While working with adults, you will likely come across a wide variety of issues. From anxiety to PTSD, to grief to substance use, therapy with adults covers a broad range. But there are some issues that are universal. Many adults struggle with things like unresolved loss, life transitions, identity development, and conflict in relationships. And there are some art therapy activities that work well with these common issues. That’s why I put together this collection of art therapy activities for adults. These art therapy activities provide a helpful springboard for your work with adults.
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Using Art Therapy Activities with Adults
Some people believe that art therapy is the province of children, and that most adults would balk at the suggestion of making art in sessions. There’s no doubt children can do well in art therapy. This is due to a number of reasons, including things like their natural drive toward play and creative expression. But adults are driven to create, too. Plus, many adults appreciate the way art allows for nonverbal communication and exploration of issues on a symbolic level.
What’s more, art-making creates a safety buffer for adults who struggle with direct talk therapy. Art externalizes their issues, making it easier to communicate concerns by delving into the art, rather than themselves.
The Efficacy of Art Therapy Activities with Adults
An art therapy literature review published in Frontiers in Psychology (2018) looked at studies conducted between 2000 and 2017 to examine the efficacy of art therapy with adults. Researchers found that art therapy can be an effective treatment option for adults, especially for certain populations (i.e. cancer patients, adults who have experienced trauma, & the elderly), and especially when therapy is long-term.
Art Therapy Activities for Adult Populations
Although more research is needed to further determine how effective art therapy is with adult populations, there are certain groups for which art therapy appears to be a promising option.
Here are some of the adult populations that could benefit from art therapy:
- Cancer patients
- Adults who have experienced trauma
- Elderly people
- Adults with depression
- Adults with anxiety
- Veterans
- Prison inmates
- Adults with dementia
- Adults experiencing high stress/burnout
Engaging Adults in Art Therapy
As mentioned above, adults often experience similar presenting concerns, but for some adults, things like health, stage of life, family constellation, and other personal circumstances create unique issues that require special attention. That is where art therapy can really shine. The client has control over the art-making process and the art will take them where they need to go.
The client has control over the art-making process and the art will take them where they need to go.
Some adults are not initially open to art therapy. That’s where it’s helpful to get creative. The Handbook of Art Therapy (2003) suggests you offer the following details about art therapy to help put them at ease:
- Art is another form of communication.
- Art provides an opportunity to explore problems and discover possibilities for change.
- Art externalizes the problem, making it easier to explore.
- Art therapy has little to do with esthetic value, or making something pretty or Pinterest-worthy.
- Artwork can provide visual representations that allow clients to picture scenarios, experience possibilities, participate in role plays, and reframe their meaning.
- Art therapy can provide a “visible trail”, or visual record, of their therapeutic journey.
- Art therapy taps into different parts of the brain than talk therapy alone.
Creative Ways to Use Art Therapy Activities with Adults
There are lots of ways to use art therapy activities with adults, including the standard drawing, painting, and sculpting. But here are a few more art therapy ideas for creative ways to use work with adults:
- Photography
- Mixed Media, Collage, Assemblage
- Comic Strips & Comic Books
- Sand Trays and Zen Gardens
- Altered Books
- Activities that Use Bridge, Road Map, or Container Metaphors
- Combined Expressive Arts (i.e. visual, dance, movement, music, creative writing)
- Group Art Therapy
5 Amazing Art Therapy Activities for Adults
While there are countless art therapy activities for adults that could work well, these 5 art directives include some of my favorites.
- Draw Your Wall Art Therapy Activity
- Identity Collage Art Therapy Activity
- Unfinished Business Container Exercise
- Bridge Drawing Art Therapy Activity
- Meaning Machine Series
- Draw Your Wall Activity
This straightforward art activity provides an excellent metaphor for your adult clients to work through any number of issues. You can explore past trauma, current boundaries, life stuckness, and even check in on the therapeutic relationship.
A Metaphor for Adults Who Have Experienced Trauma
While the Draw Your Wall activity can benefit treatment no matter what the issue, in my experience, the Draw Your Wall activity is especially useful for clients who have experienced trauma.
Sometimes when people experience trauma, their brains and bodies go into protective mode, locking down the painful memories and physically embedding sensory data for future reference. This is helpful on a survival level, but when clients get stuck in that mode, they can experience all kinds of issues and symptoms.
That’s why I find the wall metaphor to be incredibly powerful for clients who may not be ready to delve into their trauma. The wall metaphor presented in this art therapy activity respects the power of the traumatic experiences. Instead of directly targeting the trauma, it respects those built up protective devices and explores their purpose.
Respecting the Client’s Need for Protection
I was working with a 23 year-old woman (I’ll refer to her as Sydney) who was having trouble opening up about a past trauma. After assessing that she was just not ready to go there, I gently introduced the wall metaphor into the session. I told her that we didn’t need to go deep into her trauma.
Rather than explore the details of her experiences, I asked Sydney to depict the wall that got built as a result of those events. This opened up a productive dialogue in which Sydney felt safe to discuss the function of her wall and the impact of the trauma in a broader sense, thus allowing her to keep necessary protections intact until she was ready to dismantle them.
How to Facilitate this Art Therapy Activity for Adults
Facilitating this art therapy activity for adults is pretty straightforward and can be done in a single session, or carried over several sessions.
Provide them with paper and drawing tools. It can be any size, but should probably be at least 8.5×11. Depending on the client’s issues, you may tailor the directive prompt to meet that need, (i.e. draw the wall between you and your partner, draw your wall in therapy, etc.), or you can leave it open-ended, and simply say ‘draw your wall’.
Once your client has finished, run through some open-ended processing questions to explore their meaning.
- Identity Collage
This simple yet powerful art therapy directive works well for clients who are struggling to define who they are. Whether their identity struggles are related to childhood trauma, unresolved loss, or a life transition, the Identity Collage art therapy activity can help them explore who they are. Because it’s collage, it’s super accessible for most clients and there is a lot of versatility in terms of what kind of prompt and materials you provide.
Identity Formation and Art Therapy
Research has shown that social-cognitive processing that is centered around self-exploration, self-reflection, and an integrated self-knowledge is crucial when it comes to developing a meaningful sense of identity (Beaumont, 2015). Beaumont (2015) surmises that “art therapy approaches that focus on increasing self-exploration, self-reflection, and effective emotional coping will promote the development of the integrated self-knowledge that is necessary for coherent identity formation” (p.7-8).
Exploring Identity Through Collage Art Therapy Activities
Art therapist and author Cathy Malchiodi, PhD, LPCC, LPAT, ATR-BC, REAT, explains in a Psychology Today (2010) article on art therapy interventions that collage is an excellent intervention to use with adults because they “don’t have to go through the agony of drawing something realistic and are spared the feeling of embarrassment that [their] pictures look like a 10-year-old drew them; this is welcome relief to most of my adult clients who bring this worry to initial sessions.”
How to Facilitate this Art Therapy Activity for Adults
Assemble as many different kinds of old magazines as you can find. You may also want to include printed images, mixed media supplies, and found objects, depending on your client’s preferences. You will need glue and scissors, too.
Arrange the supplies and provide a prompt for your client. For this activity, the prompt should relate to identity in some way. I usually say something like “Explore the materials provided. You may cut, rip, or select the images, words, or objects that resonate with you. Assemble and glue the collected pieces in a way that feels representative of your identity and inner sense of self.”
When they are finished, give them a chance to present what they have created. Ask open-ended questions about what you see and also offer up any “noticings” that occur to you about their process, product, and symbols. Be mindful not to assign your own meaning without allowing the client to do so first.
- Unfinished Business Container Exercise
Container exercises are wonderfully versatile art therapy activities for adults and kids alike. Containers provide an excellent metaphor to work through a number of issues, including anxiety, unresolved grief, family secrets, and childhood trauma, to name a few. This art therapy activity for adults explores “unfinished business”, using the container as a metaphor for repressed/buried/unresolved feelings, regrets, goals, dreams, etc.
How Boxes and Containers Can Help in Art Therapy and Counseling
According to an article published in the American Journal of Art Therapy (2001) on using boxes in art therapy, boxes are a promising therapy tool. In fact, Farrell-Kirk (2001) states that “the use of boxes to enclose and conceal contents, create a new realm of space, and unite opposites makes the box effective in therapy. Due to the symbolic value of these characteristics, the box has been utilized throughout art history. This presence in art history is one of the characteristics contributing to the effectiveness of the box as a tool for art therapy” (p. 88).
When we go through something painful, whether it’s as intense as losing a loved one or as everyday as not accomplishing a professional goal, our brains and bodies sometimes do things with that pain without us even knowing it. Feelings and associations related to the pain can get jammed up, repressed, or acted out/expressed in less than desirable ways.
The container metaphor can serve as a physical symbol that can tap into those feelings and experiences. Exploring the concept of “containment” through art can help clients uncover things that are being contained. It can also help them contain things that may feel overwhelming or out of control through visual and/or tactile means. Containment activities provide a way for clients to protect, preserve, and honor those parts of themselves that feel vulnerable.
Containment activities provide a way for clients to protect, preserve, and honor those parts of themselves that feel vulnerable.
The Power of the Container Symbol for Processing Our Stuff
For example, when I was in grad school, our studio art therapy professor asked us to make a box out of cardstock that represented our memory bank. She then asked us to create small visual images on paper for each of the important things we kept in there. This activity allowed us to explore the parts of ourselves that we were holding onto, both positive and negative. Let me just say, when it came time to process as a group, things got emotional. ? In a good way.
The act of taking those little bits of paper and ink out of the box, holding them, talking about them, and putting them back in the box (and sometimes slamming the lid closed!), had a powerful impact on each one of us.
For me, honoring those parts of myself, bringing them into the light, and then containing them once again brought about a new level of self-awareness that I remember fondly to this day.
How to Facilitate this Art Therapy Activity for Adults
There are so many variations for how to use boxes and containers in your work with adults. They can be drawn, sculpted, or crafted. You could also use a ready-made container to build upon. For the purposes of this exercise, I prefer to use these small premade cardboard boxes that get assembled by hand (see below).
You could also have your client craft their own box out of cardstock or cardboard, too. For many containment art directives, the process of building the box from scratch can have immense therapeutic value, in and of itself.
However, for this art therapy activity, the contents of the box is the star so the premade option works well and saves time.
Materials and Directions
I give the clients various drawing tools (these sharpies work really well on the boxes), cardstock in various colors, and I also like to offer these brightly colored index cards. I ask the client to think of the flattened box as their ‘self’. I instruct them to decorate the outside in ways that represent how they show who they are to the world.
Next, I tell them to put the box together. After that, I encourage the client to draw symbols, images, shapes, words, etc. on paper that represent the parts of themselves that feel unresolved, AKA their “unfinished business”. Once they have all of their symbols inside the box, I ask them to take them out, one at a time, and talk about each one.
During processing we explore things like how their unfinished business impacts the way they show up in life, whether their unfinished business affects that way they show who they are on the outside, and whether any of their symbols could be explored with magnification, just to name a few.
- Bridge Drawing
I love bridge drawings. They offer a simple, accessible prompt that can elicit so much meaning. Bridge drawings make excellent art therapy activities for adults because they can help with processing problematic situations and difficult life transitions.
The Benefits of Bridge Drawings in Art Therapy
Sometimes the clients we work with come to therapy because somewhere along the way, they got stuck in a life transition. For some reason, they couldn’t quite navigate the developmental milestone, and they got stuck.
Bridge drawings make excellent art therapy directives for exploring these life transitions. They can also help clients explore what they need to get to the other side of a tough situation. Bridge drawings also help clients identify the barriers that are in the way through symbolic imagery and meaning-making. Additionally, when you ask clients to place themselves in their drawings, you get lots of good information about where they might be stuck and why.
How to Facilitate this Art Therapy Activity for Adults
There are many ways to conduct bridge drawings with your clients and I will put forth two options: a classic from the Handbook of Art Therapy, and my own variation geared toward difficult life transitions.
Classic Bridge Drawing Technique
This version of the bridge drawing technique comes from the Handbook of Art Therapy, from the section on clinical application with adults. In the chapter on using art in counseling, Gladding and Newsome (2007) describe a solution-focused bridge drawing.
Clients start by dividing a piece of paper into three sections.
- In the first panel, they depict a current problem.
- Next, clients shift to the third panel where they draw the solution to their problem. In other words, “what things would look like if the problem were solved” (p. 247). In the center panel, clients draw symbols for the barriers that are keeping them from solving the problem.
- Lastly, clients draw a bridge over the obstacles, creating a connection between the problem and the solution. With support from the art therapist, the client can add symbols, words, lines, and shapes to the bridge that represent ways to get around their obstacles. Clients may also depict themselves somewhere along the bridge.
Further processing can provide more clarification on how the client can solve their problem based on where they are along the bridge.
Bridge Over Water Drawing
In this art therapy directive, you can draw upon elements of the classic bridge drawing above while also “diving deeper” into the metaphor (please excuse the water pun).
For this activity, clients are asked to think about a difficult life transition. It can be something they have already gone through, something they are experiencing now, or something on the horizon. Next, clients are asked to draw a bridge across the page, drawing their bridge over a body of water. They are also asked to place themselves somewhere in their drawing.
In my experience, it’s most helpful to leave some parts of the activity open-ended. In other words, don’t specify what kind of bridge or body of water they should depict.
When they are finished, ask them to explain how their bridge drawing represents the difficult life transition portrayed in the art. Ask processing questions to further explore their drawing. For example, you could ask about what the body of water might represent for them, or how sturdy and reliable their bridge is, and what it’s like to be where they are in the drawing.
- Meaning Machine Series
The Meaning Machine Series is an art therapy directive that allows clients to explore their frame on a particular issue, as well as what meaning they are assigning to things related to that issue. They get the opportunity to define and redefine their meaning around a given stressor or problem in order to work toward healing.
About the Meaning Machine Art Directive
I came up with this art therapy directive while working with a parent who was stuck in a pattern of self-defeating thoughts and behaviors. Her meaning around her ability to be a good mom was wrapped up in guilt about her past drug use. Her immense guilt seemed to rule her decision-making more often than not, and it seemed to extinguish any instincts she may have felt with regard to self-care.
I developed this series as a means to explore that meaning and help her discover a more positive frame.
The Meaning Machine drawing series serves as a springboard for learning how internalized messages, polarized thinking, and unprocessed emotion (i.e. guilt or shame) can keep us stuck in a rut. I chose a machine metaphor because of the way machines are designed to solve problems.
The basic idea behind the activity is for the client to take their current unhelpful view of their problem and put it through a “meaning machine” in order to fabricate new meaning that serves them better.
Exploring Meaning and Using Reframes in Art Therapy
When you assess that a client’s view of their situation is self-defeating, it can be really helpful to walk them toward a reframe. By confirming the objective facts of the situation, and then adjusting the lens through which they are viewed, you can help the client seize a more positive frame of meaning that can inspire them to approach their problem differently.
Reframes can honor and highlight the client’s mission versus focusing on the negative. For example, for the mother I mentioned above, I’ll call her Jane, a reframe of her past drug use and subsequent recovery allowed her to process through the guilt she felt. Through our work together, we determined that Jane’s drug use was a way for her to ‘sound the alarm bells’ about the overwhelm she felt as a single mom of 3 young children.
She found respite in her heroin use, and fully escaped the only way she knew how. This method of escape pulled in much-needed supports for her and her family. As things stabilized, she embraced recovery. She ultimately stepped back into her parent role, surrounded by a supportive community.
Using the Meaning Machine Art Directive
In therapy, Jane drew her unhelpful view of the problem as a dark, messy blob of lines and jagged shapes. The meaning machine she created was made of clean, round shapes and bright colors. After “sending” her old view through her meaning machine, a large heart filled with brightly-colored segments “came out” the other side.
Through the reframing process, we owned that the method wasn’t the best, as it caused damage in its wake, but we honored that her mission was good, and in the end resulted in her family’s unmet needs getting met.
How to Facilitate this Art Therapy Activity for Adults
This art therapy activity can be done in one session or over the course of several sessions, depending on how long the client needs. Using three large sheets of paper, preferably 9×12 or something similar, ask your client to do the following:
- On page one, draw their current (usually unhelpful) frame of their problem. Take some time to process their view of the problem. Explore ways this could be reframed. Ask them to look past the not so good method and identify the good mission behind the problem.
- On the second page, draw the machine that will fix it. If they need guidance, ask them to describe the tools they would need to get past the problem and their current negative view. Tell them to fashion a pretend machine that could shift their thinking about the problem. Once they have finished their machine, help them process what they came up with.
- Finally, ask them to envision putting their problem into the machine. On the third page, they should draw what comes out.
Once they are finished, explore what they have created. Ask them how their meaning has shifted and how their new frame will serve them.
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
Beaumont, Sherry. (2015). Art Therapy Approaches for Identity Problems during Adolescence. Canadian Art Therapy Association Journal. 25. 7-14. 10.1080/08322473.2012.11415557.
Farrell-Kirk, R. (2001). Secrets, symbols, synthesis, and safety: The role of boxes in art therapy, American Journal of Art Therapy, (39), 88-92.
Fiese, B. H., Tomcho, T. J., Douglas, M., Josephs, K., Poltrock, S., & Baker, T. (2002). A review of 50 years of research on naturally occurring family routines and rituals: Cause for celebration? Journal of Family Psychology, 16(4), 381–390. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.16.4.381
Malchiodi, C. A. (2003). Handbook of Art Therapy. New York: Guilford Press.
Regev, D., & Cohen-Yatziv, L. (2018). Effectiveness of Art Therapy With Adult Clients in 2018—What Progress Has Been Made? Frontiers in Psychology, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01531
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