What is Art Therapy?

Bayview Recovery offers art therapy as one of many treatment modalities to help individuals overcome their addiction or co-occurring disorder and complete their recovery. Art therapy encourages creativity and self-expression, helps build confidence and enables patients to manage their triggers and stress. In this way, art therapy can help individuals in recovery improve their physical, emotional and psychological health and sustain their long-term sobriety.

By giving recovering addicts a means to express the thoughts, feelings and emotions that they might not be able to communicate verbally — whether because it is difficult to articulate or painful to share — art therapy can be a powerful tool in the healing process. In the form of art, an individual can face and communicate many deep-seated and painful issues and emotions, mitigating the tension and stress that they bring with them. This can allow the individual to be heard while maintaining their feelings of safety and security.

How Art Therapy Benefits Those in Recovery

Art therapy teaches many valuable skills which can extend beyond treatment and into your life without drugs or alcohol. This treatment modality can help individuals reduce stress, anxiety and reactiveness by enabling them to manage their physical responses to a wide variety of intense or challenging situations. Art therapy also encourages individuals to feel and explore their emotions fully before evaluating or judging them. By withholding judgment, an individual can avoid negative self-attitudes and decrease his or her desire to use drugs or alcohol as a means of coping.

Instead, those in recovery can develop a healthy outlet for these feelings which otherwise might threaten their goals of becoming healthy again. Through making art, these individuals will also find new ways to improve their view of themselves and help sustain their long-term health. An individual need not to have any previous artistic training or talents before beginning art therapy. The skills they will develop while making art at Bayview Recovery will be yet another source of self-esteem and inner-confidence.

Further, when an individual begins to express their deepest personal concerns in the form of art, they also deepen their relationship with themselves, learn to rely on their own intuition and trust their internal resources — all of which can help protect individuals from returning to substance abuse. Combining art therapy with therapeutic modalities, holistic therapies or a 12-step program can mutually reinforce the benefits of each treatment pathway.

What Happens During Art Therapy?

If you seem like a good candidate for art therapy, Bayview Recovery will incorporate an art therapy program into a broader and more comprehensive treatment plan for you. An individual may participate in individual or group projects depending on what will best serve his or her needs and personality and offer the greatest benefit. You will get to choose the field of art you would like to focus on, and a trained counselor will help you learn the medium both as a tool for artistic expression and personal healing. The art one creates at Bayview Recovery is never judged; it is a vehicle for achieving health, wellness and sobriety.

The Benefits of Art Therapy at Bayview Recovery

Art therapy is one of many pathways to healing that can form a part of a more comprehensive rehab plan. In addition to art therapy, you can also begin a meditation or yoga practice as a part of a holistic healing program that will accompany your clinical treatment, including individual, group or family therapy and counseling.

Recovery is an extremely difficult time for most people, but art therapy can help ease this transition, support your treatment and provide you with a lifelong means to acknowledge your humanity and stay healthy and sober. You can reap the benefits of this therapy and a customized plan for healing in our comfortable, residential-based facility so you won’t have to miss out on any of the comforts of home while on your new journey.

Call Bayview Recovery today at 855.478.3650 to learn more about all our programs and begin your journey towards health and wellness.