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Art Therapy in Chicago
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Meet Our Art Therapists
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Rebecca Vichi, MA, ATR
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Sherraine Miller, MA, ATR-P
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Elizabeth Yoo-lae Cho, MAATC
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Bekka Brennan, LPC, ExTh
Utilizing Art And Creativity On Your Journey To Healing
Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy that encourages you to utilize therapeutic painting, drawing, or some other artistic expression to articulate complicated emotions that can be challenging to express verbally. Incorporating the use of your hands with expressive therapy as you talk to your therapist, such as coloring, sketching, or weaving a basket, can make it easier to access and communicate your feelings.
As the American Art Therapy Association describes, art therapy for mental health is “used to improve cognitive and sensorimotor functions, foster self-esteem and self-awareness, cultivate emotional resilience, promote insight, enhance social skills, reduce and resolve conflicts and distress, and advance societal and ecological change.”[1[ By incorporating mind, body, and spirit in the therapeutic process without relying on verbal expression alone, art therapy can transcend the limitations of language and allow you to tap into other powerful forms of self-expression.
Utilizing art therapy can help you develop deeper self-awareness of your feelings and understand how past experiences may be impacting you presently. Not only can expressive therapies allow you to be seen in a fuller sense of your true being, but they also instill an element of mindfulness and flow that can help reduce symptoms of distress.
How We Utilize Expressive Arts In Therapy
Because every client is different, the way we incorporate creative arts into therapy will vary. Your art therapist in Chicago will meet you where you are and gauge your level of interest in how much or little you would like to incorporate art into your therapy session. Depending on your response, they may suggest different art activities that can be performed with your hands while engaging in traditional “talk therapy”, such as sketching, knitting, crocheting, or basket weaving.
In other instances, you might want to engage in art with your therapist present to witness the process—this exercise can be therapeutic in itself. Utilizing art therapy offers a spaciousness for experiences and emotions to emerge more naturally and in their own time. Your preferences will dictate if art therapy is utilized as an adjunct to psychotherapy or, conversely, psychotherapy is used as an adjunct to art therapy.
Art therapy can provide you with a sense of safety for your inner self to gradually emerge. There is no pressure to put together a verbal narrative to explain how you feel when engaging in art. Incorporating art into therapy can help your access your experience in profound ways that facilitate relief and healing faster and more effectively than conventional modalities.
Who Can Benefit From Art Therapy?
Art therapy helps adults and teens with a variety of mental health challenges, including anxiety, trauma, grief, and depression. Not only can expressive arts open you up to your feelings and foster self-awareness during therapy sessions, but it also has the added benefit of being a healthy coping mechanism you can use to process emotion moving forward.
Art therapy is a good alternative for anyone who has a high level of anxiety about the therapeutic process itself. In addition to just talking, involving a creative process that engages the hands and other parts of the brain can help anxious clients feel at ease so that they can share their concerns more openly. If depression is an issue, creative expression is a way to tap into a pleasurable activity that can reawaken joy. Additionally, engaging in art therapy can aid in bringing traumatic events to the surface that sometimes have a harder time emerging in psychotherapy.
All of our art therapists are also trained in other psychotherapy methods and will draw from their vast reservoir of skills to meet your needs and attune to where you are on your healing journey. In addition to art therapy, they may also utilize Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) or attachment theory, which delves into how early life experiences shape present-day experiences.
Why We Love Creative Art Therapies
When building our group practice, we knew we wanted to include an art therapist on our team. Although traditional psychodynamic therapy predominantly relies on talking to convey thoughts, feelings, and emotions, this can be limiting for many clients. Not everyone is as comfortable expressing themselves verbally as they are utilizing other modes of expression.
Incorporating art therapy into our practice has provided our clients with another way to express themselves. Expressive arts therapy can be a helpful option for clients who are less verbal about their experiences, don’t know what to say to a therapist, or get anxious with direct communication. By accessing the unconscious and subconscious mind and body, art therapy invites more of the whole person to the table.
Utilizing art therapy for mental health can help establish a sense of safety with your therapist as well as gain confidence that you are enough just as you are. And within a safe and trusting therapeutic relationship, symptom relief can happen. Art therapy has the potential to open up a whole new dimension of healing and help you identify what is possible for your life. Not only can it help provide you with short-term relief from whatever you are currently suffering from, but it can also help instill a hopeful outlook in the long term.
[1] https://arttherapy.org/about-art-therapy/
Find Out How Art Therapy Can Help You in Chicago, IL
Balanced Awakening has been happy to offer art therapy in Chicago since 2021. If you would like to find out more about art therapy with us, you may visit our contact page to schedule a free 15-minute call. We now offer in-person and virtual services throughout Chicago, IL, and virtual services in Miami, FL.
Art Therapy Blog Posts
Art Therapy FAQs
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Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy that encourages you to utilize painting, drawing, weaving, collage building or any art mediums to articulate complicated emotions that can be challenging to express verbally. Incorporating art into therapy can help speed up healing and help you feel better faster.
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An art therapy session may look very similar to a traditional talk therapy session, but perhaps you the client are doing a weaving or scribbling as you talk. Or, it could also look like quietly painting in the presence of your therapist and talking with your therapist briefly afterward about what the painting means to you. Art therapy sessions can be 90% focused on art or 90% focus on talking or somewhere in between.
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Art therapy sessions can be more focused on art making - or they can be more focused on talking while art making happens simultaneously or for part of the session. Your art therapist will customize sessions just for you, so you will have a say in how much art vs. how much talking you do in a session.
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Not at all! Come with a beginner’s mind, even if you do have prior artistic skills. Art therapy is all about the process, not so much the outcome. So whatever you produce in an art therapy session will not be evaluated in any way based on artistic ability. It’s helpful to let yourself get into the flow and see where it takes you!
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Art therapy provides an alternative avenue for emotions and self expression to emerge. Sometimes it can be really challenging to access and express things when you’re in your head. Art therapy gets you in your body, and allows your truth to emerge through your hands instead.
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Art therapy can be a shorter or longer term therapy, depending on your preferences. Most people will feel better after a few months of art therapy sessions that happen once/week. Others will find it helpful to come to art therapy every other week for a year or longer. The duration and frequency of art therapy is determined by you with the help of your art therapist.
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All of our art therapists have degrees specifically in art therapy. They also have extensive training in psychotherapy, so they have a solid mental health background in addition to art therapy.
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Our art therapy rate for the first two sessions is $245. After that, 55 minute sessions are $220. We accept BCBS PPO and Aetna insurance.
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Absolutely! Sometimes when we hear about art therapy, the focus is on how it helps kids. But did you also know that it can have a profoundly positive impact on the lives of adults? Sometimes as adults it can be more difficult to access fun, joy, play, and creative expression which are all very important parts of mental health and well-being. Art therapy can help adults tap into the flow of joy, fun, and creativity.
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We do! Art therapy is offered both in-person and virtually. If you’re doing art therapy from home, you’ll have access to whatever supplies you have at home. If you do art therapy in-person, you’ll have access to our abundance of art therapy supplies. But art therapy from home can be the most convenient option for some.