What is Expressive Art Therapy Anyway?

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 differences; for highly creative people; for people who don't think they are creative at all.

Revised Oct 14, 2025. Previously published in August 2023.