Art Therapy Activities for Teens

Adolescents struggling with mental illness are often reluctant to see a therapist no matter how badly they need treatment. Many are afraid of being vulnerable in the presence of a stranger. Others have preconceived ideas of therapy based on what they’ve seen in movies. They may believe therapy means lying on a couch as a counselor probes their mind in a coldly clinical way, which may feel invasive to them.

Expressing emotions through art can help teens warm up to counseling because it’s less intimidating than direct communication. Moreover, studies have shown that engaging in art activities regularly can boost a child’s mental well-being.

What is art therapy for teens?

The teenage life stage is typically a time of artistic expression. The graffiti seen in urban areas is a testament to the adolescent urge to create. Because many youth find pleasure in creative expression, art therapy can help ensure that they’ll stick with counseling even when it becomes challenging.

Because it allows them to focus on creating instead of feeling pressure to discuss their feelings, art therapy for adolescents can be particularly beneficial for those who struggle to express themselves verbally.

When encouraging a client to reveal what’s troubling them, a therapist can ask directly or have the client express their difficulties artistically. Sometimes, teen drawing is the better option, particularly in cases where emotions are too overwhelming to be expressed in words.

An art therapist will typically ask a teen to create a project illustrating the mental health challenges they’re struggling with. The therapist refrains from analyzing the project, instead, encouraging the client to share as much about the meaning as they choose.

This process allows clients to create emotional distance between themselves and their problems. By transforming their emotional difficulties into art, they externalize their challenges, making them easier to deal with.

Therapeutic art projects for teens

Here are some art therapy activities for teens you can do at home:

Create a calming place

Mindfulness art therapy activities foster inner peace, and creating a calming place is a common one. Instruct your teen to close their eyes, relax, and envision a calming place, such as a log cabin on the edge of a tranquil lake. Whether real or imagined, the place they envision should make them feel safe, relaxed, and at ease. You might want to play soothing music to help them relax.

Once your teen vividly visualizes this scene, have them recreate it on paper. They can hang this picture in their bedroom to help them chill out after a stressful day.

Paint feelings

To encourage feeling painting, purchase an emotion wheel, which you can get on Amazon. Dr. Gloria Willcox invented this gadget to help teens better understand their feelings.

Each section of the emotion wheel corresponds to a color and a feeling. Using an emotion wheel fosters emotional intelligence, which is the ability to recognize and identify one’s own emotions and those of others. When your teen gets in touch with their feelings, they develop better communication skills, more satisfying relationships, and healthy coping abilities.

Instruct your teen to take a breath and scan the wheel. Have them locate the emotions they’re currently experiencing. Then, encourage them to draw what each emotion feels like to them.

Draw a mandala

Mandalas are geometric patterns within a circular boundary that encapsulate deep spiritual meaning. They first appeared in India in the Hindu text called the Rig Veda (c. 1500–500 BCE). Psychiatrist Carl Jung was the first person to use mandalas therapeutically. Today, clinicians worldwide attest to the power of this ancient practice.

Teens can learn to relax and let go of stress by creating mandalas. Research suggests this activity can even reduce mental health symptoms. For example, a study of 36 individuals with PTSD found that those instructed to draw mandalas 20 minutes daily for three days experienced a decrease in trauma symptoms, while those instructed to draw other objects did not.

Your teen can color pre-drawn mandalas, like those found in adult coloring books, or create their own. For inspiration, have them search Google for examples.

Try meditative painting

This exercise combines two activities—meditation and painting. The goal is not to create an artistic masterpiece but to enter a meditative state. To do that, a person must set their rational mind aside and let intuition take over. Sometimes, individuals practicing this technique feel an overpowering urge to release negative energy onto the canvas. Others like to create pleasant and healing images to encourage positive energy to flow into them.

To maximize the benefit of meditative painting, encourage your teen to paint without thinking and to use slower, repetitive strokes to achieve a calm state. If they feel peaceful, they’re on the right track with this activity.

Create a family sculpture

For this exercise, your teen will need modeling clay or Plasticine, a non-hardening clay that comes in several colors. Have them make a clay representation of each family member.

However, instead of aiming for realistic likenesses, they should create abstractions that represent each person’s personality. When the sculptures are finished, instruct your teen to arrange them according to their roles in the family and how each interacts with the others.

Assemble a desktop Zen garden

Your teen might enjoy creating a desktop Zen garden, a structure based on the ancient Japanese practice of Zen gardening. These mini gardens can help them be more mindful and combat stress and anxiety. Here are the steps:

1. Create or buy a small container. Your teen can paint it if they’d like.
2. Fill the box with sand and spread evenly to level.
3. Add objects, such as statues and rocks, but keep the garden simple and uncluttered to create a sense of peace.
4. To represent water ripples, use a small rake to form long, curving strokes in the sand.

Transform worries

This activity exemplifies Eckhart Tolle’s words: “Become an alchemist. Transmute base metal into gold, suffering into consciousness, disaster into enlightenment.” To help your teen transform their worries, have them write down everything they’re worried about. Time them; this exercise should take no longer than five minutes.

Tell them to transform these worries into positive energy by shredding them and making a collage out of the pieces. The completed work of art should represent what the teen will experience when worry no longer rules their life.

Know when to seek professional help

Art activities for teens are a terrific complement to counseling, helping them understand their feelings and solidify their gains. If your teen is struggling and doesn’t have a therapist, there’s an option you might not have considered: online teen therapy.

This teen-friendly alternative to in-person counseling has proven effective at treating a variety of mental health conditions, including anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. It also offers the benefits of convenience and flexibility, as your child can receive treatment from home or anywhere else with an internet connection.

Online therapy is perfect for teens who find it challenging to discuss their struggles in person due to social anxiety or other concerns. It also eliminates the hassles of sitting in crowded waiting rooms or getting stuck in rush hour traffic.

Art therapy activities for teens: Final thoughts

Therapeutic activities for teens that involve artistic endeavors at home can be beneficial if your child is struggling with mental health challenges. Artistic creation has been demonstrated to reduce the severity of mental health symptoms and can help adolescents focus on the joy of invention.

Art therapy is a particularly great option for teens who want to cultivate calm but don’t have the patience to sit in formal meditation. It also helps adolescents get in touch with their feelings, which helps them manage them better, and develop intuition, the inner voice that helps them make decisions.

Try the art therapy ideas for teens shared in this article or use your own art therapy prompts. Either way, getting your teen involved in art projects can help them explore their thoughts and feelings and bring more joy into their life.