What Is the Main Goal of Art Therapy in Austin, TX?
When people come for treatment via art therapy, they aren’t looking for improved painting or drawing skills! They are looking for better ways of relating to themselves, others, and the world around them. In short, they want to feel good in ways they currently don’t.
Below are some reasons why someone might show up in an art therapist’s office.
People Seek Art Therapy in Austin, TX to Conquer Anxiety
They might be coming for anxiety treatment. The art therapist will work with them to learn to regulate their response to stressors, reducing whichever ones can be eliminated, and to manage the way they let worries take hold of their bodies, feelings, and thoughts.
Bodies, feelings, and thoughts are all related—so seeking art therapy for anxiety treatment will entail work in all three areas to help level out the effects of nervousness and find solutions for dealing with it when it arises.
People Seek Art Therapy in Austin, TX to Calm Attachment Issues
They might be coming for the treatment of attachment issues. These can impact the way people participate in their relationships, including their relationship with themselves, and the art therapist will work with them through embodied experiences to learn how to find better balance in close and casual connections.
This can help relieve strong emotions like abandonment, overwhelm, and confusion. New ways of engaging with family, friends, and others pave the way for better encounters with them.
People Seek Art Therapy in Austin, TX to Soothe Burnout
They might be coming for burnout treatment. People who experience things like compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization, and secondary traumatic stress in work settings that don’t support them well and expose them to difficult conditions need specialized intervention to help them regain the ability to ignite their own creative spark.
The art therapist will work with them to repair specific damage that’s been done and restore physical, emotional, and mental functioning so they can create a better outcome.
People Seek Art Therapy in Austin, TX to Alleviate Depression
They might be coming for depression treatment. Low mood and low motivation signify a problem with the brain’s limbic system, and the art therapist will work with them to help restore feelings and initiative that have been muted.
This will support things like reengagement with the environment, goal achievement, personal expression, and responsiveness to internal signals. The body sends these signals, so physical interventions are needed to connect them to emotions and thoughts.
People Seek Art Therapy in Austin, TX to Recover from Grief or Loss
They might be coming for grief or loss treatment. Death, divorce, foreclosure, estrangement, relocation, unemployment, bankruptcy, and illness are examples of tangible scenarios involving stressful change while intangible examples include the dissolution of a dream and the transition from one life stage to another.
People going through these experiences deserve the restoration of hope. The art therapist will work with them through hands-on methods to gently and respectfully sift through the aspects of the situation, ultimately taking a person’s brokenness and making them whole again.
People Seek Art Therapy in Austin, TX to Eliminate Self-esteem Issues
They might be coming for the treatment of self-esteem issues. These could come from a variety of sources—and they almost always stem from encounters with others who’ve inspired feelings of insignificance. The art therapist will work to restore self-respect and personal autonomy through experiential means.
This will weed out things like imposter syndrome and compulsive caretaking, helping to illuminate a sense of self that isn’t plagued by the need to compete with others or make them happy.
People Seek Art Therapy in Austin, TX to Resolve Spirituality Issues
They might be coming for the treatment of spirituality issues. The art therapist will work with them through physical engagement to identify and neutralize feelings related to things like challenging one’s relationship with something larger than themselves, doubting one’s purpose and meaning, or questioning one’s faith.
These situations can all involve social and relational consequences, so care is taken to create a realistic context for transitioning to any new beliefs with support for the journey ahead.
People Seek Art Therapy in Austin, TX to Heal from Trauma
They might be coming for trauma treatment. Whether the crisis involved is public or personal, long-term or limited-term, this response to something shocking deserves care that centers around recovering physical, emotional, and intellectual functioning, perhaps even improving these beyond what they were before.
The art therapist will work to help integrate the body with thoughts and feelings that got separated by the impact of what happened. Wholeness is created though sensitively timed intervention.
The Main Goal of Art Therapy in Austin, TX is to Create Transformation
Above are eight reasons why someone might seek treatment via art therapy, and the goals for each are amazingly similar if you stop and think about it. Aside from feeling better, art therapy offers clients the opportunity to engage physically for the purpose of enlisting more of their nervous system in treatment.
In particular, the hands (somatosensory processing) and eyes (visual perception) are recruited to get the job done. Given the connections these body parts have to the larger nervous system, art therapy can link the physical with the emotional and the intellectual.
An Art Therapist in Austin, TX Can Help Create a Life That Feels Better
An educated and credentialed art therapist can help clients achieve balance and synthesis in ways that traditional talk therapy does not. What is the main goal of art therapy? To provide client-specific services that are tailored to transform what’s not working into a life that feels better all the way around.
Get a Free Consultation with an Art Therapist
Are you ready for a life that feels better all the way around? Please contact me about what’s not working and we’ll have a free conversation to explore how art therapy in Austin, TX with me can help you achieve your main goal and all the smaller goals it’s made of.
Are You Tired of Being Held Back by Challenges and Obstacles?
I serve adults in Texas, Indiana, and Arizona through online art therapy, and I’d love to partner with you to create an experience of living that sets you free from the things that are holding you back.