To access mental health services, there is usually a range of talk therapy options to choose from. But when you are seeking PTSD treatments, or learning how to relieve stress and anxiety, talk therapy alone is often not enough to sustain long-term relief, and it can even be harmful to use words to describe painful memories and emotions.

There’s a solution. The cognitive part at the front of the brain acts as a defensive guard against overwhelmingly painful experience. Creative arts therapy techniques gently navigate around these defences by instead engaging the limbic system, the emotional centre of the brain, which lights up with imaginative nonverbal expression of metaphor, somatic physical movement, storytelling, and role play.