Healing Through Art
What is Trauma?
For those of you reading, I would like you to take a minute and reflect on this question. When you are ready please read the definition I provided below of trauma.
Keep in mind that trauma is broad and many people may have a different definition for what this may look like to them.
Trauma is a distressing event that has occurred in your life.
This distressing event may look different person to person.
So how does art therapy promote healing for trauma?
One: Less Talking, But More Processing
Have you heard of Broca’s Area?
If you have not, it is a region of the brain that is responsible for speech. This region of the brain decreases in activity when someone re-experiences a traumatic event. This means that art therapy would be extremely beneficial for people who have experienced trauma. Talking about the event may be difficult for traumatized people and could result in an impulse to fight or flee. Art helps us work on that trauma in a way that may feel more tolerable to stay in.
Two: Neural Pathway Connections
Some of you reading this may be asking, what are neural pathways?
Well, neural pathways are a passage between the nervous system. But neural pathway connections help us to form connections in our brain as well as to attach meaning to these connections. The reason neural pathway connections are important for trauma work is because we can change the brain's neural pathways. Art therapy can help those working through trauma because producing an art piece will change a client's neural pathway and create new meaning as well as change how you think and feel.
Three: Safe Space
It is important for every client to have a safe space. Using art therapy with clients who have experienced trauma needs a safe space to work in. Through the use of art therapy it can help empower the client by being able to express themselves freely in a non-judgemental space. It can also help the client contain their feelings and reconcile with feels of guilt.