Art Therapy and PTSD

"Art can permeate the very deepest part of us, where no words exist." - Eileen Miller

Recent research has shown that art therapy effectively helps people suffering from trauma and can reduce the symptoms of PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Here is a short neuroscientific explanation of why this is so.

Human experience is stored in memory banks located on both sides of the brain. The left hemisphere of the brain stores explicit memories, which are consciously remembered and can be described in words. An example of an explicit memory is the kind of sandwich that you ate for lunch. The right hemisphere of the brain stores implicit memories, which are unconscious, sensory, and automatic. Reading, typing, or playing music are examples of implicit memories. You don't have to think about how to type, or remember the letters on the keyboard. It's automatic.

Trauma occurs when a person is faced with a perceived or actual threat to their existance. Because this is so overwhelming and frightening, people disconnect their mind from the experience as it is occuring, in order to survive.

As a result of this disconnection, the left brain shuts down and the trauma memory is stored on the right side of the brain. This doesn't mean that the memory is necessarily unconscious. What is does mean is that when memories of the trauma pop up, often sparked by sensory triggers, they are re-experienced with the same intensity and with the same disconnection as during the trauma, causing many of the symptoms of PTSD.

 

In order to work on the trauma in therapy, the memory must be accessed in the right brain and engaged in the left brain. In contrast to verbal therapy, art therapy engages both sides of the brain at the same time. As a result, the trauma memory can be accessed in the right hemisphere without shutting down the verbal part of the brain, and it can be gently discussed and processed.