If you’re in a group setting, you, the therapist, and your group members can begin to understand the conflicts or triggers that are leading to your current emotions. Together, you can draw on shared experiences to tackle these issues and suggest ways to resolve them productively. Art therapy is a holistic treatment that provides the tools to cope with triggers like anger and loneliness. It teaches you how to overcome emotional roadblocks and express yourself when communicating with others. Here are some ways art therapy can help treat addiction.

• A big part of the 12 Steps is self-reflection which art therapy facilitates.
• For over 50 years, the Gateway Foundation has been serving patients at all stages of recovery by offering evidence-based and individualized treatment programs.
• In these treatments, patients go beyond simply listening to music to engage emotions, motivations, and barriers to recovery through lyrics and melody (American Music Therapy Association, 2014).
• By drawing self-portraits of yourself over time, you create visual representations of how you’ve changed.

Essentially, art therapy, under the supervision of a licensed art therapist, can help addicts seeking to recover from their addictions. It can be a calming yet effective therapy to help you move forward in your journey toward recovery. Several limitations of the current study should be noted.

Using Art Therapy To Treat Addiction

Draw monsters in place of your real fears. Think about something that frightens you and art therapy for addiction ideas use your tools to give it form, color, and shape. Draw yourself as a strong warrior.

Document the things and people you are grateful for in the form of a collage using mixed media. Map out the people you have in your life. Draw yourself in the center and then map out all of the connections you can think of in your life and how close each one is to you.

Art and Creativity in Addiction Recovery: Healing Through Expression

Art therapy also fosters self-esteem and self-awareness, cultivates emotional resilience, promotes personal insight, aids in the reduction and resolution of conflicts, and advances change. We understand what you’re going through and we can help you or a loved one survive addiction and find happiness in your life again. Programs generally last two years, with additional time for supervised clinical experience. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

These situations can be hard to put into words, but rather than talk it out and risk giving inaccurate descriptions, you can draw it out. If drawing doesn’t do it for you, you can use paint, sculpture, or even dance to depict your emotions. No matter the feelings, experiences, traumas, or mental state, you have the ability to express them through art. The benefits of art therapy are more than just lower stress levels. Art therapy provides a non-verbal way to express pain, anxiety, or other emotional issues.

How To Get Away From Addiction

In 1945, Hill wrote a book on art therapy called Art Versus Illness. Finally, to paraphrase Howes, reading these brief posts is no substitute for the education it takes to understand how to effectively and ethically apply them to practice. Competent therapists always get adequate training before applying any intervention. The Meaning Machine Series is an art therapy directive that allows clients to explore their frame on a particular issue, as well as what meaning they are assigning to things related to that issue. They get the opportunity to define and redefine their meaning around a given stressor or problem in order to work toward healing.