24/04/2025
🎨 Art Therapy is a form of Psychotherapy that uses art making and creative play as a vehicle for expression and communication. Art-making encourages people to express themselves and make sense of their emotions through the creative process, which can be particularly helpful for those who struggle to talk about or make sense of hard life experiences. Art Therapy sessions aren’t structured in the way art lessons are. They involve the exploration of art materials as a reflection of the client’s present life experience.
🌻 As a neurodivergent practitioner, I have a good understanding of some of the challenges that children and young people on the autism spectrum face. This often includes things like feeling distressed about transitions, struggling relationally, experiencing challenges with self-expression, shutting down, and the frustrations that come with feeling misunderstood.
💜 Verbal communication can be particularly difficult for autistic children, who often find it easier to communicate in representational images. Art therapy can help to address this. Within sessions, I meet the children and young people I work with at an empathic level, taking into consideration what they are communicating with their body language, in their artwork, in the emotions they show, in what they are reactive to, and in how they respond to me. By introducing the use of art materials and drawing on each individual’s strengths, children can learn how to self-regulate, which can help to address things such as anxiety and attachment issues in ways that feel safe to them.
