Tactile Art Therapy Helps Resolves Complex Emotions

Art therapy as defined by the National Library of medicine, explains that art therapy is most commonly used to assist those with mental illness and cognitive decline for its ability to assist with “quality of life.” And through that it was found that artistic expression would be helpful to explore as a supplement to traditional therapy. This can be helpful as it allows for someone to put their complicated feelings into the real world and to have someone help them understand their abstract feelings better.

Trying to explain systemic racism and how it affects those it seeks to demonize may be hard to understand if the person has never fully realized that’s what they’ve been experiencing their whole live. Though it may be a bit easier through either an image or another art form, as this could allow for the patient to perhaps sculpt a piece about how they view their body, and their therapist could help to break down the harmful stereotypes that may negatively effect their body image. It’s a more tangible form of expression and takes the abstract concept of hurting someone emotionally and puts it into a realistic context. It puts that emotion or feeling into something someone might be able to more readily understand and come to terms with. They can hold it in their hands, they can feel it as their piece is being made, this process is not the same in digital.

Textile art therapy is more beneficial for a person that has trouble expressing emotion than person seeking art therapy than non digital media. This takes from the benefits and drawback of art making in general. Using traditional art is helpful in improving different techniques due to the permanent nature of the medium. If you make the incorrect cut while making a dress or the wrong brush stroke while painting then you either start over or improvise a different idea for the project. This can also be beneficial in therapy to show the person seeking therapy that while their choices have consequences there is still room to work around it or to start anew.

While with digital media those mistakes can be completely erased, and so could give someone a warped perspective of their mistakes or choices and consequences. The physical connection to the work is also somewhat lost. From my own experience, despite the fact that it doesn’t entirely relate to art therapy, I feel that my digital process and my physical process is different, there are different pitfalls and hurdles when it comes to digital media, there is a chance the piece might be lost through either the fault of the device or the fault of the person shielding it. 

Digital media has risen rapidly in the 21st century and this may be due to it’s affordability. Art supplies cost money and depending on the specific supplies this could put a significant dent in someone’s pockets. So evaluating whether digital media would be a viable option for Art therapy is important. In a study done by Front Psychology, found under the National Library of Medicine, it was found that using digital media may be beneficial when the patient has special needs.  The results of the experiment, where special needs children in their sophomore year in high school, states “In particular, digital art therapy induces a holistic sensory experience by mobilizing visual images that could represent various expressions, emotions felt in music and tactile senses that made texts for people with intellectual disabilities with difficulty in verbal communication.”

Though digital art was used for this experiment due to the availability and propensity of people using phones and computers, this does not mean that traditional art also couldn’t be used for the experiment. Teaching these special needs high schoolers how to express themselves with traditional media including clay and painting wouldn’t be all that difficult. Though there would potentially be a significant price involved. That is a small price to pay for tactile sensations and a better chance to immerse themselves in their feelings and potentially the feelings of others.

Always being on one’s devices may lead to a lapse in reality and with the addition of a learning disability like the children in the experiment this could cause an even bigger lapse in development when doing art therapy. And this study didn’t take people without learning disabilities into account, people that might have anxiety or PTSD might not have a positive experience with art therapy. The population size and demographic for this experiment is too small to really say whether or not the experiment works or not. Even if it does it still doesn’t change the fact that this would increase screen time usage for a group that already spends a significant amount of time on their screens.  It’s good to take a break from the constant screentime in daily life to pick up clay and discuss emotions with someone trained in dealing with those emotions. 

There are several benefits to traditional art therapy, a great example of this comes from the act of finger painting as it has been proven in experiments by Kaczmarek to enhance feelings of mindfulness and attention, both of which would be highly beneficial for therapy. When a person is mindful of their process and decisions when creating it can push the piece to be a more genuine work of art, this translates to the work being a more accurate expression of a person’s experience.  As opposed to digital, where the only thing connecting the person to their art is a screen. Process of creating art will feel different and sort of wrong in a way, it feels better to hold that piece of art in one’s own hands, to see the pride in knowing they made it themselves. 

Digital media may be important for getting baseline ideas and information down, though a more holistic experience can be achieved through traditional art when dealing with art therapy. Traditional art media creates sensations that can encourage mindfulness and can immerse one deeper into the creative process and therapy experience. Also with the overabundance of digital experiences it can be a nice change of pace to be encouraged to take a step back and create with a licensed therapist.

References

Kim, J., & Chung, Y. J. (2023). A case study of group art therapy using digital media for adolescents with intellectual disabilities. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14, 1172079. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1172079

Raaina Mahevish, Khan, A., Mahmood, H., Qazi, S., Fakhoury, H., & Hani Tamim. (2023). The Impact of Social Media on the Physical and Mental Well-Being of Medical Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44197-023-00164-7

Shukla, A., Choudhari, S. G., Gaidhane, A. M., & Quazi Syed, Z. (2022). Role of Art Therapy in the Promotion of Mental Health: a Critical Review. Cureus, 14(8). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9472646/

Stanko-Kaczmarek, M., & Kaczmarek, L. D. (2016). Effects of Tactile Sensations during Finger Painting on Mindfulness, Emotions, and Scope of Attention. Creativity Research Journal, 28(3), 283–288. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2016.1189769