Center for Creative Counseling
Create Clarity & Connection
Center for Creative Counseling
Create Clarity & Connection
Center for Creative Counseling
Create Clarity & Connection
Art therapy is an excellent (and enjoyable) way to explore issues, learn new coping skills, and focus on healing.ย
The Center for Creative Counseling offers online art therapy services to residents of Pennsylvania, with trained art therapist Hayley Wilds.
Art therapy is a type of therapy that uses the visual arts to enhance the therapeutic process.ย Through creative expression, art-making, and discussion, art therapy can bring about increased self-awareness, insight, and so much more.
According to the American Association of Art Therapy, art therapy “enriches the lives of individuals, families, and communities through active art-making, creative process, applied psychological theory, and human experience within a psychotherapeutic relationship.”
At the Center for Creative Counseling, art therapy clients get a chance to tap different parts of the brain and body that go beyond talk therapy alone. Art therapy offers a different mode of communication that helps you express things that verbal communication cannot.
Neuroscience has found that the majority of brain activity is unconscious. (Some say up to 95%!) If your mind is an iceberg, your consciousness is the tip above the water. The bulk of the berg is completely unseen. That’s a lot of untapped stuff under the surface!
And what’s so cool about art therapy is that often times, things show up in your art that you didn’t know existed. In fact, one of art therapy’s superpowers is making the unconscious conscious.
When you use art to explore your issues, you create symbols that represent your struggles. It can be extremely helpful to work with those external symbols because your unconscious mind put them into your art for a reason.
When you externalize your problems, you start to recognize that they are separate from you. You are not your problems. You are a complex individual made up of multiple parts.ย
Clarity increases when you can actually see those parts manifested in visual form. You can interact with them, shape them, and rebuild them in real life, versus just using verbal communication to speak abstractly about what’s going on for you.
In addition to getting more clarity, using art in therapy helps to increase emotional safety. Working with your physical art objects provides a sort of insulation or buffer that can be helpful when processing intense or painful topics.
Additionally, when you process your artwork with your art therapist, you are the master of your destiny. In other words, you determine what your artwork (and its symbols) mean to you.ย
This method of processing allows even more unconscious material to come to the surface as you and your art therapist work to understand what your art is trying to communicate.
I might be a little biased, but I think art therapy offers one of the best ways to achieve therapeutic change. But you don’t have to take my word for it.
The American Art Therapy Association highlights a ton ofย art therapyย benefits on its website.ย
Art therapy can:
Let me first say that art therapy can benefit everyone!
What’s more, you do NOT need to be a skilled artist to enjoy and engage in art therapy.ย Art therapy is about the art-making process, and not about artistic ability.ย (And yes, you can draw stick figures and still experience the power of art therapy.)
Humans are creative beings by nature, and art therapy gives you the space to use that innate power to dive into your issues, express yourself, and embark on a journey toward healing.
Art therapy is a good fit if you:
Here is the thing – I have witnessed some incredibly powerful moments of healing self-discovery during art therapy sessions. And I think you deserve to experience that, too.
In this new world, aka the pandemic that won’t end, we’ve got a major silver lining – online therapy! And that silver lining extends to art therapy, too.ย
The Center for Creative Counseling provides online art therapy in Pennsylvania. Online art therapy shares all of the same benefits as in-person art therapy and has a few of its own, too. With online art therapy, you get to make art from the comfort of your own home, using art supplies that you are comfortable with. You also get the added benefit of using digital tools as well.ย
You are in control of the kinds of materials and supplies you would like to use to create. I am happy to make art supply recommendations as well. Plus, I will provide digital art therapy worksheets and workbooks for specific art therapy activities. And I can ship specific art supplies to your door, depending on the situation.
I use a secure telehealth platform to protect your privacy and maintain confidentiality. Plus, I use a secure messaging and email platform that allows for the safe exchange of images to help us process your artwork with ease.
Below are a few examples of art therapy artwork. These images represent some of the art therapy directives used in treatment. All of the images below were created for educational purposes and they do not belong to clients.ย
Interested in receiving art therapy through the Center for Creative Counseling? Awesome!
We offer online art therapy services in Pennsylvania. Sign up to to be the first to hear about our therapy openings.ย
Hayley is a trained art therapist who has used art therapy in her work with kids, parents, and families for more than a decade. Hayley earned a masters in art therapy with a counseling specialization from Seton Hill University in Greensburg, Pennsylvania (2010).
