Why making art can help heal PTSD
Art by Lindsey Bailey - to see more from artist Lindsey Bailey go to www.lindseyswop.com
by Laura Onstot
When I started receiving treatment for PTSD, writing — my go-to creative outlet — was sometimes more triggering than it was helpful. I like my writing to solve problems, or to tie stories up into tidy packages. When it came to telling my own story, PTSD gave me none of these liberties.
Most of my non-traumatic memories live in my brain with a combined verbal and visual component, but my traumatic memories live in my body — in the way I clench certain areas when I am around certain people, in the way my heart rate skyrockets after a small trigger, or the muddled feeling of emotional flashbacks. I remember some aspects of the traumatic events well, but other parts of the memory are blurry, or missing altogether. It is indeed my body that has kept the score.
I spent a lot of time revisiting traumatic memories in therapy, trying to piece together what actually happened, to flesh out the story. “Processing,” as my therapist called it, or, as I liked to call it, “pure hell.” I was saturated in intense emotions, and was so frustrated that I couldn’t articulate what I was feeling.
One day I pulled out a piece of printer paper, borrowed a pencil from my first grader, and started to sketch. I hadn’t drawn since grade school, but it immediately grounded me. I found I was able to express deeper emotions and memories, without needing to narrate a story that I still couldn’t make sense of myself.
Intrigued by my gravitation toward drawing, I sat down to learn more about art therapy from Leah Guzman, a board-certified art therapist and author of The Art of Healing and Manifesting. Guzman was very clear from the beginning of our conversation: doing art as a hobby (me) is very different from art therapy. She agreed that spending time creating art will reduce cortisol levels, but, “Art therapy goes deeper.”
When Guzman got her master’s degree in art therapy, she learned the theoretical frameworks of traditional counseling, like cognitive behavioral therapy, EMDR, family systems, etc. Now, she incorporates these frameworks along with artistic activities and talk therapy to help her clients process their trauma.
Lindsey Bailey
She held up a whiteboard with two drawings of the brain to explain the science behind art in PTSD. When a person experiences a traumatic event, the amygdala, way in the back of the brain, is activated, leading to hyperarousal and the fight/flight/freeze/fawn response (the sympathetic nervous system, or SNS). While an activated SNS can be helpful in life-threatening situations, trauma survivors often live chronically in this state.
Then, Guzman pointed to the front of the brain, where the prefrontal cortex, responsible for problem solving, resides. She said, “Talk therapy can be really difficult if you've had a traumatic event, because if we are activated, even thinking about the traumatic event, then we're gonna get stuck.”
Guzman explained that art is a safe space to process emotions, and can serve as a holder of the trauma until the person is ready to talk about it. She works with her patients to teach them coping skills to regulate their nervous systems, while revisiting traumatic memories during art therapy, with the eventual goal of helping them assign language to accompany their visual memories when they are ready.
Guzman helps her clients to identify emotions, choose a color to represent that emotion, and then draw different lines, shapes, and symbols to depict what they are feeling. “You don't have to actually draw out stick figures or anything like that.” Nor, she says, is it about making a pretty picture. “It's really just about being cathartic.”
A study in the Netherlands concluded, “Art therapy may offer an alternative and suitable treatment, because the nonverbal and experiential character of art therapy appears to be an appropriate approach to the often wordless and visual nature of traumatic memories.”
“You didn't have a choice in what happened. But you do have a choice in how you heal.”
Lindsey Bailey
Art therapy can be a gentler way to explore past trauma, eventually enabling the survivor to assign language to their story. But you can still experience the benefits of making art without seeing an art therapist.
Sarah Greenberg, a Harvard-trained psychotherapist and executive director of behavior change and expertise at Understood.org, explained that one hallmark of healing from trauma is being able to experience a trigger, but have a different level of reactivity. She said art, or creativity — even yoga — gives the survivor a safe place to process their thoughts, memories, sensations, or feelings. “This is a way in which the wisdom of your body and the wisdom of your mind is finding ways to process without feeling flooded, or overwhelmed, and that's extremely powerful,” Greenberg says.
She was careful to point out that what is helpful for one person, may not be helpful for someone else. It is important for the individual to explore the activities that help them feel most safe and grounded. Greenberg said, “You didn't have a choice in what happened. But you do have a choice in how you heal.”
Looking to find a therapist to help you process trauma? Greenberg says it is less about finding a therapist with a specific technique, and more about finding a therapist you feel safe with. “Much more important than the specific type of therapy or the specific tool somebody uses is that alliance that you feel with that therapist.”