What Does an Art Therapist Do? Thoughts from an Austin, TX Art Therapist

Art therapists stay just as busy as any other therapist! But what does that entail? Well, in many ways what an art therapist does is similar to what you’d expect from every mental health professional, but THEN there are the aspects that are specific to art therapy. What are they?

Assessment in Art Therapy

An art therapist in Austin, TX is on board to make sure clients reach their treatment goals—and the process from the beginning of treatment to the end of treatment will focus not only on what the client says but also on what the client does.

Think about it—artmaking is an active endeavor, and it’s completely observable. The resulting art products are also visible. So during the first phase of art therapy, the art therapist is using their observational and visual thinking skills to assess the client’s strengths and challenges.

Some Things an Art Therapist Watches for During Assessment

Does the client have problems regulating their energy, or are they pretty sustained during art therapy in Austin, TX? Do they have trouble soothing themselves, or are they able to do this with ease? Do they respond to the boundaries and limits of the materials they’re working with, or do they have boundary issues?

Does the client have the motivation to engage in their own artmaking process, or does motivation peter out? Do they think through their actions in advance, or do they get lost in their own lack of planning? Do they respond with self-knowledge to what they’ve created, or do they demonstrate a lack of insight about or connection to their own output?

Treatment Planning in Art Therapy

The answers to these questions are important for the art therapist in Austin, TX to know about, as the assessment phase leads to the development of a treatment plan that harnesses the client’s strengths to overcome and transform their challenges.

Typically, the art therapist will work with the client to develop this treatment plan. Unlike a talk therapy treatment plan, the art therapy treatment plan may identify how art media and methods will be used to achieve treatment goals.

Treatment Plans that Involve Art Media and Methods

This is where an Austin, TX art therapist’s unique education and training come into play! Non-art therapists don’t have a sense of how to enact a treatment plan through art media and methods and thus won’t write a treatment plan that includes these, though some non-art therapists try to guess and subject clients to their “creative” guesswork in treatment.

Given that art therapy makes use of somatosensory processing and visual perception, treatment isn’t something guess about.

Intervention in Art Therapy

Enacting a treatment plan means that intervention through art therapy in Austin, TX is underway. And intervention is how transformation occurs. You know how you can compare the way you feel right now to the way you want to feel?

In therapy of all kinds, intervention is what happens to get between those two feelings and build a bridge from “before” to “after”. In art therapy this can look like the introduction of gradual changes in media and methods; believe it or not, titrating these changes on an individualized basis can resemble the titration of medication in that things are shifted slowly to ensure maximum therapeutic benefit at every step.

Intervention Through Art Media and Methods

As far as art media go in Austin, TX art therapy, some are more fluid and some are more resistive. At the fluid end someone might be brought more in touch with their ability to express emotions. And at the resistive end someone might be better connected to their capacity for emotional containment.

Both expressing and containing are important, but any given client might need to work on one more than the other. So the art therapist will help them learn to acquire new skills by supporting them in mastering increasingly difficult media that tap their potential for engaging differently in life.

And as for art methods, those can range from high complexity to low complexity and from structured to unstructured. They can be used in a titrated manner also, and the art therapist will guide treatment by making method recommendations that keep the client connected to their overarching treatment goals.

Progress Monitoring During Art Therapy in Austin, TX

Then there’s progress monitoring. Progress monitoring allows the art therapist to informally assess how a client is doing in relation to the goals that were set up in the treatment plan. And again because artmaking is observable and art products are visible, progress monitoring is easy if the art therapist documents the subtle changes they see happening over the course of treatment.

Remember, the purpose of art therapy is not to generate new visual artists that are waiting to be discovered by art collectors. The purpose of art therapy is to help people create their own transformative process.

Issues That Require Transformation and Integration Through Art Therapy in Austin, TX

The subtle changes that are happening might lead to aesthetic improvements, but generally speaking these changes are more about integrative improvements. How do you know if you need integrative improvements? Well, if you have a psychological world that’s trapped in your body, you might be on the go all the time or have a lot of somatic complaints.

Or if your psychological world is trapped in your feelings, you might experience mood instability or adopt a rigid stance in life in hopes of avoiding disruptions. And if your psychological world is trapped in your head, you might get lost in the vortex of your thoughts or personalize anything and everything that happens to you.

Integrative Improvements Through Art Therapy in Austin, TX

None of these situations are optimal. The body, feelings, and head need to be integrated. Connecting to full functional potential will help a client be able to engage with life in the right way at the right time.

And that’s what the art therapist is doing all along—helping the client connect in this integrative way via the prescriptive use of media and methods. The little changes the art therapist notices in the client helps the therapist to ascertain how treatment is going and if any adjustments need to be made to the treatment plan.

Graduation from Art Therapy in Austin, TX

Most art therapists will discuss treatment plan tweaks with the client. And as treatment is more and more successful, the client’s bridge from “before” to “after” becomes more and more complete. When the client reaches their goals, they work with the therapist to plan for graduation from therapy.

Review of the Client’s Process of Change

Graduation from art therapy in Austin, TX can involve a review of the client’s artwork over the course of treatment, as it’ll showcase the client’s unique process of change. And the client can take the artwork with them as a tangible record of the time spent in therapy.

The insights they gain as they reflect upon this artwork will continue to impact them long after therapy has ended. It’s a way to extend the power of the therapeutic experience. And who wouldn’t want to have extended power?

A Framework to Help Clients Detect Integrative Connections

When I work with clients through art therapy in Austin, TX, I do so through the lens of a framework called the Expressive Therapies Continuum. This framework holds together everything I’ve mentioned in this blog article—assessment, treatment planning, intervention, and progress monitoring—and gives me talking points to help a client learn to manage their own nervous system so they can continue to build that bridge from “before” to “after” even outside the therapy sessions.

Clients report that they like having therapy within this framework because it helps them detect connections between different ways of experiencing their inner and outer worlds physically, emotionally, and intellectually.

Art Therapy Can Help You Build a Bridge From “Before” to “After”

Let’s talk about how integrative work through art therapy in Austin, TX can support you in building a bridge from where you are to where you want to be! Contact me for a free phone consultation about the bridges you want to build in your life. I serve adults all over Texas, and I also provide treatment throughout Indiana and Arizona.

I’d love to help you explore how online art therapy with me can take you from the way you feel now to the way you want to feel.