[Europe] How creative therapy can be helpful

"When I started my journey into recovering from my eating disorder, I soon learned that I had lost the ability to connect to my authentic self, and struggled to access my emotions, after years of numbing and suppressing them."

This is what Elsie, age 18, declared to Young Minds, when she began to describe her experience with creative therapy. 

She continues: 

"Before starting different types of creative therapies, I wasn’t sure they would be for me. My critical voice told me I would not be able to engage because I am not creative, and that it would not be helpful for me. But five months later, I am so thankful for the voice that creative therapy has given me. It became an outlet where I could express my feelings in a way I didn’t know was possible.

Creative therapy has helped challenge my perfectionism and the high expectations that I put on myself, and instead has helped me to stop judging my art, or other creative expressions of my emotions."

Many young people nowadays struggle with perfectionism, manifested as unrealistic body images, striving for overachievement, etc. The world moves at a very fast pace and it can be very easy to lose oneself. According to psychotherapist Carl Rogers, "Psychopathology and suffering take place when there is an incongruence between the real self and the ideal self". These words were echoed by Elsie, who felt she had lost her authenticity. 

Creative therapy is a form of therapy that uses non-verbal expression, like art or music, as a means to communicate our inner world. The most common creative therapies are: movement therapy, which includes unstructured dancing and movement; art therapy, which is basically painting whatever comes to mind; and drama therapy, which focuses on how your body feels and the sensations you experience in your body. 

In contrast to what might be a general opinion, creative therapy does not require you to excel, it pushes you to explore and leave behind rigidity and perfectionism. 

For the complete news article and more information on creative therapy, please visit this link.