Art Psychotherapy

Art Psychotherapy may be helpful for children, young people, and adults who find it difficult to express themselves through words alone, or who are seeking an embodied, creative, and relational approach to working.

It can be particularly supportive for people who:

  • Feel overwhelmed, stuck, or disconnected

  • Have trauma or attachment concerns, or significant life changes

  • Have chronic stress, anxiety, and depression

  • Have neurodevelopmental, cognitive, and sensory differences that benefit from sensory-based or more-than-verbal approaches

  • Prefer creative, visual, or experiential ways of exploring emotions and experiences

  • Want to develop greater self-understanding, emotional regulation, or connection.

What is Arts Psychotherapy?

Art Psychotherapy is a way of working that includes body-based experiences, sensory impressions, and feelings that may not come through in words alone. Creative processes offer pathways into aspects of experience that may sit beneath conscious awareness, supporting insight, integration, and connection when verbal language is limited.

Trauma-responsive and attuned to each individual, the work is shaped by safety, pacing, and what feels manageable for you. Creative expression offers flexible, supportive pathways for exploring experience with choice and care. Through art-making and embodied processes, people are supported to explore, express, and make meaning of their inner world, including experiences shaped by memory, sensation, and response. The creative process becomes a safe, living dialogue that fosters self-awareness, understanding, and a deeper connection with self and others.

Art Psychotherapy and Creative Arts Therapy at HEARTH are grounded in whole-person well-being and responsive to psychological, physical, neurological, and relational experiences.

Who is it for?

For many people, creativity offers a safer way in. Art-making and embodied processes can support expression, identity exploration, and connection when words feel unavailable, unfamiliar, or not the preferred pathway.

  • Creative Arts Psychotherapy supports children and young people to express, regulate, and understand their experiences through play, art-making, movement, and sensory processes. These more-than-verbal pathways are developmentally responsive and guided by each child or young person’s pace, interests, and capacity.

  • Art Psychotherapy offers trauma-responsive, more-than-verbal pathways for exploring and integrating lived experience. Creative and embodied processes support safety, pacing, regulation, and connection, particularly where experiences are held somatically or outside conscious awareness.

  • Creative and embodied processes support exploration of emotional experience, stress, anxiety, mood, identity, and life transitions. Therapy offers space for reflection, regulation, and meaning-making beyond words.

  • Creative Arts Psychotherapy supports individuals with diverse ways of sensing, thinking, moving, and communicating. Therapy is adapted to individual preferences and strengths, offering flexible, respectful, and embodied pathways for expression, regulation, and connection.

  • Creative Arts Psychotherapy supports people living with overlapping physical, psychological, neurological, or developmental experiences. Therapy is integrative and responsive, adapting to complexity rather than working within single-diagnosis frameworks..

  • Psychoeducation may be woven into therapy to support understanding of nervous system responses, emotional regulation, sensory processing, and patterns of experience. This is always tailored and integrated into creative and embodied work.

  • Art Psychotherapy can support individuals navigating medical treatment, neurological change, brain injury, or cognitive shifts. Creative and sensory processes offer accessible pathways for expression, adjustment, rehabilitation, and integration.

  • Creative and embodied therapy can support people living with physical illness, injury, pain, or changes in bodily functioning. Art-making, movement, breath, and sensory awareness offer ways to reconnect with the body, support regulation, and explore experience beyond verbal language.

  • Creative Arts Therapy supports older adults and those caring for them through transitions, loss, memory changes, and evolving identity. Creative and sensory engagement can support connection, dignity, expression, and emotional wellbeing.

  • Creative Arts Therapy offers gentle, person-centred support during end-of-life and palliative contexts. Art-making and sensory processes can support meaning-making, expression, legacy work, and connection for individuals and families.

Who are Creative Arts Therapists?

Art Psychotherapists are qualified allied health professionals who specialise in creative, embodied, and experiential processes. Professional registration requires approved tertiary training, with some peak bodies recognising Master-level qualifications in Art Therapy or Art Psychotherapy as the standard for practice.

Grounded in inclusive, trauma-responsive, and person-centred practice, Art Psychotherapists recognise therapy as a deeply individual process shaped by each person’s experiences, needs, and ways of being. Through creative and expressive modalities, they offer therapeutic spaces where people can explore, process, and communicate in ways that feel natural and authentic.

In Australia, professional titles may vary depending on training background, scope of practice, and the registering body. Practitioners may use titles such as Art Therapist or Art Psychotherapist, Creative Arts Therapist, or Creative and Expressive Therapist. While titles may vary, practitioners registered with recognised peak bodies such as ANZACATA, PACFA, and ACA meet established standards for training, ethics, and professional practice.

Creative and Embodied Processes:

These are ways of working that invite attention to the body, movement, sensation, imagery, and creative expression. Sessions may draw on art-making, integrated play, movement, breath, narrative, imagery, and sensory awareness, engaging both gross and fine motor processes. Over time, themes and imagery may emerge that become significant within the therapeutic process, revealing patterns, meaning, and possibilities for change.

Processes and materials may include:

  • Art-making using a range of materials such as drawing, painting, collage, printmaking, and mixed media

  • Sculpture and three-dimensional work using clay, found objects, and tactile materials

  • Photography and image-based processes, including viewing, creating, and reflecting on photographs

  • Integrated play and symbolic play, supporting exploration, imagination, and meaning-making

  • Movement-based and embodied processes, including gesture, posture, rhythm, and spatial awareness

  • Breath, grounding, and body-based awareness practices

  • Narrative processes, including story, metaphor, and visual storytelling

  • Imagery and visualisation

  • Sensory exploration, supporting regulation and connection through texture, sound, light, and movement

  • Gross and fine motor engagement, supporting physical, neurological, and sensory integration

  • Nature-based and outdoor processes, where appropriate, drawing on natural materials, environments, and seasonal rhythms

Focus / Support Areas

Art Psychotherapy and creative and expressive therapies may support:

  • Exploration and expression of lived experience through creative and embodied processes

  • Increased self-awareness and understanding of emotional, physical, and relational patterns

  • Emotional, psychological, and somatic attunement, supporting mind–body connection and regulation

  • Processing and integration of life experiences, including trauma, through safe, more-than-verbal pathways

  • Development of inner resources and coping strategies that support whole-body regulation

  • Strengthening communication, connection, and relational safety beyond words

  • Support for identity, self-expression, autonomy, and belonging

  • Creativity, curiosity, and playfulness as part of growth, healing, and adaptation

Each session is tailored, with focus and pacing guided by the individual, the therapeutic relationship, and what feels supportive over time.

Delivery Formats

Art Psychotherapy and Creative Arts Therapies may be offered in a range of formats, depending on context, setting, and individual needs. These may include:

  • One-to-one sessions

  • Couples, siblings, or family sessions

  • Kinship and carer sessions

  • Private group settings

  • Group programs or workshops

  • Open drop-in sessions

  • Clinic-based services

  • Home-based or outreach services, where appropriate

  • School, community, or other off-site settings

  • Telehealth / online

Memories and trauma are stored in a different part of the brain than verbal language, suggesting that talk therapy on its own may not be as beneficial for people who have experienced trauma as when it’s combined with art therapy.

(Emily Davenport, MA)