Scottsdale AZ: Therapeutic arts for self-care: Exploring therapeutic arts practices
14 August @ 10:50 am – 1:10 pm
| Participants will explore the conceptual and practical distinction between therapeutic arts and art therapy, two terms that are frequently conflated but differ significantly in scope, training requirements and clinical application. This distinction is essential for psychological practice: clinicians must understand the boundaries of their own competence versus treatment offered by a credentialed art therapist. The workshop grounds this discussion in the current understanding of clinician burnout, compassion, fatigue, and vicarious trauma, situating therapeutic arts within the broader literature on mindfulness-based stress reduction and present-moment awareness through guided experience exercises. Participants will directly practice techniques they can integrate into their own self-care routines, gaining firsthand insight into how the creative process can support nervous system regulation and sustained attention. From an educational standpoint, this training addresses a recognized gap in clinical training programs: while clinicians are routinely taught to recommend self-care and mindfulness practices to clients, they receive comparatively little structured instruction on maintaining their own psychological resilience. By positioning therapeutic arts as a professional development and self-care tool, which is distinct from but an informed portion of the clinical discipline of our therapy, this workshop equipped clinicians with practical strategies for personal sustainability while reinforcing sound ethical boundaries around scope of practice. |
