Art Therapy

Art Therapy provides our clients with a different therapeutic means of expressing their thoughts and emotions and behaviour. Often, individuals come to us with a dysfunctional way of expressing emotions and or suppressing them. Art therapy encourages the exploration of emotions through creativity. This can provide clients with a real sense of ‘expressive freedom’ and new personal insight, as they find another medium in which they can identify and explore difficult emotions. This expressive form of therapy helps our clients to become more consciously aware of their unconscious inner world. As clients learn that there are creative ways in which they can identify and safely express the mechanisms of their internal world, clients will gain a greater awareness of self and how this relates to others. Art therapy offers the individual an opportunity to recognize the magnitude of the human organism and its capacity for change.

Clients sometimes mistakenly assume that to engage in art therapy one must have an obvious artistic tendency however in fact for the purposes of therapeutic endeavour this is not the case, in fact, everyone has some form of creative capacity and can therefore engage and benefit from Art therapy.

Art therapy is provided as a different form of self-expression, and serves as a means of ensuring that self-exploration is not confined to talking therapies, but rather that creative expression can also be a powerful means of gaining personal insight and of social skills enhancement where creative expression is shared within the group dynamic particularly by those individuals who may find it more difficult to have a voice in more traditional talking therapy. Once aware of the basic concepts of art therapy this can become an individual endeavour for continued self-exploration relaxation and stress relief.

At the Recovery Lighthouse our therapists will support and guide you to use your creativity to process negative thought, emotion and behaviour, the therapist will offer insight into your creative presentations as this relates to aspects of your inner world you may otherwise not have gained access to. Art therapy is shown to lead individuals to a state of improved physical, psychological and emotional well-being.