Can You Do Art Therapy on Yourself at Home? An Honest Answer
No, not on your own. Art therapy needs an art therapist: it is clinical work that happens inside a relationship, with someone responsible for your safety and your pacing. What you can do at home, on your own, is make art that is genuinely therapeutic. For everyday stress, for grief that is still moving, and for knowing yourself better, that is often enough.
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 have stood on both sides of this question. In the clinic I am the therapist. And in 2014, the year my mother was dying of cancer and I was depleted from giving to my clients all day, I opened a visual journal because I needed one place where I could be the one receiving. Nobody was treating me there, and the SoulPages method was born there. So when you ask whether you can do this by yourself, my answer has two halves, and you deserve both of them.
Can you do art therapy on yourself?
No, and the reason is in the word therapy. Paint, paper and glue are the same in a clinic and on your own table. What makes it therapy is the trained person in the room, who assesses what you are carrying, notices what you cannot see in yourself, and stays responsible from one session to the next.
What you can do alone has other names: art journaling, visual journaling, therapeutic art making. Those names are accurate, and the practice behind them is real.
| On your own at home | With a group or a trained facilitator | With an art therapist | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is called | Art journaling, therapeutic art making | Therapeutic art | Art therapy |
| Who holds the process | You | The facilitator’s structure and training | A credentialed therapist, clinically |
| What it suits | Everyday stress, reflection, grief that is moving | Wanting structure, teaching and company | Trauma, a diagnosis, distress that affects sleep or daily life |
| Safety net | Your own pacing and a closing ritual | A held space and a method | Assessment, containment and continuity of care |
What can making art on your own actually do?
Quite a lot, as long as you ask it for the right things:
- It settles you. Small studies have found that a single session of 20 to 45 minutes of art making can lower anxiety or stress hormones in healthy adults, at least in the moment. I wrote about what that research does and does not show in how art journaling helps with anxiety.
- It gives a feeling a form outside you. A color, a torn image or a small figure on a page can hold an experience at a distance you can bear, so you look at it instead of being inside it.
- It builds a record. One page is a moment. Fifty pages are a map of a year, and patterns you could never see in a single evening become visible.
- It gives you a place that is yours. Nobody assigns the page, nobody grades it, and nobody needs to see it.
You do not need to know how to draw for any of this. You need to let color and imagery meet the page and see what rises.
What can’t it do?
This is the half most articles skip. A journal, however faithful, cannot:
- Notice you. A page does not see that you have gone pale and quiet. A therapist does, and slows things down.
- Assess or treat a condition. Depression, an anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress and other diagnoses need clinical care. A journal can walk beside that care. It cannot be that care.
- Pace you when something opens too fast. Alone, you are both the one who is flooded and the one who has to stop the session.
- Hold the thread between sessions. A therapist remembers where you were last week and where you were heading. A journal keeps the pages, and you have to do the remembering.
A home practice is a different thing with a different job, and it does that job well.
How do you make art at home in a way that is therapeutic and safe?
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), in which every session begins by connecting to the strong, good parts of you and to your resources. Harder material is approached only from that ground, and only if you brought it yourself.
For a first session at home, set a timer for twenty minutes and choose your stopping point before you begin, the way a swimmer checks where the ladder is before entering the pool. Then walk through the seven elements:
- Intention. Choose one word for what you want from this page today: rest, steadiness, company. It is a direction, and the page is free to go elsewhere.
- The magic of chance. Leaf through a magazine and pull out whatever you are drawn to, before you understand why.
- Background. Cover the page with a color you love. This first layer is the ground you will stand on.
- Images. Glue down what you pulled, and make sure one image is a resource: a place that held you, or someone who loves you.
- Color. Add color around the images, wherever the page asks for more.
- Line. Take a pen and outline, connect or frame what is there.
- Text. Write a few words, or a single one, and the date.
When the timer ends, meet the page before you explain it. Ask what it does to you when you look at it, describe what is actually there, and ask one open question that you leave open. Then close the journal, rest both hands on the cover for one breath, and give yourself ten ordinary minutes before you return to your day.
My Bridges to Myself protocol walks you through a resource-first page in more detail.
When is working on your own not enough?
Watch the direction, more than the intensity. A home practice is doing its job when heavy material moves: you create, something shifts, and you leave the page a little lighter or clearer. Bring in a credentialed therapist when:
- The same overwhelm returns every time you open the journal: a pounding heart, fog, numbness, a scene replaying without relief.
- Sleep, work or daily functioning are suffering.
- The trauma is recent and still raw.
- You are living with a diagnosis, or suspect you might be.
- There are thoughts of harming yourself. In that case, reach out right away: call your local emergency number or a crisis line (in the US, call or text 988), or tell someone close to you.
Reaching for help is a continuation of the same care that brought you to the page. My article on whether it is safe to journal about trauma covers pacing and stopping in depth.
Is there something between working alone and seeing a therapist?
Yes. A course, a group or a retreat led by a trained facilitator gives you structure, teaching and other women around you, without a clinical contract. In SoulPages, community is a resource in its own right: your page is witnessed, and what one woman dares to put on paper opens a door for the others.
A facilitator is not your therapist, and a good one says so plainly. I have mapped all three options in art journaling vs. art therapy vs. therapeutic art.
Can you keep a home practice while you are in therapy?
Yes, and the two strengthen each other. A journal gives you the six days between sessions. It catches what surfaces late at night, holds it until you can bring it somewhere, and gives you something concrete to bring. Tell your therapist that you keep a journal and ask how they would like you to use it.
Frequently asked questions
Can I do art therapy on myself?
No. Art therapy is clinical work led by a trained art therapist within a therapeutic relationship. What you can do on your own is therapeutic art making, such as keeping a visual journal, which calms, clarifies and builds self-knowledge without being treatment.
Is making art at home as good as art therapy?
They do different jobs. A home practice gives you a daily place to settle and reflect. Art therapy adds a trained person who assesses, paces and holds what is too heavy to carry alone. For ordinary stress a home practice is often enough. For trauma or a diagnosis it is not.
What do I need to start at home?
A journal with thick pages, watercolor or any paint you own, a few old magazines, scissors, glue and a pen. Twenty minutes and a timer matter more than the quality of the materials.
Do I need to know how to draw?
No. Color, torn paper, collage and simple marks carry the work. You only need to let color and imagery meet the page and see what rises.
How do I know I need an art therapist rather than a journal?
Watch the direction. If creating leaves you a little lighter or clearer, the journal is doing its job. If it repeatedly leaves you flooded, numb or worse than before, if sleep and daily life are suffering, or if the trauma is recent, choose a credentialed therapist.
Can an online course replace art therapy?
No. A course gives you a method, structure and often a community, and for many women that is exactly what they were missing. It does not include assessment, a treatment plan or a therapist who knows your history.
There may be a journal in your house already, bought for a day when you would have the time, the talent or the reason… You can begin tonight without any of the three. Start with a color you love and one image that stops your hand, and let the page be a place where you receive something. Give yourself twenty minutes, take a page, some watercolor, a few images, and make something that reflects exactly what you feel right now. And if the page keeps bringing more than you can hold alone, let that be the moment you invite someone in. The courses at soul-pages.com are there whenever you want a structured way to continue.
With love,
Rakefet
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