Healing Through Art Therapy – Lab 064

I feel like all the products, all the apps, everything is marketing itself is good for your mental health, Like the coloring apps, right, matching games. I'm like, this game is against a timer? How is this relaxing and good for mental health?

All it's doing is raising my anxiety. Well, since the pandemic started in twenty twenty, it seems like there's been a huge ramp up in things that are associated with improving your mental health.

It's just like how things say all natural, Like what are the qualifications for this?

Right? Organic? M that ain't organic? They spelled organic with a K.

Well, it's mental health awareness myth, and I think we should get to the bottom of it. Iron Tt and I'm Zachiah and from Spotify. This is Dope Labs. Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science, pop culture, and a healthy dosa friendship. May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, and we have never shied away

So let's get into the recitation.

Okay, So what do we know?

Well?

I think we know already that mental health is important. We just had an episode recently talking about the connection between the mind and the body, and we also know that therapy is a really helpful tool for a lot of people.

Absolutely.

And then I think also we know our surroundings, our environment can affect our mood and our emotional state, you know. So not just am I in a place that smells good? Am I in the place that looks good? Am I in a place that makes me feel calm? We have multiple inputs for our state of being. So things we see, like art can affect how we feel.

Absolutely. Okay, So what do we want to know?

I think when we.

Start to consider art therapy, yes, I understand in the literal sense, it's a combination of art and therapy, but how exactly is it working?

Right? And then when we figure out how it works, I want to know who it's most helpful for. Is it people who are more artistically inclined that art therapy will help or is it everybody? No matter what, at any art level, you can use art as therapy.

That's a good question.

And then also if you are using arts therapy, what is happening in your brain?

Right?

I want to know how it's working, what part of the brain is activated you.

My friend always wants to know that biology. That's a very good question, and so me, I want to know if the type of art you're engaging with have different effects, Like does painting do something different for you than pottery?

Would you know what I mean?

Yeah, you talked about my biology, but it feels like you're going into materials material.

Science, Like yes, those nice smooth pastels. That seems very calmon.

And I think it would be great to define the parameters of art therapy because I see a lot of things getting swept under that broad term. So like those apps where you paint by number, is that art therapy?

Like those coloring books?

That's a very good question.

I think we're ready to jump into the dissection.

Our guest for today's lab is Professor Juliette King.

I'm Juliette King.

I'm an associate professor of Art Therapy at the George Washington University, and I'm an adjunct associate professor of neurology at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

Professor King is pursuing a PhD in Translational health sciences. Her research is focused on using neuroscience and art therapy to treat psychological trauma.

She also wrote a book on these issues. It's called Art Therapy, Trauma and Neuroscience Theoretical and Practical Perspectives.

Okay, so before we dive into art therapy specifically, we want to be clear. Art therapy is one of many different kinds of therapeutic practices out there.

Right when it comes to therapy, there's no one size fits all approach. What works for you may not work for me, and vice versa. So let's jump in to figure out exactly what art therapy is.

I love to answer this question by defining what I say is a continuum, and so on one end of the continuum we might call therapeutic arts where but cellist is playing on a cancer unit and hearing the music might help people feel better, more calm. Or if you're walking down the halls of the school and the walls are gray and cinder block as opposed to painted by an artist in residence with colors and movement, then you're going to feel differently walking down those halls.

So Professor King is saying that art is inherently therapeutic, and that makes sense to me.

You know, we love oh, yes, the arts.

Yes, me and my friend we love to walk through a museum together. They're usually really quiet, so it's a really good time to just, you know, sit down, look at really beautiful art.

We went to MIA, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, so when we travel we try to find museums around us.

That's so true. Got us in the right mood for that show.

Yes, And I also feel like even when you see other art, it can stimulate your own creativity.

Absolutely. So, on one side of the continuum we have therapeutic arts, and on the other end we have art therapy. And just because something is therapeutic doesn't make it therapy. There's a difference. Art therapists has specific training in how they provide clinical support.

Art therapists are trained as talk therapists like psychologists or counselors. And also we carry this extra toolbox around where we use different art materials and methods to help a person express themselves, connect mind, body states, understand a little bit more about themselves that they might not have direct conscious access to.

So art therapists use the tools of art making in addition to more traditional talk therapy techniques. But how exactly do these tools help us connect better to ourselves?

Says that communicating through art is nothing new. In fact, we've been doing this since the beginning of time.

Art is everywhere and it's a critical part of being human and Professor King says that our survival is somewhat dependent on our capacity to be creative, to you know, look at things from different perspectives.

We have an innate pool to express ourselves. Think back to the cave paintings right where pictures were drawn to let the world know what it was that people were experiencing at the time.

Art and art making have existed in various forms across cultures throughout our history. Art shows up in religion, record keeping, protests, storytelling. It truly is everywhere.

And when you put it that way, it makes a lot of sense that combining the tools of art with therapy would be very powerful, especially now that we know that art is inherently therapeutic and people are inherently drawn to making art.

So can everyone do art therapy?

Right? Who is the ideal person? Because I can't draw.

Everybody has the capacity to engage in the arts. You know, my specialty is in visual art therapy, but there are many different kinds of expressive therapies and expressive arts. There's dance, there's music, there's drama, there's writing, there's poetry, there's play. So all of these forms of expressive abilities are inherent in all of us.

Remember that time when we were in grad school and we were at your house per use and your mom was there and we were line dancing with her in your living room.

Oh my goodness. Yes, yes, that.

Was very therapeutic for me. So I could definitely see how dance can be therapeutic because I was sweating. Your mom didn't break a sweat. I was sweating through my clothes. Had such a good time, And in.

Fact, these capacities are really.

Healthy and important for us, especially in times where we deal with such stress, isolation trauma.

Professor King told us that anyone who's seeking therapy can try art therapy and you don't need to have any artistic skills at all.

That's perfect for me.

A lot of people think that they're not creative, so they don't want to draw, or I can't draw, I draw stick figures, you know, and that's very common. And one of the fun things about it sometimes is that you learn new things about yourself and new talents that you have that you may not have realized before.

There are a lot of reasons to go to therapy, whether it's processing or healing from a specific experience, or if it's even part of just maintaining your overall mental health.

Professor King mentioned earlier, it's important to remember that our therapy takes place within the therapeutic context and therapeutic relationship between the patient and therapist.

The work of psychotherapy takes place between the therapist and the client, and there's a triangular relationship with our therapy in that the art making process and what the person makes is really a central part of that. So we can understand that within the relationship with the therapist, we have the capacities to rebuild fractured attachment patterns. We have the capacity to facilitate emotional regulation. A lot of times

That makes a lot of sense.

Yes, a pandemic is not normal. It has become our new normal, but it is not normal. So we are all experiencing this collective dysregulation.

And in previous labs we've learned how disregulation can lead to the body's automatic stress response because of the uncertainty and anxiety.

Right, right, that's such a good point, and.

So that brings us right to the brain.

Yes, and you know, I want to know more about what's happening in our brains when we practice art therapy.

Well, for starters, Juliette says, it's not happening in just one place.

There's not one targeted area that we would correlate with our therapy, but we would correlate artistic activity and creative activity with whole brain engagement. The more we learn about the brain is that we are a system of functional hubs and networks. Very little is connected to a specific biological or physiological or anatomical function in the brain. Our brain operates in relation to itself. This rests on the molecular biological understanding of neuroplasticity, and really it goes back

Neuroplasticity means our brains have the capacity to rewire them selves and form new connections in response to new information, sensory stimuli, and following an injury. This is what's happening in your brain when you're learning, and.

So this potential to change is exciting because you don't have to be stuck in your waist and if there's something you want to do differently, your brain has the capability to do it differently. Now, that might be a little bit harder, but once you start walking on that path, you just beat it down and it becomes easier. Is you're no longer hiking through rough terrain. Right, That's what neuroplasticity is. You begin to make a smoother path for yourself and eventually it's paved.

I love this analogy, it's a word.

So when we're little, those neuroplastic capacities are much greater than when we're ninety five. However, what we know about the brain is that the capacities for neuroplasticity.

Span the entire developmental continuum. And what we also know about neuroplasticity is the more input we have from sensory, motor, visual systems, right, then the more capacities we have to change and grow.

So if more sensory input means more capacity to grow and change, then art is giving you more input with more opportunity to change how we regulate or do things.

It seems like I love that.

With that in mind, it feels like with art the possibilities are endless. Yeah, the capacity to change and grow is so important because it allows our brains to learn new things and make changes. Moving forward and making changes in our behavior and thought patterns is essential to healing and often a really big part of therapy.

Absolutely tt So let's take a break and when we come back, we'll talk about how art therapy can help us find balance during times of stress, the importance of nonverbal communication, and how different mediums can be used for healing.

We're back and we've been talking with Professor Juliette king about art therapy. What parts of the brand are stimulated, and who exactly is art therapy made for? Is everybody? But before we jump back in, let's talk about what we're going to be focusing on in next week's lab.

In next week's lab, we're talking all about games, and strangely we somehow come around to the meaning of life. We also talk about gamification and tt you tell us about one of your recent new favorite games.

Too, Yes, so check it out to make sure you hear about all that. Tea.

Let's get back to the lab.

We've been talking about how art therapy can help with emotional regulation and finding a balance throughout times of stress.

How do we understand how to use our art process and products and ourselves and that relationship to help with emotional regulation and regaining homeostasis.

Our bodies are constant and lea striving for balance, which is essentially what homeostasis is. Stress disrupts balance and can lead to dysregulation, like we've been talking about, where it's difficult to make decisions because our bodies are stuck in a stress response.

And we've talked about this stress response in some earlier episodes. So fight and flight and freeze, and before we can understand how to move towards homeostasis, we need to unpack how our bodies experience, process, and store trauma.

The nature traumatic experiences, the nature of disease and distress. The nature of stress is such that our systems engage in an upheaval, a disruption of homeostasis. Things become out

And when memories are stored in our.

Body, we don't have conscious access to that, and we also don't have verbal access.

You know, I was reading some really interesting things about how folks think about memories. It's said that a lot of times we consider memories to be these intact accounts of what happens, and that they get buried but that's

And so what ends up happening also is in the recall or re experiencing of a trauma, the talking centers of the brain aren't working as actively, and so we see from neuroimaging capacities how different parts of the brain aren't operating as fluidly as they might, and so that too is going to hinder a person's ability to construct a story, to tell their memory, to put together a narrative.

That's really amazing. So the nature of trauma is that sometimes we literally can't even talk about it. That's really tough.

Yeah, And that also gets in the way of this really important part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, and that's the part of the brain behind our eyes. That's how we live our life, our organization, our executive functions. Well, when we're experiencing traumatic events, when we're experiencing emotional upheaval, then the capacities for our prefrontal cortex to process information, to process emotions.

That also gets steyny.

And that's something we talked about in the So Anxious episode LAP thirty eight with doctor Wendy Suzuki.

Now that we know that trauma is stored in the body, something like art therapy makes a lot of sense. Someone might not be able to use words to talk about or process their experience, and that could make healing really difficult.

This makes me think about what Professor King said earlier about how art therapy can help people express and understand themselves without having conscious access or verbal access to whatever they're working through in that therapy.

Now, we live in a verbal society. We live in a society that's saying forget the young conscious whatever, let's just stay focused.

Okay, so exhibit a social media podcast, not this one, though, keep listening to dope labs. Everybody is talking about something, and talking is a primary way of processing our subconscious and the primary mode of communication and talk therapy.

But a lot of times talking just doesn't cut it. We need other methods to help a person feel safe enough to understand their situation enough in order to be able to engage. Art therapy inherently allows for emotional regulation.

Professor King told us about the importance of nonverbal communication. There's so much we say without using words, which is why I know you give me a hard time for it, but it's why, hands down, ten times out of ten, sometimes eleven, I'm choosing FaceTime for an important conversation.

That is very true. I know if I hear that time tone, I know it's the key. I just know. If I can hear coming through microfeedter, I'm like, yes, that's my friend.

But I think that's because so much of how I communicate, even though I'm saying a lot of words. You do not want these text messages unless you really know me and can decide how these things are going you know.

I totally understand. I understand.

We use nonverbal communication all the time. That's how we come out of the womb when we're born. We experience the entire world through our senses. So that really forms a strong foundation for how engagement and sensory motor, visual, tactile movement. Engaging in these sensory experiences is innately part of who we are and innately part of how we

When you look back at it, and I think about the things that we've learned in a lot of our episodes exploring the brain and unpacking and understanding development. Even in that book that I recommend it and tt I know you read it, Good Morning Monster.

Oh my gosh, yeah, and Oprah's book What Happened to You?

Right?

All of these things make me think about being an infant is really traumatizing.

You have no way to express yourself.

You're trying to make sense of all these things around us, and really our brains don't remember that.

No.

I would imagine being birthed into this new world with all these like very foreign things. It's like being dropped on another planet with aliens.

Yes, And then all.

Of a sudden people are like, all right, develop here, eat this, drink this, I'm gonna carry you here, I'm gonna put you down there. That's scary. Sometimes I think about my dog Daisy, like that Daisy.

Must be like she's barking. You know, you're trying to say things. You're trying to express yourself. Think about how much babies babble and make noises, but they're trying to learn. Okay, how can I tell this person there's poopin on my backside?

Help right?

Like, or they'll be in one direction and then all of a sudden they're airborne and they're like, wow, I'm flying because somebody picks them up and then moves them somewhere else and they're like they're on a mission to do something. They're like, oh, I would like to touch that thing, and they start moving and all of a sudden they're being lifted by a crane, and.

I don't know what's going on.

Imagine you walking down the street to the corner store and a crane picks you up and drops you in another state.

It's a lot of information to take in.

For some people, art may not be the magic key right right, You may have to add something else. And I've been seeing the adoption of a lot of different things that to me, I would say, oh, non traditional, but they may be rooted in something that I didn't know about before.

Like remember when people were doing.

Yoga with goats, Yeah, and the goats were jumping on their backs mm hmmm h But now what we see is animal assistant therapy, so like emotional support animals. And I'm like, we're those two things connected? Does one come out of the other, right?

And I mean even when you think about just yoga, there was a time where yoga was very new in Western culture and folks were very confused by it. And now you know there's a yoga studio on every corner.

Yep.

There's a whole history of that, and I think what we're seeing is that those types of practices were being discredited in favor of a much more medical approach to things, which is something that we talked about in our last two labs about maternal health, when we talked about overall wellness and sometimes just needing a more holistic approach. And now we're seeing a shift right back to those same things that have been working for societies and cultures.

For many many moves.

Did you ever see that video of that older woman, really old, and she's in like the hospital or something like that, and they play Swan Lake or something like that and she starts moving.

M hmm.

That's what all this reminds me of. I'm like, yes, a woman that is practically immobile, but when she hears certain music played, it triggers something in her mind that recalls, you know, her time as a prima ballerina.

We've seen music therapy as a great tool, and I think people see it being used in classrooms. I've seen it for a lot of older adults, especially when you start considering, you know, the effects of memory loss.

One of my middle school science teachers shout out to Mss Perico. Every time we had a test, she would play Beethoven because she was like, it makes you smarter. I don't know if that's true, but it was very relaxing, and it did like kind of set the tone for every single test that we took in her class, where it just made you feel calm. It kind of like just flipped the switch in your brain where it was like, Okay, I know this sound. It's time to take a test, It's time to focus.

So some of that is like music cues, and just like there are different types of therapy within art therapy, there are different types of mediums.

M we ask Professor King how different mediums can affect us differently if we're using art therapy.

So one of the guiding theories of art therapy, what I like to call our primary way of knowing, is that media, meaning art materials have different properties. So watercolors have different properties that clay does, that pastels do, and so the theories go, which have become quite advanced over the years, and to look at parallels between different media properties and how these properties evoke different levels of expression, all of which exists on what we could call a

And we use this.

Somewhat naturally and innately through our training to understand how to develop interventions with specific art materials to effect or to address whatever goal it is that we're working on. A simple example would be using water colors is likely going to evoke more of a sensory experience, more of an opening up than building something with tools and wood, right, That's going to evoke more of a cognitive higher level of thinking.

That's really interesting, and so my next question is do art therapists see a difference from person to person. Does everyone respond to the same mediums in the same way. So watercolors may open a person up black, Professor King said, but maybe not necessarily for another person.

Therapy is subjective.

I think a really great example is thinking about those coloring books, which ps are not art therapy.

But some people feel.

Really calm when they color those intricate designs. Other people feel like WHOA, They feel insecure, they feel overwhelmed, it raises anxiety or like sends them into an obsessive state.

Professor King told us that art therapists are really careful when using different mediums with patients.

If we're not careful, opening a person up too much can lead to emotional flooding. A person can get overwhelmed or overstimulated, there's actually an ethical responsibility that art therapists and psychotherapists all have, and if they're not trained, then they might not realize how the different materials could open a person up too much without knowing how to help

You know, I was a little surprised to find out that those coloring books are not therapy, because you.

Know, between coloring things that are already.

Drawn, drawing my own doodles, doing puzzles, all those things feel very calming for me.

Yeah, so they're therapeutic, but not therapy in the sense that you're working with a therapist. So for you, puzzles are therapeutic, but for me they raise my heart right, So I'm not doing puzzles, but that makes me think. And we want to know from you all, what types of things that are considered art do you interact with that make you feel calm, that are therapeutic for you. If you look in this app right now, there's a poll and you can choose which of the forms of art you use to destress.

Where do you find an art therapist? It's already expensive when we talk about just having talk therapy.

Come on, I've looked at a couple of.

Different places they're saying like individual sessions or you know, in a therapeutic gower, which is like fifty to fifty five minutes, and I see costs from one hundred to two hundred dollars for each session.

That's a lot of money. I mean, because imagine you're doing it weekly. Yeah, you multiply that by four and then multiply that by twelve the numbers are up. That's a lot of money.

And that goes right back into the insurance conversation we had in last week's lap.

Yes about maternal health care.

That also has an effect on access. Who can access these things?

Yeah, because our therapy may be something that can really help you sort through a lot of things. But if you can't afford it, then it's just not a resource that you can tap into. So then what happens, what happens to you and your development, your mental health development.

So similar to the talk therapy, an art therapist can be wherever talk therapist is. Art therapists work in many different contexts. On the individual level, at the group level, art therapists can work with couples and family therapy. Art therapists can be seen in private practice and outpatient treatment on inpatient facilities.

If you are someone you know is experiencing mental health symptoms, the best thing you can do is talk to a doctor who can work with you to come up with a plan that is right for you. You can also find resources for mental health support at spotify dot com slash resources.

Okay, it's time for the one thing.

My one thing this week is an artist and I find her art very therapy. It's very calmon and I sent it to one of my sisters and she did not get it. She was like, what is wrong with you? And it's actually fiber art so it's these moving Scott motion, felt and wool, and she creates these mini movies where she bakes a cake or she'll make breakfast, and it is just so detailed and the sounds are just so rich at nice. I can watch those videos for hours. You can find her on Instagram. Her Instagram name is

There's an artist of visual artists whose work I found on Instagram and I just love it. It has a calming effect. It has elements that feel like biological in nature. So some things look like plants, some things look like if you were using TM or SEM to look at small biological structures. I feel like I can see those types of patterns in the art. Her name is Linda Cato and her art is amazing and it has like a calming effect for me. That's it for Lab sixty four.

And don't forget that there is so much more to dig into on our website. There'll be a cheap cheap for today's lab, additional links and resources in the show notes. Plus you can sign up for our newsletter check it out at Dope labspodcast dot com. Special thanks to today's guest expert, Professor Juliette King.

You can find or follow her on Twitter at Tertiary Process and read more of her work in her book Art Therapy, Trauma and Neuroscience Theoretical and Practical Perspectives.

And you can find us on Twitter and Instagram at Dope Labs Podcast.

TT's on Twitter and Instagram at d R Underscore t Sho.

And you can find Zakiya at z said So. Dope Labs is a Spotify original production from Mega Owned Media Group.

Our producers are Jenny rattlet Mask and Lydia Smith of WaveRunner Studios. Our associate producer from Mega Oh Media is Brianna Garrett.

Editing in sound design by Rob Smerciak.

Mixing by Hannes Brown.

Original music composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugier from Spotify, executive producer Corin Gilliard, and creative producer Miguel Contreras. Special thanks to Shirley Ramos, Jess Borrison, Yasmine Afifi, Kamu, Elolia, Till krat Key and Brian Marquis. Executive producers from Mega Own Media Group are us T T Show Dia and Zakiah.

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You don't want to hear It's awful?

No, it's not, it's it's special to me.