Art therapy

Wondering if anyone else who is multiple has tried art therapy. I'm sure a trauma specialist would probably be necessary as well, but I've been thinking it might be helpful in facilitating communication as quite a lot of the "evidence" I find of my others has been creative projects.

Has anyone else found it helpful in trauma processing or in communicating/finding other parts? I think it would be helpful to me personally, but this is definitely the main thing I need to work on right now so it would be great if it helped us function better as a unit.

With a trauma informed therapist and/or patient, I think anything can be great if speaks to you!

I know some people find painting or sculpting as art therapy useful to learn mindfulness, emotional regulation, and thoughts examination. Some use it as a starting point to process trauma. For DID, it can allow to works on communication, yep. Either by making a piece about a memory or feeling, then examining what it means for each alter, by allowing any alter to comes out and contribute (helps with cooperation and learning not to control everything), or by letting alters express themselves in the way they want to.

Personally, I'm a psych student and trained at using mediation tools through animal assisted therapy. I've been able to use writing fiction on my own as art therapy. It helped me to learn emotional regulation, behavioral regulation, thoughts examination, to allow my alters to express themselves through our characters, and to explore what healing could look like for each of us by allowing our characters to heal from their traumas. Heroic fantasy, who is a really coded genre often focusing on a group of characters with specific role working together, is great for that - but you can write in any genre, as long as all of your alters who want to join in are allowed. And you don't necessarily need one character peer alters. I had 5 main characters, it was enough for my 15 alters to share. And btw, sharing characters and trying not to "break" what others alter have build before is a great way to learn to understand the POV of each alters that contribute, as well as finding things they share (memories, emotions, thoughts, behaviors, etc. they have in common).

I also used journaling and writing our memories as a way to rebuild our sense of time, to build a shared timeline for the alters that weren't able to see where their story fits in our whole life.

And right now, I'm on a project that is heroic fantasy, and crafted specifically toward healing, growing up and healthy relationships.

I take sculpting lessons, not in an "art therapy" setting or mindset, but the teacher and the group are so nice, it actually helped me with perfectionism, and with dealing with my anxiety toward taking risks, trying new things, going out of my comfort zone, and facing other people's judgment. All of this help a lot with building a sense of safety toward other people.

So yup, art therapy can be a huge help! Specially if you know what you want from it, and think about how to use it to reach that goal.

I have had some with a trauma-sensitive art therapist. for me it was tricky business. I am avoiding trauma content and I easily feel overwhelmed by it and all our pictures were just showing trauma stuff, even when the task that was set was a different one. I learned to just put away the first version and then the second version was more on topic. But seeing things right in front of me that I usually avoid was shocking and rarely in a good way. we use body work now as our non-verbal approach. having one that is non-verbal is kind of important in my opinion. could also be music or other stuff...

We've used our writing as a means to explore trauma, autism, gender dysphoria and DID. One of our main characters even has DID. One way we've shown her switches is her autistic traits shifting given that one of her alters is less touch sensitive than the host alter and will take off her gloves.

It has helped us to uncover some of the traumas we've suppressed or not wanted to acknowledge were traumas. We've discussed this entire process with our T as well.

Vi

I use art therapy as well, by myself.

Creating art for the pleasure of being here and now and mindful. Creating art to tell about the past trauma and have the feeling of "it is over/finished now" once the piece of art is finished, that applies to trauma time too. Writing stories to process trauma stuff, learn how to better communicate, how to emotionally regulate. Crafts, I sometimes to basic emboidery, sewing, patchwork, binding notebooks... Also, writing essays to gather informations about stuff I like: taking notes and organizing them helps me gather memories together.

Exploring ideas and thoughts through writing and allowing all of my parts to develop ideas calmly helped me to have a better overall awareness of all that is happening inside of my brain and also to accept that many different and sometimes opposite ideas can coexist in the same brain, it's okay and it makes things even more interesting in the end.

I haven't tried art therapy, but drawing my feelings out when things are getting hectic sometimes can be the only thing to calm me down and so is super important to me. even though i don't do it a lot.. I use it to have parts speak to me though somewhat, cause sometimes things I don't even know that were being thought or felt just comes out in the process and then i get to see that.