Some of what matters most has no words. You sit down to explain how you feel and the sentence dies on your lips. Not for lack of intelligence or effort. The thing you are reaching for lives somewhere language struggles to go.
Most therapy runs on talking, and for much of what we carry, talking is enough. Not for all of it. There is a layer of experience that words reach late, or never. Art therapy is built for that layer.
Some things live below language
When something overwhelms us, the brain does not always file it as a tidy story. The psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk has spent decades showing that painful and traumatic experiences are often stored as fragments, as images, sensations and feelings, rather than as a sequence of words. The memory is real. The narrative is missing.
This is why telling someone to simply talk about it can fail. You cannot narrate what was never coded as a story. Ask for words too soon and you often meet silence, or a flat account that leaves the real weight untouched.
It is not about being good at art
People hesitate here. They tell me they cannot draw. That was never the point. Art therapy is not an art class and there is nothing to get right. The mark on the page is a way in, not a performance. A colour, a shape, a line made without planning can hold what a careful sentence cannot.
What the image can reach
Making something quietens the part of you that edits and explains. While your hands work, the guard drops. Feelings that stayed out of reach in conversation begin to appear on the page. Then we look at them together, at your pace, with no pressure to name everything at once.
Researchers who study trauma describe creative work as a way to reach implicit memory without forcing it into words first. The evidence base is still growing. What happens in the room is steadier. The image often arrives before the explanation, and it opens the door.
"You do not have to find the words before you begin. The work can start with everything you cannot yet say."
For children and teenagers
This matters even more for young people. A child rarely has the vocabulary for grief, fear or a home that has changed shape. Ask directly and you meet a shrug. Give them paint, clay or a pencil and the story comes out sideways, in what they make. For many children and teens, this is the most honest conversation available to them.
- A way to express what you cannot yet put into words.
- No skill required, and nothing to get right.
- Space to work at your own pace, with feelings held rather than rushed.
- A route in for children and teens who go quiet when asked directly.
- Support through change, loss and the things that sit under the surface.
What this means in practice
I am a clinical psychologist, certified coach and art therapist, and I am also an artist. I know from both sides that some things arrive as an image long before they arrive as a sentence. I work in English and Portuguese, in Albufeira, Portimão and online.
If you have carried something for a while and talking about it has never quite worked, that is not a failure. It may be waiting for a different language. You are allowed to start there.
Andreia Teles is a clinical psychologist, certified coach and art therapist based in the Algarve. She works with English-speaking expats and locals in English and Portuguese, in Albufeira, Portimão and online.
Sources: Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score (2014) and research on traumatic and nonverbal memory (van der Kolk and Fisler, 1995). Talwar, Accessing traumatic memory through art making, The Arts in Psychotherapy (2007).