Counseling & Creative Arts for Trauma Resolution
When our brains experience trauma, they can get stuck in negative thinking patterns. When we use our creativity, a hopeful newness can spark connection amidst mental isolation and fragmentation.
Creativity can be defined as “the use of imagination or original ideas to create something.” When we each use our own unique inventiveness, we can escape patterns of negative cognitions, maladaptive schemas, and problematic behavior. In fact, creativity is not only a part of healing trauma, but the catalyst—especially when using healing modalities like therapy.
Here are 6 ways using creative arts in therapy connects avenues for healing trauma in the brain:
1. Creating Connections to the Self
When the mind, body, and spirit are connected, our true Self can fully emerge. Often, when trauma impacts our brain, there is a detachment of Self which results in a decrease of self-esteem, self-awareness, and identity stability. When the arts are used in therapy to express parts of us that feel detached from previously experienced trauma, that same process of expression can allow for massive inner healing.
2. Creating New Outlets of Expression
Trauma is largely stored in non-verbal experience, so it can be difficult to unpack traumatic experiences with our words. When using creative arts, there are various outlets available for self-expression. For example, using painting to create cathartic release, or the expression and transformation of strong emotions stored in the body. Once those emotions are expressed, creative arts can also be used to explore somatic therapies, such as breathing exercises, mediation, dance, and other forms of moving the body.
3. Connecting to Creativity
While using trauma to connect with creativity, our brains are activated to enhance memory recall as well as retrieval and storage of information. Our negative emotions can be linked to certain thought patterns, and when these patterns are broken, the brain has a higher capacity for self-expression, problem solving, and self-realization. Using these newly built pathways to interact with stored trauma not only helps us stop negative thought patterns from occurring, but improve the likeliness of increased insight, motivation, and interpersonal relationships.
4. Connecting Problematic Pasts to Corrective Experiences
New positive experiences can help change our brain structure when we have experienced a traumatic past. To heal trauma, we must feel it, so using art in therapy to safely re-experience the past can help us create new insights that can help make meaning in the present. For example, Psychodrama/play therapy is a great way to create healing memories of self-expression which can help replace traumatic ones in the brain. Thus, when traumatic experiences are felt and expressed in real time, mirror neurons are introduced into the brain allowing healing to begin.
5. Creating Connections with Others
Research shows that creative arts in counseling diminish distress and loneliness while building healthy relationships, empathy, and social skills in the process. When art therapy is used in group therapy sessions, a sense of belonging can form from shared experience. While trauma is a unique experience, the resulting feelings can still be shared and healed with the power of community. When sharing painful emotions behind a traumatic experience with people who can empathize, healing can grow from the shared experience of expression.
6. Connecting to a Better Future: Inspiring Post-Traumatic Growth
Actively re-experiencing trauma can help shift the mind’s perspective from the past to the present and subsequently promote future healthy responses in the brain. Safely using creative arts with a mental health professional can help make shifts in behavior when healthy practices are repeated. For example, when using creative arts weekly in therapy, evidence shows we are more likely to develop personal strengths, spiritual transformation, new potential of possibility, quality of relationships, and greater life appreciation. When we allow ourselves the time and space to express how we feel in the present, we are able to heal our past and transform our future.
What does the Bible say about using creativity?
We don’t need to look farther than the first page of the Bible, Genesis 1:27, to know that because we are made in the likeliness of God, we are created to create. It can often be hard to remember that being creative is what we were made for while living in a world wanting us to consume—especially when we feel burnt out. But it’s important to also remember that we are made to create and then rest. After God created creation, he rested and marveled at what was made (Genesis 2:1-3). When we use our imagination to create something, we are not only bringing glory to God by honoring him in his likeness but using a holy process to bring about restoration and healing.
This week, try allocating one hour to create something as a process of healing—not a means for a product to be made.
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