Let’s be real for a second. The majority of individuals who are attracted to healing careers are not entering into it with a state of absolute mental sanity. Many of them began with therapists, counselors, psychologists, coaches, or healers; as their internal something was broken first. A person who’s giving others therapy or taking care of others’ mental health doesn’t need to have everything fixed in their own life. Perhaps the person who chooses to fix others’ lives has something broken inside themselves. A wound of some sort or other has turned into a calling. And when you read this, you have probably had your inner critic screaming for all these years.
Self-doubt. Overthinking. The sentiment of being inadequate. The ever-present need to do something to prove yourself. Honestly, it gets exhausting.
And the question is this in reality. Would it really do you good to pursue art therapy as a career and therefore heal your own critics? Or is that a mere romanticism that people would like to think?
Here is the thing. The yes and no are not so cut and dry. It is layered. Emotional. Scientific. And deeply human. Let us break it all down.
We must first of all know what the inner critic is.
The inner critic is the inner voice, psychologically speaking, which continues to rebuke your flaws and mistakes, failures, and fears. It is formed out of childhood experiences. Parenting styles. Academic pressure. Societal expectations. Trauma. Comparison culture. Rejection. Social media. The list is long.
A study that was published by the American Psychological Association indicated that extreme self criticism is closely associated with the presence of anxiety disorders, depression, eating disorders, low self esteem, and chronic stress. Put simply, excess self-attack interferes with your nervous system.
The brain begins to be in survival rather than growth mode. You are afraid, not curious.
And when that occurs year after year, you lose your faith in yourself.
Here creative therapies start having a strong influence.
What Exactly Is Art Therapy?
Art therapy does not mean that one should be good at drawing. Let us dispel that myth at this point. You do not have to be Picasso to take advantage of it.
Art therapy is a psychotherapeutic method where artistic activities such as drawing, painting, sculpture, collage, and mixed media are utilized to assist individuals to release their feelings that one cannot describe (unemotional). It appeals directly to the emotional brain.
Art therapy psychologically stimulates the emotional centers of the brain such as the amygdala and the creative problem solving centers of the brain such as the prefrontal cortex. The combination aids in emotion control and understanding.
Research as performed in journals such as Frontiers in Psychology reveals that art based interventions have an immense effect in lowering the levels of cortisol in the body which happens to be your primary stress hormone. Reduced cortisol translates to relaxed mind, sleep, increased immunity and decreased anxiety.
Well, that is crazy just to think about it.
This section is potentially close to heart.
Many of the individuals who pursue art therapy as a profession already have a history of emotional suffering. Childhood neglect. Academic pressure. Identity confusion. Chronic self doubt. Burnout. Relationship trauma.
One does not simply wake up in the morning and say yeah, I am going to help people deal with emotions in colors.
There is a personal tale of that draw.
At some point, Carl Jung commented that the healer is most likely the one who has been hurt most of all. And frankly, that theory is true in the real world much more than individuals would like to acknowledge.
When art therapy is learned, you are taught not only to lead people. You also undergo your own process of self exploration intensively. And that is the only thing that can get your inner critic shaking as no inspirational quote will do.
This is where the situations become interesting.
The inner critic exists in words. In words. In self talk. In comparisons. In mental stories. Art therapy does not speak beforehand. It bypasses the reasoned mind and gets into the emotive body.
Whenever you are doing some visual art, your brain gets in a semi meditative state. This decreases the default mode network activity. The same network is the one that causes rumination and negative self talk.
The inner critic automatically tends to keep silent in the process of creation.
In the long run, through constant art based emotional exploration, you start to notice your patterns. You just see your phobias appearing on paper. You see repetitive symbols. Repeating emotions. Suppressed anger. Unprocessed grief.
The transformation can be brought about once people are aware.
That is the real healing.
Not affirmations. Awareness.
Short answer. Yes. But with conditions.
Long answer. Studying art therapy presents you to various psychological paradigms. Trauma informed care. Neuroplasticity. Attachment theory. Expressive therapies. Somatic processing. Inner child work.
Quality programs have the students take personal art therapy sessions during training. It is in this that personal healing is in fact enriched.
You do assignments where you get to know about your fears through drawings. You work on relationship traumas in sculpture. You vicariously discharge anger in strokes of colors. Sounds weird. Feels powerful.
With time, the inner critic gets loose since you no longer fear yourself.
You stop running.
You start listening.
And that changes everything.
We shall introduce a few facts since no one is always convinced by feelings.
The World Health Organization has come out to state that creative therapies have become acknowledged as supportive interventions in dealing with mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, and psychosomatic disorders.
Expressive therapies A meta analysis of expressive therapies (2023) found that art therapy had moderate to strong effectiveness in decreasing depression scores in both adolescents and adults.
A different study conducted in Journal of Affective Disorders revealed that after 12 weeks of structured art therapy, those who attended it experienced a 39 percent decrease in self criticism and a 31 percent in self compassion.
Those numbers are not small. They possess clinical importance.
Consider that this is your job now.
This is the plain and simple fact you are not told through an Instagram reel.
It is very fulfilling to take care of others as you are restoring yourself. However, it could be emotionally burdensome.
Once you enroll in any art therapy course online, you will begin to realize your story within the stories of your clients. Their shame mirrors yours. Their fear triggers yours. Old memories in your case wake up because of their trauma.
This is referred to as countertransference in psychology. And any therapist has to deal with it.
The distinction is whether you digest it and you repress it.
This mirror can be medicine and not damage with the appropriate supervision and self-work.
You are getting taller than you ever fancied.
Your inner critic will not be gone forever in any profession. Having a human voice is part of being human. The goal is not to kill it. The idea is to ensure that you do not allow it to dominate your life.
Art therapy will enable you to form another relationship with this voice. You do not fight it, but learn to see it. You also learn to question it instead of obeying it. You do not hate it, but learn to know its origin. That shift is everything. As soon as you cease to accept the inner critic as absolute truth, its strength will begin to diminish.
Conclusion
The decision to make a career in art therapy is not merely about assisting other people to sketch their emotions. It is concerned with discovering how to have your own emotional messiness without being self-destructive.
It concerns how to transform pain into language.
Fear into form.
Shame into color.
Silence into stories.
Your inner critic might never entirely fade away. But it ceases to be your master through art therapy. It is simply another voice. And you are the one who ends up with the brush.