Often words alone can be hard to find, to describe an experience or emotions. Integrative Arts Psychotherapy (IAP) makes use of the arts to as a tool to explore thoughts and feelings. 

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Using the arts may range from raising awareness of emotion or trauma stored in the body, unpicking a spoken metaphor, music (eg.a pertinent lyric, a soundtrack to a time) -to using sand tray or visual arts. There is no right or wrong way, it is your choice whether to use it, and you do not have to be 'good at art'.

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Each artform helps to externalise feeling to look at things from different angles- whether exploring relationships in the sand tray or voicing unsaid words, making a playlist, pushing feeling into clay/ paint/ drawing, picking postcards, or distilling words into stories or poems. This can be cathartic, soothing and a way to 'empty out'. Journalling or sketchbooks can also be a great tool in between sessions.