The Therapeutic Power of Art Making
Written by Jade Taussig, Psychotherapist, Coach & CEO
Jade Taussig is an accredited psychotherapist, coach, and entrepreneur dedicated to helping people unlock lasting change, process their emotions, and find their voices. As co-founder of Integrated Wellness, creator of Mood Moved, and CEO of We Are The News, she combines psychological expertise with innovation, creativity, and personal growth.
Do you ever find yourself lost for words or feel that the words available to you aren't quite right? When writing, we have the luxury of time. We can pause, edit, delete and fiddle around with the synonyms option until we find precisely or approximately the word we want. Talking is different. It is dynamic and immediate. There is no thesaurus available in the middle of a conversation.
My core training is as a talking therapist. However, I have always been fascinated by the different ways we can access and express our emotions. A feeling or memory may be powerful, yet the words to describe it can elude us. Sometimes, the experience is felt more readily in the body through tension, tightness in the chest or shallow, panicked breathing. This is where creative expression can offer us another language.
How can making art be therapeutic?
Through art making, we can access and express our emotions in different and novel ways. If we remain open and curious about what emerges, the creative process can allow us to encounter different perspectives and potentially disrupt rigid or unhelpful thought patterns.
What we produce also gives us something tangible to reflect upon, a form of non-verbal language with which we can engage. Expression may remain entirely wordless. Alternatively, when an image is shared and reflected upon with another person or within a group, something that began without words may gradually move into the verbal sphere.
I’m reminded of the adult colouring book phenomenon in 2015, when sales skyrocketed. Although this form of activity is demonstrably more bounded and less creative than working with a blank canvas, it gives us insight into the mindful nature of adding colour and the adult desire to tap into an activity that was commonplace in our childhood but largely abandoned in adulthood. Perhaps this is why it returned, because it was deeply rewarding.
What happens with no predetermined lines, cues or structures? This is where the mind, body and unconscious interact, potentially giving us insight into our inner world and the way we experience the world around us. It also has the potential to show us what is hidden, difficult to articulate, obscure or evocative. Or perhaps it is simply just a yellow blob? It is blob-like and yellow. That too is allowed.
The place of art in a progressively logical world
Increasingly, our lives seem driven by systems, efficiency, data and logic. We are constantly being told that artificial intelligence (AI) is the answer to absolutely everything. On that point, I strongly beg to differ.
Comprehending and connecting with the human condition is an art more than it is a science. A large language model may produce something impressively structured and seemingly near perfect, but therein lies the problem. Being human is a messy business, and our attempts to understand ourselves and one another can be messier still. Art lives and thrives in this space.
Once an artwork has been created, we can become curious about it and ask questions such as, "What did I notice while creating this? What do I notice now? What feelings arise when I look at this? What do I make of this?"
One question may cascade into another, opening up unexpected avenues for reflection. Exploration can continue through talking, further art making or simply spending time with what has emerged. Neat and tidy it is not. Dynamically human, it is.
Stress relief and beyond
There is a growing research base examining the relationship between creative activity, art therapy and wellbeing. A study by Kaimal, Ray and Muniz demonstrated that cortisol levels, our stress hormone, considerably decreased after a creative session, with participants also reporting feelings of entering into a flow state that was enjoyable, freeing and relaxing. Importantly, previous artistic experience was not significantly associated with the outcome. The therapeutic benefits of art are experienced irrespective of whether a person is artistically inclined, trained or good at art.
Research by art therapist Vija Lusebrink also provides an interesting framework for understanding what may be happening during art making. Her work on the Expressive Therapies Continuum explores how creative expression can engage sensory, movement, perceptual, emotional and cognitive processes.
Research has also explored creative and art-based interventions in relation to cognitive processes and conditions such as dementia. Studies involving people living with dementia suggest that art-based interventions may provide opportunities for communication, engagement and person-centred activity.
From thoughts to feelings
Rather than relying exclusively on language, art allows different aspects of experience to interact. Art can also be useful for people who have a tendency to intellectualise their experiences. Words can, of course, be magnificently artistic. Poetry, for example, can hit us on a gut level and say considerably more than an equation. However, sometimes we can drown in words or tie ourselves in knots with them. A clever wordsmith can be extremely skilled at using language to obfuscate how they actually feel. Art has the potential to bypass that.
A talking therapist’s experiences of the therapeutic benefits of art making
Occasionally, in my clinical work, clients share their artwork and their experiences of creating it with me. This can bring an interesting new dimension into the therapeutic room and foster deeper understanding and connection. The chosen medium, colours, lines, shapes and expressions can all become areas for exploration. I can become curious about what those things mean to the client. In some ways, an image may be less rigid than a word. Words generally carry established meanings. An image, by contrast, may hold multiple meanings, both for its creator and for the observer.
Recently, I experienced this for myself during a therapeutic art session with Art Psychotherapist Ran Dang. She offered me a range of materials to experiment with, from felt-tip pens and pencils to charcoal and crayons. I elected to sit on the floor and spent very little time thinking about what I wanted to produce or which medium I should use. Instead, I approached the exercise as play rather than putting pressure on myself to create something seminal.
Sitting on the floor transported me to a place I’d not been for many a decade. The experience was akin to playing as a child. I had no expectations and even made a bit of a mess. The resultant image was that of a winter tree on a sunny beach. Post-production, Ran invited me to explore what I had experienced while making the piece and what I noticed as I looked at it.
What emerged surprised me. The image felt strongly connected to the death of my father, which happened almost ten years ago. His death is not something I consciously think about day to day, and I had assumed that much of my grieving had been completed. Yet reflecting on the image revealed that there was still considerably more sitting beneath the surface.
There was grief, but also frustration that practical responsibilities had interrupted that process and, in some ways, continued to do so. Alongside this, there was something else, hope and a strong sense that our connection continues.
None of this had been planned when I picked up the art materials. It emerged through the process and then through becoming curious about what I had made.
Art making with others
My daughter, a very talented young artist, fell in love with my piece and now keeps it among her own treasured art collection.
For her, art making has long been a primary source of pleasure and self-exploration. It is something she can lose herself in, whatever mood she happens to be experiencing. She describes the process as stress relieving and immersive. She also enjoys the added gratification of producing work she is proud of, which inspires further pieces.
On occasion, we draw together. The process of sitting with one another and sharing our work is pleasurable in itself.
Creating art within a group introduces another dimension. Alongside individual experiences of expression, reflection and self-awareness, participants can share an experience, witness one another's work and, if they choose to, communicate about what they have created.
Research has also explored whether art therapy can support self-esteem. One small study by Hartz and Thick examined art therapy approaches with 27 female juvenile offenders over approximately 12 weeks. The researchers compared art psychotherapy with an art as therapy approach and found improvements in aspects of self-worth, alongside different improvements in areas such as social acceptance, behavioural conduct and close friendship.
When movement and art come together
In previous articles, I have written about the powerful relationship between movement and mental wellbeing. Art making adds a further dimension. Movement is still involved, but something potentially permanent is also created.
When words are spoken, the sound disappears at the point of utterance. What remains may become part of our or another person’s memory. Artwork is different because it remains. Like a diary entry or photograph, it can become a snapshot of a particular moment, a window into our inner world at a particular point in time. We can return to it at later times or in different emotional states. This opens up the potential to see or feel something new.
Move, create, reflect
My interest in the relationship between art, movement and emotional wellbeing inspired me to create Mood Moved, a workshop series in which I collaborate with specialists, including art psychotherapists, dancers, actors, martial artists and holistic health practitioners.
The workshops explore different ways of connecting with ourselves beyond talking alone, using movement, creativity and psychologically informed reflection to support emotional exploration, self-expression, stress relief and wellbeing.
At our next Therapeutic Movement & Creative Art workshop, Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) Registered Art Psychotherapist Ran Dang and I will bring movement and creative expression together in a supportive, non-judgemental environment.
Read more from Jade Taussig
Jade Taussig, Psychotherapist, Coach & CEO
Jade Taussig is a United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) accredited psychotherapist, coach, and co-founder of Integrated Wellness, with over 17 years’ experience supporting mental health, emotional wellbeing, confidence, and personal growth. Her holistic approach draws on Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), coaching, and movement-based practices. She is also the creator of Mood Moved, a workshop series combining psychotherapy, movement, creativity, and self-expression, and the CEO and co-founder of We Are The News, a community-driven social media platform focused on freedom of expression, transparency, and informed discussion.
