What is Expressive Art Therapy?
Expressive art (EXA) therapy is a kind of psychological counseling that incorporates multiple modalities of expressive arts to aid and assist in the process of healing, recovery, growth, self-exploration, social change, and for making meaning of our lives and the world.
Where art therapy uses visual art and music therapy uses music, sound, and/or voice, EXA therapy incorporates all of it and more: Visual arts, writing and narrative, dramatic arts, music, movement, and sound, ritual or ceremony, dreamwork, astrology, tarot. There are myriad ways that expression can emerge and be used as a tool for growth.
The graphic below shows some examples. Keep in mind that the tools of an expressive art therapist are multimodal, and every expressive art therapist may vary a bit in what they offer. Take for example, the visual arts. Yes, there is painting, drawing, collage. But also sculpture and clay work, fiber arts such as weaving and embroidery, photography, film, etc.…
Expressive art therapy uses the arts as tools, not for the goal of making something objectively beautiful, but to facilitate a way in. Because when you get out of your head, and onto the page, the stage, into the body, the art has a way of entering you, coming in a side door, bypassing the thinking brain, and gaining access to places that may have been sealed off or deemed too scary to look at. Expressive art therapy can be a great option for people who might be tired of conventional talk therapy, or maybe talk therapy didn't really work for them; for people with learning disabilities; for highly creative people; for people who don't think they are creative at all.
In my graduate program, most who enroll are artists, although many will tell you they didn’t always call themselves as such. One of the program requirements is that we have an ongoing personal arts practice. This speaks to CIIS' integral methodology, and it makes good sense, because how can we be good expressive art therapists, if we are not processing our own stuff through the vehicle of art? It is a call to action that not only positions us to be ready to show up fully for our clients but encourages us to claim the title of artist. My writing coach used to say, a writer writes. And so, if you are regularly making art—in any form—then, yes, you are an artist. (And yet it is a title that can be surprisingly fraught with baggage.)
This same time last year, when I was newly entering the EXA program, I was struggling with the transition of my professional identity. As my therapist had put it, I had left the shore of Libra as designer, and I was in the ocean, but could not yet see the other shore of Libra as therapist. The harder I tried to conjure up a picture of this new shore, the more it eluded me. So, I stopped trying and just embraced my student life, and being in the in-between.
Now it’s one year later, and as I prepare to enter my second year, the vision of my new identity, of Libra as therapist, is becoming more solid. Although, honestly, it’s less of a vision and more of an awareness, a sense of stepping into something. There’s nothing tangible that I can point to and say, yes, it’s that. This awareness is energetic, it’s holistic and it’s subtle; I just feel it.
In one year from now, I will be starting my practicum. Practicum is to therapists-in-training as residency is to medical students. That is the phase where I will move from being a student to a therapist-in-training, putting into practice all that I’ve learned, working with real clients, and hopefully earning a little money. Then graduation in spring 2025, associateship and earning my 3000 hours, and then sitting for LMFT exam… There will be many changes between now and then, as I continue to define and refine my EXA therapist self. For now, I will focus on entering my second year of graduate school with this solid feeling. I am still in the ocean, I’ve become a decent sailor, and being able to see glimpses of the new shore feels pretty good.