OCD3, Ep7: Finding Release through Art Therapy

Artist and graduate art therapy student, Jessica Hoffman, explains how the process of creation can help sufferers of anxiety disorders cope with their symptoms. Subtítulos disponibles.

If you believe intrusive thoughts could be affecting your ability to lead a normal life, contact a local psychologist to start on your personal path toward healing. Art therapy may complement treatment and should be done in conjunction with not instead of traditional methods.

Read full video transcript below:

Aaron Harvey (AH): Jessica, thanks for joining me today and having us down to your amazing gallery space. Today, we want to learn a little bit about art therapy and how that might relate to OCD or anxiety disorders in general.

Jessica Hoffman (JH): So how I got involved a little bit was through my own art making and realizing that art was not so much about the product of art, but the process itself. Seeing the joy that people get out of making art, going through struggles, is really something beautiful, and I wanted to really follow that. So yeah, there’s a big gap with mental health issues today, and really, no one should be facing that alone.

AH: Can you tell us a little bit more about art therapy? What is it? How does it work?

JH: So it really is kind of accessing parts of the brain that are tough to bring out in psychotherapy and traditional talk therapy. So for somebody who doesn’t quite know how to verbalize what they’re feeling, it certainly opens up the doors to allow that to happen through the creative process. Art therapy is setting goals and being in a safe space with a trained professional.

AH: It’s really about the process, not the outcome.

JH: Absolutely.

AH: So for someone who maybe is not a professional artist, it’s really investing their time in going through the process and learning from it. I’ve read that art therapy works well with anxiety disorders. OCD is an anxiety disorder. How does someone suffering from anxiety benefit from art therapy?

JH: The process of art itself and creating in general, that flow that you kind of reach, that catharsis, that release, is meditative. So you get into this state of creation with materials that allow you to be focused solely on creating. And not other thoughts or other worries. Just getting those thoughts out, getting those images out, that stress out, it’s definitely a cathartic release in that way. It also acts as a way to cope. You use a controlled material, like a marker, where you can’t erase it. That mark is already down on the paper or the canvas. You tell yourself you made a mistake, but it’s about adapting and kind of going with the flow of it. So if you’re able to do that, in an artistic process, you’re able then to adapt to real life. An art therapist might ask a client or patient to draw an intrusive thought and that’s kind of a form of exposing them to that fear or that thought and just kind of working through that process. But allowing, too, maybe that frustration of those thoughts to let that come out with the art materials physically. It’s really getting it out and moving on from it.

AH: Assigning no value to it, basically.

JH: Yeah. Assigning no value.

AH: Personally, as a sufferer of OCD, I found a lot of therapy through making music, working in a creative agency, having a sense of community. Can you tell us a little bit about group art therapy?

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