How to Facilitate an Art Journaling Group: An Art Therapist’s Guide

To facilitate an art journaling group, give every session a clear arc: connect each woman to a resource, build one page in layers, stop to look, and close the page with a small ritual. Make art beside the women, respond to each page by describing what you see rather than interpreting it, and know where accompaniment ends and therapy begins.

I am Rakefet Hadar, an art therapist, an author, and the founder of the school that trains SoulPages facilitators to guide creative work in a visual journal. The first facilitator training, in Hebrew, opened in 2016 because women who had journaled with me wanted to bring the method to other women, and asked me for a proper structure to learn how. The international training in English followed in 2021.

Search for how to run an art journaling group and you will find advice about venues, name tags and prompt lists. Very little of it tells you what to say when a woman holds up her page, or what to do when she goes quiet and pale halfway through the session. Those moments are the real work of facilitating, and they are what this article is about.

The SoulPages method is a way of working in a visual journal in which every page is built in layers, following a fixed sequence of seven elements: intention, the magic of chance, background, images, color, line and text. In a group, that sequence becomes your session plan.

What does an art journaling facilitator actually do?

Facilitating an art journaling group means setting the frame and the pace of a shared creative process, and keeping it safe, so that each woman can meet her own page. Three things carry most of the weight:

• You make art too. A facilitator who never makes art herself will have a hard time getting anyone else to. Keep a journal of your own, show it, demonstrate on your own pages, and work beside the women rather than standing in front of them.
• You set the frame. A personal journal for every woman, a fixed day and time, materials prepared before anyone arrives. I learned how much this matters while working with women recovering from trauma, at a time when very little in their lives stayed the same from one week to the next. Our sessions, on the same two days every week, were among the few things that stayed fixed.
• You look for the light. Part of the job is to notice what is alive and strong on a page and name it, sometimes before the woman herself can see it.

The group carries part of the work as well. In the SoulPages method, community is a resource in its own right, and what one woman dares to put on paper opens a door for the others.

How do you structure an art journaling session?

A SoulPages group session usually runs two to three hours, longer than the page alone needs. The extra time is part of the method: women talk while their hands are busy, and out of that conversation a group becomes a community. Here is the arc, step by step:

1. Name the session. I give real thought to what each session is called, because the name is the first thing a woman hears and it tells her what she is walking into. Names like the Tree of Resources, Landscapes of Hope or the Inner House point toward strength before anyone picks up a brush.
2. Open with a resource. Begin by connecting each woman to the strong, good parts of herself and to her resources: people she loves, places that held her, moments she was braver than she knew. The pain is in the room, and everyone knows it is there. It just isn’t the door you walk in through.
3. Build one page through the seven elements. A blank page is often the most frightening thing in the room. A suggested order takes the question of where to begin off the table and leaves each woman free to give her attention to what she is making, and she can always move between the elements in her own way.
4. Make art alongside them. Work on a page of your own, move around the table, and when someone is stuck, offer her a material to try. Then let her decide what to do with it.
5. Stop making and start looking. Ask each woman to prop her page upright and look at it for a full minute without touching it. The noise of scissors and water jars fades, and the room goes still.
6. Share by choice. Each woman decides what she shows and what she says: the process, one part of the page, or the whole of it. She can also choose one figure on the page and speak as that figure, in the first person. If time is short, sharing in pairs is better than a rushed circle.
7. Close the page with a ritual. Date the page, close the journal, and rest both hands on the cover for a breath. The ritual tells the body that the visit is over. Then give the room a few ordinary minutes before the women go back to their day.

Here is what you offer the group at each layer of the page:

How do you respond to someone’s journal page without interpreting it?

Describe before anything else. Say only what is literally on the page, ask one open question, and then stop. In SoulPages groups we never interpret another woman’s page. The group reflects what it sees, and for many women it is the first time their art has been received without being decoded.

Take the spread in the photograph. A description sounds like this: a torn circle of paper glued across both pages, painted in rings of color that repeat from the center outward, words in two languages written between the rings, a man holding a hat and a walking stick on the left, a woman sitting at a desk on the right. An interpretation sounds like “you are searching for your center.” The description leaves the page open. The interpretation closes it around a label the woman never chose.

Habits that keep a response on the right side of that line:

• Let her speak first. She tells the group whatever she wants to about her page before anyone responds to it.
• Don’t grade the page. Skip words such as “beautiful” or “wow”. Praise is still a verdict, and it turns the page into a product. Say where your eye goes instead.
• Speak through the elements. The background, the color, the line: the seven elements give you a way to talk about what you see without reaching into her psyche.
• Name the magic of chance. Point to the thing nobody planned that works on the page: a color she rarely reaches for, an empty corner, a figure placed off-center.
• Ask one open question. One with no answer hidden inside it, such as “When you started with the background, what did you feel?” or “What changed on the page when you added this figure?”
• Suggest in the first person. If you have an idea, make it yours: “If this were my page, I might add something warm here.” The choice stays with her.
• When she hates her page, tell her what you do see in it and which part speaks to you. The pages that embarrass a woman are often the ones that came closest to something.

When the group responds, the same rule applies to everyone: each woman speaks only about what she sees, with no interpretation, no grading and no opinion. I have written more about this way of looking in my article on what to do with a page after you’ve made it.

What do you do when someone gets overwhelmed in your group?

First, tell processing from flooding. Processing brings the pain closer at a pace she controls, and she leaves tired and a little lighter. Flooding is different. Her body goes back on alert as though the original event were happening right now, and she is shaking, or somewhere far away.

Signs to watch for across the table:

• Shallow breath, trembling hands, her face losing its color.
• A blank or foggy look, as if she has left the room.
• The same scene coming back onto the page again and again, without relief.

What to do in the moment:

1. Gently stop the work. Tell her that nothing has gone wrong. There is no failure in stopping.
2. Bring her back to the room. Ask her to name five things she can see, to feel her feet on the floor, to drink some water.
3. Return to a resource. Turn her toward what steadies her: a color she loves, an image of a safe place, the words of someone who loves her. This is one reason every session opens with a resource. It gives her somewhere to come back to.
4. Close the page with her. A border around what she made, one closing word, or the journal shut with both hands resting on the cover.

Prevention does most of this work. Never send the group straight to the hardest material. In the SoulPages method we go to trauma directly only when a woman has brought that material herself and is ready to work with it. Leave room for the pain and the uncertainty, too, not only for the light. The simplest instruction I give works on any ordinary day as well: don’t block the pain, and don’t stay only inside it. Let the pain and the light share the same page.

And know when something is more than a group can offer. One hard session is not a red flag. The same overwhelm returning every time she opens the journal is the signal that this material needs a professional beside her, and part of your job is to tell her so, kindly and clearly. My guide to journaling about trauma safely covers the signs and the closing rituals in more detail.

Do you need to be an art therapist to facilitate an art journaling group?

No, but you do need to know which of the two you are doing. Art therapy is clinical work: a credentialed therapist assesses and treats distress inside a therapeutic relationship. A group led by a facilitator is therapeutic art, guided creative work made with healing intent, with structure and a held space, and with no diagnosis, no treatment plan and no clinical contract. I have mapped all three options in my comparison of art journaling, art therapy and therapeutic art.

Make this just as clear when you describe your group. A facilitator who calls her group therapy is promising more than she offers. And if you are a licensed therapist yourself, your group becomes art therapy only when you run it as clinical work.

What does a facilitator training add that experience alone doesn’t?

You cannot walk another woman through a layer you have not walked yourself. That is the first thing a training in a method gives you: the whole process, lived on your own pages, before you guide anyone else through it. The second is everything that only looks simple from the outside: how to lead a group, how to respond to a page, what to do when heavy material surfaces.

The SoulPages facilitator training runs for twenty live sessions on Zoom, and every session is recorded. One whole module is called The Group, with sessions on Reflection and Processing, The Art of Group Facilitation, Dealing with Difficult Emotions and The Art of Goodbyes. In the final module you build lessons of your own, starting from an intention and from the materials and techniques you choose.

Graduates receive a SoulPages Facilitator certificate and two complete course templates, so they start teaching with a ready program rather than a blank page. The directory of certified SoulPages facilitators currently lists 35 women in 11 countries who run SoulPages groups of their own. The training is not a therapy qualification. It trains you to accompany a creative process, and the line between accompanying and treating is part of what it teaches.

Frequently asked questions

How do I start an art journaling group?

Start with your own journal, because you cannot guide a woman through a layer you have not walked yourself. Then build a frame: a personal journal for each participant, a fixed day and time, a session that opens with a resource and closes deliberately, and a clear statement that the group offers creative accompaniment, not therapy.

How long should an art journaling session be?

A SoulPages group session usually runs two to three hours. The page needs time to move through its layers, and the extra time is when women talk while their hands are busy, which is how a group becomes a community.

How do I respond to someone’s journal page without interpreting it?

Describe only what is literally on the page, name the unplanned moment that works, and ask one open question with no answer hidden inside it. Avoid verdicts such as “beautiful”, and if you have a suggestion, put it in the first person: “If this were my page, I might…”

What do I do if someone gets overwhelmed in my art journaling group?

Gently stop the work. Bring her back to the room with simple grounding: ask her to name five things she can see and to feel her feet on the floor. Then turn her toward a resource, and close the page together. If the same overwhelm returns every session, tell her this material needs a professional beside her.

Do I need to be an art therapist to run an art journaling workshop?

No. A facilitator leads therapeutic art: guided creative work with structure and a held space, but no diagnosis, no interpretation and no treatment. Art therapy is clinical work by a credentialed therapist. When you describe your group, be clear about which of the two you offer.

Is there a certification for art journaling facilitators?

For the SoulPages method, yes. The SoulPages facilitator training runs for twenty live sessions on Zoom and leads to a SoulPages Facilitator certificate, which qualifies graduates to lead groups and to work with private clients.

Something I learned about facilitating did not happen in any training room. It happened in a group of women recovering from trauma, some of whom had lost their homes. I told one of the women that I would bring her gold thread from my home the following week. She answered sadly that when I said “from my home” it hurt, because she had no home, and everything she had collected over the years was gone. That was when I understood how much care even my most ordinary words can need. The structure in this article holds the group. Your attention, down to a single phrase, holds each woman.

Before you lead your next group, give yourself twenty minutes. Take a page, some watercolor and a few images, and make something that reflects exactly what you are feeling right now. And if you want to learn to lead a group this way, the SoulPages facilitator training is where I teach it.

With love, Rakefet

Color Archetypes: Working With Archetypes and Color in Your Visual Journal

Archetypes are universal patterns, such as the good mother, the wise old man and the guide, and Jung placed them in the collective unconscious. Each of us meets them in a personal form. Color Archetypes, my method within SoulPages, is built on that meeting: in your visual journal, you reach the archetypes through color and through the three energies you were born with.

I am Rakefet Hadar, an art therapist, an author, and the founder of the school that trains SoulPages facilitators to guide creative work in a visual journal. I began my own visual journal in 2014, the year my mother was dying of cancer. Years later I went back through the hundreds of pages I had made, and I found something I did not expect. I had glued in the images, but what connected them was color. Color was the strongest element in my pages, the one that let me change something inside. The method grew out of that discovery, and out of three questions I have been asking for as long as I can remember: Who am I? What is my purpose? What makes me happy?

What is Color Archetypes?

Color Archetypes is a spiritual and artistic method for visual journaling. It grew out of the SoulPages method, and it uses color and archetypes to help you recognize the three energies you were born with: core energy, connection energy and spiritual energy. It draws on Jungian psychology and on shamanism, and it is the subject of my book Color Archetypes: Healing Processes in the Visual Journal (2023).

When you get to know your three energies through color and images on the page, you understand yourself better, and you can begin to shift what feels stuck.

What are the three energies?

• Core energy: who am I? The seed of who you are, and the energy closest to your essence. It is how you know yourself when you are completely alone: your nature, your curiosity, what you truly love.
• Connection energy: what is my purpose? All your connections with other people, from the family you grew up in to your work and your friendships. The question of purpose comes alive when you go out into the world and meet others. This is also where balance is hardest to keep, between what you need and what your relationships ask of you.
• Spiritual energy: what makes me happy? Your connection to nature, to creating, to art and to the spiritual world. This is the energy you recharge from, and tiredness or a quiet discontent is often a sign that it is missing.

Red, yellow and blue, the three primary colors, can make every shade there is. Mix them without any order and you get a muddy brown. Give each one its own place, let them meet at the edges, and you get a rainbow. The energies behave the same way. Most of us grew up with them mixed together, which is why it can be so hard to know what we are feeling, or whether a decision came from us or from the people around us. When we learn to tell them apart, a rainbow starts to form inside.

Why work with color?

Because color is energy you can see. What is hard to put into words, you can paint, sense and change on the page.

Paint has physical qualities, too, and you can feel them. One drop of red or blue is enough to turn yellow into orange or green. Red changes the least when other colors are added to it. It holds on to itself. Blue changes slowly, and it takes a good amount of another color to move it. In the journal these qualities turn into a language, and every woman discovers what they are saying to her.

What did Jung say about color?

Jung saw two layers in color. As TheCollector’s overview of his color symbolism explains, some meanings are shared by all of humanity, rooted in the collective unconscious. Others are personal, picked up along the way, and they differ from one person to the next.

He also worked on paper himself. In his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung describes a period in 1918 and 1919 when he sketched a small circular drawing in a notebook every morning, a mandala that “seemed to correspond to my inner situation at the time.” A small drawing each morning that mirrors how you feel inside is not far from what we do in a visual journal.

Does every color have a fixed meaning?

Not one that is the same for everyone. Most of what is written about color meaning reads like a dictionary: blue calms, red excites, green balances. Color Archetypes works differently. The book does describe the primary and secondary colors, their archetypes and what each one heals, but what is personal is the arrangement: which primary color sits on your core energy, which on connection and which on spiritual. Each woman arranges her own map according to her inner connection to the primary colors.

The meaning of a color on a page never stands alone, either. It comes from the relationships between the colors, and from the energies they create together.

What does it mean when you keep using the same color in your journal?

It does not mean the same thing for everyone, and nobody can look it up for you. What you can do is look at it closely. A single page shows you a day. A stack of pages shows you a pattern.

1. Look in batches. Lay out ten or twenty pages together and find the color that keeps returning. Notice the color that never appears, too.
2. Describe before you interpret. Where does the color show up? How much of the page does it take up, what does it touch, and what does it cover?
3. Look at its neighbors. Which colors sit next to it, which does it blend with, and which does it stay away from? In Color Archetypes, this is where the meaning lives.
4. Read it against your map. If you have made your color map of childhood, ask which energy this color sits on for you, and what that energy might be asking for now.
5. Leave the answer open. Name it too quickly and you trade everything the color holds for a label you already had.

I wrote more about looking at finished pages in what to do with a page after you make it.

How do archetypes show up on a journal page?

Archetypes belong to all of us, and in each of us they take a personal form, shaped by the home we grew up in, by our culture and by our character. What is new in Color Archetypes is that we reach the archetype through color, and very often it arrives looking like someone we know.

When I did the core energy exercise, my grandfather came back to me. He was a doctor and a musician, he looked after me when I was small, and he returned as the archetype of the Composer. He told me, “You have the ability to compose your life.”

What is the color map of childhood?

Making this map is the heart of the method. It starts with childhood, because in early childhood we are most connected to the secret of our own lives, to our purpose and our potential.

Think of one year of your childhood and ask yourself what color it was. Not the story, only the color. The answer usually arrives before you have time to think, and that is the answer you work with. The map is painted in rings of color, and you build it ring by ring, year by year, until it shows what you came in with.

Then you move through the map, which the book does in seven parts: one for each energy, one for each passage between them, and one for unity.

1. Core energy. Who am I, when I am alone with myself.
2. From core to connection. Attachment and separation: your first relationships, the moments you were part of someone else, and the moments you learned to be separate.
3. Connection energy. Healing childhood patterns: what you learned as a child, what is yours and what is not, and where your boundaries are.
4. From connection to spiritual. Finding the path: the guides you have met in your life, and what you have come here to pass on.
5. Spiritual energy. Renewal, growth and dreaming: where you recharge, and what daydreaming opens in you.
6. From spiritual back to core. Creativity: the place where an idea comes down to earth and becomes something you make.
7. Unity. The energy of love. When you know your energies and can balance them, a sense of unity and self-acceptance arrives. This is where gold comes in, and with it black and white.

Much of the change happens in the exercises inside each part. In connection energy, for example, you write a list of what you learned as a child, sentences that begin “When I was little, I learned that…” I call it the university of childhood. I chose the sentence “My home could fall apart at any moment,” and I turned it into “My home is inside me.”

How can you start working with color archetypes in your journal?

You can begin with a single page: the three primary colors and one of the three questions. Walk through the seven elements of a SoulPages page:

1. Intention. Dedicate the page to one question: “Who am I?”, “What is my purpose?” or “What makes me happy?”
2. The magic of chance. Leaf through old books or magazines and pull out the images you are drawn to, before you understand why.
3. Background. Lay red, yellow and blue on wet paper and let them meet. Notice where they make new colors and where they turn muddy.
4. Images. Glue down the images you chose, or draw them.
5. Color. Notice which of the three primaries your hand keeps reaching for, and give it more room around the images.
6. Line. Outline one image, or draw a border between two areas of color.
7. Text. Answer the question in one sentence, and add the date.

When the page is finished, look at it before you explain it. Which color takes up the most room? Which one did you almost leave out?

Is Color Archetypes a form of art therapy?

No. I am an art therapist, and the method draws on Jung, but Color Archetypes is not art therapy, and it does not replace therapy. We set the word “therapy” aside and speak of healing.

Childhood material can stir things up. In SoulPages we start with resources, the strong, good parts of you, and we go to harder material only if you bring it in yourself. If a page brings up something heavy that does not settle, close the journal and give yourself time. I wrote more about this in Is it safe to journal about trauma?

Where can you learn the whole method?

The full process is in my book, Color Archetypes: Healing Processes in the Visual Journal, 120 pages, published in 2023 in paperback and on Kindle. It was a course before it was a book, and it kept the shape of one: nine guided journeys, each with the teaching, a guided visualization written out word for word, a writing exercise, and inspiration for the page you make afterwards. You can order it on Amazon.

To start smaller, The Color Map of Childhood is a single recorded session in which you make your own map. The recorded Color Archetypes course takes you through the whole process in nine lessons.

Frequently asked questions

What is Color Archetypes?

Color Archetypes is a spiritual and artistic method for visual journaling, grown out of the SoulPages method, that uses color and archetypes to help you recognize the three energies you were born with: core, connection and spiritual.

What are the three energies in Color Archetypes?

Core energy answers the question “Who am I?” Connection energy answers “What is my purpose?” Spiritual energy answers “What makes me happy?” In your personal map, each of them gets a primary color.

Does each color have a fixed meaning in Color Archetypes?

No. The method has no one-size-fits-all color dictionary: what is personal is which primary color sits on each of your three energies, and how the colors on a page relate to each other.

What does it mean when I keep using the same color in my journal?

It means different things for different women. Look at where the color appears across a stack of pages and what sits next to it, and if you have your color map of childhood, ask which energy that color sits on for you.

What did Jung say about color?

Jung saw two layers in color: meanings shared by all of humanity, rooted in the collective unconscious, and personal meanings that each of us picks up along the way and that differ from person to person.

Is Color Archetypes a form of art therapy?

No. It was developed by an art therapist and draws on Jung, but it does not replace therapy, and it speaks of healing.

When did you last stop and ask yourself what color you are? Your favorite color is a different question. I mean the color that is in you today, this morning, after that conversation… Give yourself twenty minutes, take a page, some watercolor, a few images, and make something that reflects exactly what you feel right now. And when you want the whole map, the book is waiting for you.

If questions come up along the way, I am here.

With love,
Rakefet

Art Journal vs. Visual Journal: What’s the Difference?

An art journal and a visual journal use the same paper, paint and glue. The difference is intent. In an art journal the page is made to be art: technique, experiment, visual play. In a visual journal the page is made to hold what you are living through, so images and color carry feelings before words do.

I am Rakefet Hadar, an art therapist, an author, and the founder of the school that trains SoulPages facilitators to guide creative work in a visual journal. I opened my first visual journal in 2014, the year my mother was dying of cancer. I was spending every day giving to my clients, and I needed one place where I could be the one receiving. I did not need that journal to be beautiful. I needed it to hold me. That is the whole distinction, and everything below grows out of it.

Why do people confuse art journals and visual journals?

Because there is no official definition, and the people who use the terms draw the line in different places. Some writers treat “visual journal” as the umbrella and “art journal” as one kind of it. Others use “art journal” for polished, finished-looking spreads and “visual journal” for a messier everything-book. Many use the two words interchangeably. Search for the difference and you will find forum threads that end without an answer.

The materials cannot settle it, because the materials are identical. What settles it is the question the page is trying to answer.

What is an art journal?

An art journal is a bound book where each page is an artwork in its own right: layers of paint, collage, stamps, drawing and lettering, made to explore technique and visual expression. The question behind the page is “what can I make?” Art journal pages are often shared, taught and admired, and a lot of the joy is in the making itself.

What is a visual journal?

A visual journal is a journal in which images, color and collage do the reflective work that words do in a written diary. The question behind the page is “what am I living through?” A visual journal page may turn out beautiful, but beauty is a side effect, not the goal. It is usually private, and its value grows with time: one page is a moment, fifty pages are a map of a year.

Art journal vs. visual journal vs. the rest: a side-by-side

The last four are easy to tell apart. The first two are the ones that blur, which is why the question column matters more than the materials.

Can one journal be both?

Yes, and most real journals are. The same book can hold a page you made to try a new gel print technique and, the following week, a page you made because a phone call left you shaking. What changes is not the journal but your intent when you open it. Naming that intent before you begin, even with one word, is what turns art journaling into visual journaling.

Where does SoulPages fit?

SoulPages is a method of working in a visual journal, built on seven elements: intention, the magic of chance, background, images, color, line and text. It brings together principles from art therapy, Jungian psychology and trauma-sensitive work inside that simple structure.

So SoulPages is not a third kind of notebook. It is a way of working in a visual journal, and it differs from open-ended visual journaling in three concrete ways:

1. Every page starts from an intention, a question or a single word the page is dedicated to. Not a plan, just a direction.
2. Every session begins with resources, the strong and good parts of you: people you love, places that held you, moments you were braver than you knew. Harder material is approached only from that ground, and only if you bring it yourself.
3. The finished page is witnessed, not decoded. You first notice what the page does to you, then describe what is actually on it, then ask one open question. No symbol dictionary, no diagnosis.

Do you need to be able to draw for either one?

For an art journal, drawing skill helps, though many art journalers never draw at all. For a visual journal, it is irrelevant. You do not need to know how to draw. You need to let color and images meet the page and see what rises. A color wash, a torn magazine image and one word are a complete visual journal page.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between an art journal and a visual journal?

Intent. An art journal page is made to be art, exploring technique and visual expression. A visual journal page is made to hold what you are living through, with images and color carrying feelings before words do. The materials are the same.

Is a visual journal the same as an art journal?

Not quite, though the terms are often used interchangeably and there is no official definition. The clearest line is the question behind the page: an art journal asks what you can make, a visual journal asks what you are living through.

Is a sketchbook a visual journal?

Usually not. A sketchbook is for drawing practice and observation, and its pages are judged by how well the drawing works. A visual journal is for inner reflection, and its pages are not judged at all.

Do I need art skills to keep a visual journal?

No. Collage, color fields, torn paper and simple marks carry most of the expressive work, which is why people with no art background can start on the first evening.

What is SoulPages?

SoulPages is a method of working in a visual journal, built on seven elements: intention, the magic of chance, background, images, color, line and text. It combines principles from art therapy, Jungian psychology and trauma-sensitive work, and every session begins from your resources.

Can I use one journal for both art journaling and visual journaling?

Yes. Most journals hold both kinds of pages. What changes is your intent when you open the book, so it helps to name it before you begin, even with a single word.

Somewhere in your house there may already be a notebook you bought for “art” and never opened, because you were waiting to be good enough for it. That book does not need you to be good. It needs you to show up with whatever today was, a color, an image torn from a magazine, one word in the corner. Give yourself twenty minutes, take a page, some watercolor, a few images, and make something that reflects exactly what you feel right now. If you want a guided way in, my guide to keeping an art therapy journal walks you through the first pages, and if heavier material is part of your story, my article on whether it is safe to journal about trauma covers the safety side. The courses at soul-pages.com go further whenever you are ready.

With love,
Rakefet

Art Journaling vs. Art Therapy vs. Therapeutic Art: Which One Do You Need?

Art journaling is a self-directed practice you do on your own, at your own pace. Art therapy is clinical work delivered by a trained art therapist inside a therapeutic relationship. Therapeutic art sits between them: a guided creative experience with healing intent, led by a facilitator rather than a clinician. Choose by how much holding you need, not by how much you like making things.

I am Rakefet Hadar, an art therapist, an author, and the founder of the school that trains Way-Finders to guide creative work in a visual journal through the SoulPages method. I have sat on both sides of this question: in the clinic, where the work is treatment, and at a kitchen table with my own journal in 2014, the year my mother was dying of cancer and I was so depleted from giving to my clients that I needed somewhere to be the one receiving. Those two rooms are not the same room, and most articles blur them. Here is the honest map.

What is the difference between art journaling and art therapy?

The difference is not the materials, it is who holds the process and what it is responsible for. In art journaling you hold it. In art therapy a credentialed therapist holds it, and the work is accountable as treatment.

What is art journaling?

Art journaling is the practice of working in a visual journal over time, combining color, imagery, collage, line, and a few words to reflect what you are living through. Nobody assigns it, nobody grades it, and nobody needs to see it. Its power is accumulation: one page is a moment, fifty pages are a map of a year.

It asks nothing in terms of skill. You do not need to know how to draw. You need to let color and imagery meet the page and see what rises.

What is art therapy?

Art therapy is a clinical profession in which a trained art therapist uses image-making inside a therapeutic relationship to assess and treat psychological distress. The image is not the point; the relationship in which the image is made is the point. The therapist carries responsibility for safety, for pacing, for what happens when something opens too fast, and for continuity between sessions.

That is the real dividing line. A journal cannot notice that you have gone pale and quiet. A therapist can.

What is therapeutic art, and where does it fit?

Therapeutic art is guided creative work made with healing intent, led by someone who is not acting as your clinician: a workshop facilitator, a course teacher, a retreat guide. There is structure, there is a held space, there is often a group. What there is not is a clinical contract, a diagnosis, or treatment goals.

This middle category is where most group creative work actually lives, and naming it honestly matters. A weekend of making art in good company can be genuinely healing and still not be therapy, and a facilitator who calls it therapy is overstating what they are holding.

Where does the SoulPages method sit among the three?

SoulPages is a method of working in a visual journal in which every session begins by connecting to the strong, good parts of you and to your resources, and only from that ground does harder material get approached, if at all.

Practically, it spans two of the three columns above. Used alone with your own journal, it is art journaling with a trauma-sensitive structure. Used in a group with a trained Way-Finder, it is therapeutic art with a specific method behind it. It becomes art therapy only when the person holding the room is a therapist working clinically, which is exactly why the training school exists as a separate thing from the clinic.

One thing carries across all three uses: in this method we do not work with trauma head-on unless you brought that material yourself and you are ready to work with it. The trauma is there, we know it exists, and it is not the door we walk through. The door is resources: people you love, parents and family including those who are gone, places that held you, moments you were braver than you knew. Community is a resource too, and a significant one.

Which one do you need? A short decision path

1. You want a regular place to process ordinary life, privately, at your own pace. Art journaling. Start tonight with a notebook and whatever paint is in the house.
2. You want structure, teaching, and other women around you, and your material is manageable. Therapeutic art: a course, a group, a retreat.
3. You are working with trauma, grief that has stopped moving, a diagnosis, or anything that affects sleep and daily functioning. Art therapy, with a credentialed therapist. Keep journaling alongside it if you want to.
4. You journal already, and it keeps leaving you flooded, numb, or worse than before. That is not a signal to try harder alone. It is a signal to bring someone in.
5. You want to guide this work for others. Then you need training, not just a practice, and you need to be clear in your own marketing about which of the three you are offering.

Can you do both at the same time?

Yes, and it is often the strongest combination. A journal gives you the six days between sessions. It catches what surfaces at 11pm, holds it until you can bring it somewhere, and gives you something concrete to bring: not “the week was hard” but a page of torn paper and dark blue that says what the week was.

Therapists rarely mind. Many welcome it. If you are in treatment, tell your therapist you keep a journal and ask how they would like you to use it; that conversation itself tends to be useful.

Frequently asked questions

Is art journaling the same as art therapy?

No. Art journaling is a self-directed creative practice you lead yourself, while art therapy is clinical treatment delivered by a trained art therapist within a therapeutic relationship. The materials can be identical; the responsibility for safety and pacing is not.

Can art journaling replace therapy?

No, though it can do real work alongside it. Journaling is enough when heavy material moves and you leave the page a little lighter. When the same overwhelm returns every time, or sleep and functioning are affected, that material needs a professional beside you.

What is therapeutic art?

Guided creative work made with healing intent and led by a facilitator, teacher, or guide rather than a clinician. It offers structure and a held space, but no diagnosis, treatment plan, or clinical contract.

Do I need to be able to draw for any of these?

No. None of the three depends on drawing skill. Collage, color fields, torn paper, and mark-making carry most of the expressive work, which is why people with no art background often go deepest fastest.

Can I bring my art journal into therapy?

Usually yes, and it often helps. Pages made between sessions give a therapist something concrete to work from and let you show what is hard to say. Ask your therapist how they would like to use them.

How do I know if I need art therapy rather than art journaling?

Watch the direction, not the intensity. If creating leaves you clearer or emptier in a good way, journaling is doing its job. If it repeatedly leaves you panicked, numb, or spiraling, if the trauma is recent, or if daily life is suffering, choose a credentialed therapist.

There is a moment I have seen in both rooms, and it looks exactly the same in each one: a woman puts down the brush, looks at what she made, and goes quiet in a way that means something moved. What differs is who is there to catch it. Choosing well is not about which practice is deeper, it is about being honest with yourself about how much holding you need right now. Give yourself twenty minutes, take a page, some watercolor, a few images, and make something that reflects exactly what you feel today. If you want a structured way in, my guide to keeping an art therapy journal walks you through the first pages, my article on whether it is safe to journal about trauma covers the safety side in depth, and the courses at soul-pages.com go further whenever you are ready.

With love,
Rakefet