Art Is Therapy

Sometimes, just talking about it with one other person, or two other people, isn’t enough. All of us have deep-seated traumas. It’s only human. Sometimes, the best way to express pain is through the act of creation. If we can relate ourselves to it, then the arts we create can free the parts of our minds that have felt as if they were rotting, or starving, or jailed.

Many artists — in fact, most artists — are known for beginning what they do because of past pains they’ve gone through. It seems, the more pain, the better the artist. They’ve learned to harness what they’ve been through to create something that yearns to be seen, heard, or listened to. It yearns for that audience because it’s then that comes the release. Once it’s seen or heard, the artist can now move on from that trauma to either a different part of that pang, or to a different pang altogether.

As an artist, you’ll learn to have a ‘signature’, which is a key stylistic point in your work that makes it obvious that what you made was yours and nobody else’s.

The reasons why many artists become as good as they do is because they’re able to channel all of their pain into any medium of choice. Channeling your pain into an artistic endeavor lessens the pain because it focuses the energy into outside of your body and outside of your mind instead of holding it in.

Think of journaling, but for an audience.

Also, instead of going to therapy and paying for it, creating art is a much less expensive way of being heard. Focusing all of that negative energy into a project removes that energy from your body, and allows something beautiful and loud to be created from it.

Funneling all of that energy to a point outside of your body is like filling a glass with water and then drinking it. The water hydrates you and heals you from the inside out through the act of filling a glass and drinking from it. Your work hydrates the dry parts of your mind by giving it places where it lights up as your work moves along. Using hydration to heal your body is a lot like hydrating your medium by feeding it pain.

Obviously, not every song, not every story, and not every act of creation is fueled by pain. There are many, many projects in any medium that are fueled by good energy and positivity, but that positivity had to come from somewhere. A lot of the positive art is stemmed from a place of negativity that has been morphed from something pessimistic to something optimistic. Looking at different parts of the same idea different ways helps to build those fun, positive bits of work that lighten people’s moods.

It still stems from trauma, but it’s looked at in a different lens.

For the most part, art is free to do. All you need is a pen and a piece of paper for a doodle, or a word processor on your computer that was there for free… and you’ll be able to create something, anything. All you need is imagination, and whatever your chosen medium is can morph itself out of you. 

Art is the biggest therapy there is or can be. 

Creating something beautiful from pain is a release that allows for it both to be spoken and depicted. Most therapists don’t have you draw for them, and they don’t ask you to create, they only ask for what happened and how it made you feel. They’re there to listen, and they exist to listen and give you advice. The act of creation doesn’t ask for advice, but it does ask you to listen to what you are creating so it can be true to who you are as a human being.

It teaches you to listen to yourself.

It teaches you to care about yourself because your pain is your muse.

Allowing yourself to be broken and to learn how to grow from it, evolve from it, can become a gift to society. There are bound to be people who have experienced the same things you have. That’s why art is so important. It brings together different people from all over with the act of sharing art these communities relate to. Sharing art with people is the act of looking for relations between yourself and who you’re sharing the art with.

It’s the act of bringing together community and communities.

This is the reason why artists share their art, their pain, and their acts of creation. They’re looking for community, and likeminded people who will relate to what they do and why they do it. It becomes that art isn’t just therapy for the creator; it’s therapy for every human being who relates to what was created. It’s a release…

… and, it reminds us we are not alone.