For some people, improving self-esteem can be an elusive process. They carry deep-rooted meaning about who they are as a person, thanks to messages of shame and blame within their family system. This narrative can be tough to challenge. And, as with most things in person-centered therapy, the person has the power. Through supportive work, they can reframe their meaning and improve their self-esteem. And these 3 art therapy activities for self-esteem can help.
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How Art Therapy Activities for Self-Esteem Can Help
Art-making by its very nature is a form of communication. Whether you are aware of it or not, when you create art, information is communicated, and some of that information comes from your subconscious.
The visual language clients use during art-making is one of symbolic imagery and metaphor. With the guidance of a trained art therapist, clients can make meaning from their creations by exploring the symbols and metaphors that come up in the art.
This processing of the art allows clients to establish new frames on their experiences and potentially rewrite their stories.
Rewriting the Story with Reframes
Reframes aren’t always easy, but when you find one that fits, it can be powerful. And thanks to the incredible ways symbols show themselves in artwork, clients are able to create useful metaphors. And you can then help them create positive reframes from those metaphors.
For example, one of my past clients, I will refer to her as Gina, created a series of drawings where storm symbols kept showing up in the imagery. Gina said that the storms represented the negative events surrounding her recent firing from a job she loved.
After some more processing, Gina moved toward a reframe of her storm metaphor. What started as a negative frame, “nonstop storms hit me the hardest”, morphed into a positive, more useful reframe: “storms are coming no matter what, but they eventually pass, making way for something new”.
Using Art Therapy Activities to Guide the New Narrative
Once a reframe is established and new meaning is created, sky’s the limit for the art therapy process. You could direct your client to do a word association using a phrase from their reframe, followed by a short story that details their new narrative. This could be followed by an art directive that allows them to depict their short story, and so on.
Or, you could ask if they would like to create a series of art pieces that depict points in time, drawn from the perspective of their new frame on their story. Whatever you and your client decide to do, art can be a powerful tool toward helping them rewrite their story.
Art Therapy Activities for Self-Esteem and Meaning Making
At the end of the day, a person’s self-esteem hinges on their own thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about who they are. When your clients have the opportunity to restructure their view of self, this naturally boosts their self-esteem.
Consider Gina from the storm example above. Her original meaning around her job loss was one of the victim, always getting caught in the storm, and unfairly getting hit harder than others. This meaning very likely had a negative impact on her self-esteem, believing on some level that she deserved to have it worse than others.
But, through therapy she was able to validate and honor her negative frame, establish an alternative, more positive view, and make new meaning. Her new frame was one of acceptance that sometimes bad things happen but that they offer opportunity as well. This takes it away from blame or shame and toward hope, which can have a positive effect on self-esteem.
3 Art Therapy Activities for Self-Esteem
Here are three suggested art therapy activities for self esteem that may help your clients improve how they feel about themselves.
- Altered Book Making
Altered book making is an incredible art therapy activity that allows clients to rewrite their story through words, imagery, and sculpture.
So just what is an altered book exactly? An altered book is a mixed media art form in which the client takes an old book and turns it into something new. The artist recreates the “story” using art materials/processes like collage, assemblage, painting, drawing, and black out poetry, just to name a few.
Altered Book Making Supplies
You can provide a selection of old books for your client to choose from, or they can choose one from their own library. Art supplies can include things like:
- Old magazines
- Paint
- Markers and other drawing tools
- Glue
- Found objects
- Photographs
- Cardboard, cardstock, & colored paper
- Paper sculpture tools and supplies
Allow your client to repurpose the pages of the book using the available supplies to create their own narrative.
Altered Book Ideas
They can do as many pages per session as they want. You can leave the focus of the book entirely up to them, or you can set intentions for certain pages, suggest themes to consider, or provide direction for upcoming pages.
Things like portraying a problem both now and when it’s solved, depicting yourself overcoming an obstacle, and documenting an important mantra are all excellent directives. You can also assign homework for them to create more altered pages between sessions.
Clients can include varying types of pages all throughout their altered book, including using the book text itself to create blackout poetry. Blackout poetry clients a creative way to express themselves by covering up all of the words in the text except for those they want read. Check out the example below from @ignovionwrites on Instagram.
How Altered Books Help with Self-Esteem
An article published in the Journal of Family Psychotherapy (2010) explains that “the exercise of reauthoring a book that already exists symbolizes the parallel possibilities that clients have to reauthor their own lives…Using dominant stories, externalization, and unique outcomes, the therapist may help clients penetrate stories that generate new meaning and alternative stories that clients may then use to resolve their dilemmas.”
This kind of art therapy process can target the parts of your client’s identity that contribute to low self-esteem. Altered books are just as much about the process as they are the finished product. In the end, your client will have a tangible keepsake that represents positive change, and one they can go back to again and again.
Check out the amazing video below from @journalwithpurpose on Instagram for a super cool example of the altered book making process.
How to Facilitate this Art Therapy Activity
There are a number of ways to use altered books in art therapy, but for the specific issue of self-esteem, I like to assign 3 main altered book page types to my clients, including blackout poetry, an esteem collage, and a life goal watercolor and ink painting. More details on how each of these art directives look below.
- Blackout Poetry Page: First, I will ask them to choose a page at random in an old book they are ready to alter. Then I will ask them to go through the page, circling or underlining words that stand out to them. They should try to create a narrative of some sort by stringing together their selected words with connecting words. Using markers or Sharpies, they should cover up, or black out, all of the unused words. They can do this a number of ways, but the classic ways is just using black lines.
- Esteem Collage Page: The concept of this page is based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. (see below). I review the section on Esteem and suggest the client create a collage page in their altered book about what comes up for them as they reflect on those concepts.
- Life Goal Painting Page: For this page, I provide them with both watercolor, which is very fluid, and ink pens, which are traditionally quite controlled. I ask them to reflect on a major life goal that they have up until now, been uncertain about whether they will achieve it. Then I ask them to create a painting on the page, portraying what comes up for them.
The creation and processing of these three page types can last multiple sessions. You can build on them, adding more pages and art directives, as well as assign homework outside of session.
- Self-Esteem Mandala Series
Mandalas make wonderful art therapy directives for self-esteem because according to C. G. Jung, mandalas represent the unconscious self.
Mandala art therapy allows clients to complete a mandala circle using shape, line, color, geometric patterns, visual imagery, and more. This process can establish balance, restore inner peace, and bring forth insight and self-awareness.
Here is an example of a simple mandala that I created with Paint 3D. Mandalas can get really intricate (like the one below) so don’t let my basic computer drawing skills mislead you. ?
The Power of Mandalas
According to an article from the Jung Society of Utah, “[C.G.] Jung believed that creating mandalas offered a ‘safe refuge of inner reconciliation and wholeness’, providing a sacred space into which we can invite the Self. He also noticed that creating mandalas had a calming, focusing effect on his patients’ psychological states.”
Mandalas can be viewed as a reflection of your inner situation at the time, or a personal symbol of self. Using mandalas for self-esteem work can support clients in identifying the parts of themselves that contribute to their identity formation.
How to Facilitate This Art Therapy Activity
Though there are lots of ways to complete a mandala, for this Self-Esteem Building Mandala Series, the client will focus on their experience of self and who they want to be. This is a three part mandala art therapy directive that can take up to 4 unique sessions to get through.
In the first mandala, ask your client to depict a representation of how they view their current self. Then in the second mandala, ask them to draw their future self, aka who they want to become. Then for the third mandala, ask them to draw the inner resources that they will tap to help them move from their current self to their future self.
The idea is that, through processing, they will be able to identify the ways in which their current self is already capable of becoming who they wish to be. The mandala exercise can help clients externalize their beliefs about who they are and who they “should” be, and work on new frames that serve them better. This process can support improved self-esteem by helping them identify their strengths and relabel their current view of self.
Here are a few examples of mandala artwork from various creators on Instagram.
- Comic Book Art Series
Similar to the mandala series above, the comic book art directive is designed to help clients realize their potential, rename their problem, and reframe their understanding of self. Encountering a problem through art-making and processing the meaning around it can promote self-esteem and self-actualization.
Comic Art Therapy and Self-Esteem
A recent post from Very Well Mind (2021) breaks down psychologist Abraham Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs. These needs are organized into a pyramid, with Esteem and Self-Actualization at the top. Maslow postulated that self-esteem was dependent on both appreciation from others and inner self-respect. Additionally, he referred to self-actualization as “the need people have to achieve their full potential as human beings.”
This art directive allows clients an opportunity to externalize an obstacle and explore their ability to overcome it. Through processing you can help them determine their experience of how others see them, as well as their own feelings about their abilities.
How to Facilitate This Art Therapy Activity
This comic book art series can be as lengthy as you need, but I recommend you do at least three drawings. The first directive can be open-ended like “draw a problem” or a little more specific, like “draw yourself encountering a problem”. From there, for each subsequent artwork, the directive is simply “draw what happens next”.
I like to process with the client after each individual page of their ‘comic book’. As we move through the series (which often takes place over several sessions), we periodically line up the art pieces that have been created so far and do additional processing and meaning making. Then, when we both feel the series has reached its end, we lay the drawings out in order and do additional processing.
Alternatively, you could use a comic book journal for the activity. This blank comic book from Happy Toddlerz is filled with ready-made comic panels that clients can use to tell their story. It works really well for all kinds of comic art therapy directives.
How to Process this Art Activity to Boost Self-Esteem
During processing, I ask questions to help nail down new perspectives on self (i.e. what would they caption each scene, how has the problem morphed, what are the hero’s strengths, and how has the hero grown). I also like to ask the client to give the hero positive affirmations each step of the way as they tackle the problem. (Positive self-talk can influence self-esteem.) And usually I ask how the story and characters in the comic book might relate to the client’s own life and experiences.
At the end of the series, I ask how they would like to bind their comic book and we make it happen. This offers them a physical symbol of their own potential and one that they can revisit as needed.
As noted in the Handbook of Art Therapy, storytelling can be a valuable creative experience. “By allowing the child to be a storyteller, the child is actively engaged in reparative work of his or her self-esteem” (Malchiodi, 2003).
For more tips on supporting clients with building self-esteem, check out this post from Psychology Today (2017).
Art Therapy Disclaimer:
Introducing art into your work with clients can be powerful. There are so many benefits to art therapy, it’s easy to see why the field is growing. While it is possible to include art in your practice if you aren’t a professional art therapist, it’s important to ensure you have training on art therapy and how to use art effectively.
It’s also important that you are clear with your clients that you are not an art therapist, and you are not providing art therapy.
Though there are ways to incorporate art into your practice, the general practice of art therapy by untrained or non-credentialed art therapists is not recommended. According to the American Art Therapy Association, “art therapy can only be practiced by an individual who possesses the required training, certification, and/or state licensure. Bona fide art therapy is beyond the scope of practice of non-art therapists.”
Additionally, some art therapy directives can be self-guided, but they work best under the guidance of a trained art therapist.
About the Clients Referenced in this Post
Every vignette, case study, or reference to a client has been adapted and adjusted for legal and ethical publication. Names, demographics, and other identifying information have all been changed in order to protect client identity, confidentiality, and privacy. The information presented in each example is for educational purposes only, intended to illustrate a concept, technique, or activity.
About the Artwork in this Post
All artwork used in this post was created by me. The images serve as a reference for the reader. Most of the artwork I feature in blog posts is “response art”. That means that when I set down to create each piece, I reflected on my work with a specific client, and then created the artwork with that experience in mind. All efforts were made to comply with HIPAA law and confidentiality and privacy of all clients.
References
Bloom, L., & Bloom, C. (2017, December 14). Reframing: The transformative power of suffering. Psychology Today.
Cherry, K. (2021, March 19). How Maslow’s Famous Hierarchy of Needs Explains Human Motivation. Verywell Mind.
Cherry, K. (2021b, April 24). What is Self-Esteem? Verywell Mind.
Cobb, R. A., & Negash, S. (2010). Altered Book Making as a Form of Art Therapy: A Narrative Approach. Journal of Family Psychotherapy, 21(1), 54–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/08975351003618601
Klerk, M. (2016, August 6). Mandalas: Symbols of the Self – Jung Society of Utah. Jung Society of Utah. https://jungutah.com/blog/mandalas-symbols-of-the-self-2/
Malchiodi, C. (2007). Art Therapy Sourcebook. McGraw-Hill Education.
Malchiodi, C. A. (2003). Handbook of Art Therapy. New York: Guilford Press.
Mehlomakulu, C. (2012, November 5). Mandalas. Creativity in Therapy.
