When Art Is Asked to Heal Too Much

“Art heals” is a beautiful idea. I believe in it deeply. I live it. But it's not that simple; art can also be a burden.

I spent well over a decade deeply researching how crochet heals (and then extending into the therapeutic benefits of knitting and other crafts.) Crochet saved my life, and I believe deeply in the power of craft and art to heal. Art IS therapeutic. But it’s also not that simple. It’s not always healing. It’s sometimes not enough and it is sometimes even damaging. And acknowledging this doesn’t take away from the value of art as therapy.

The Myth of Automatic Healing

We want to believe in the clean narrative. That pain leads to expression, and expression leads to healing. It’s comforting to think that the act of creating can carry us through any hardship. That the sketchbook or the canvas or the yarn becomes a space of alchemy. Turn the suffering into beauty. Turn the chaos into form. Turn yourself into someone more whole.

This belief is seductive. Especially for those of us who’ve struggled with illness, trauma, or identity loss. It suggests a kind of agency. If I can make something, then I’m not defeated. If I can write it down, then I’m moving forward.

And I have found this to be true many, many times.

But this belief can also become its own kind of violence. Especially when it becomes the standard by which we judge our process. When the creative ritual stops offering comfort and starts demanding a result. When we sit down to make and find only silence, or pain, or ambivalence. When we start to wonder if we’re failing somehow.

The idea that art should always soothe flattens the truth of what creative practice really is. It’s complex, nonlinear, and sometimes destabilizing. Sometimes, creating is the rupture. Not the repair.

When the Process Reveals More Than It Resolves

Art doesn’t only express what we already know. It reveals what we didn’t realize was still living in us.

A line appears in a poem that surprises us. A color shows up in a painting that we instinctively avoid. The hands move in rhythm, but the heart is unsettled. The work feels important, maybe even urgent... but not relieving. Not yet.

This is the paradox. The process that feels disorganizing may still be deeply necessary. But it can be confusing to navigate, especially when we’ve been told that expression automatically equals release.

In trauma recovery, the nervous system often responds to truth-telling with heightened alertness. Not calm. Not closure. This doesn’t mean we’ve done it wrong. It means something is being stirred. Something is asking for more care than the act of creating alone can provide.

Sometimes, the art is a mirror we didn’t ask to look into. Sometimes it breaks the silence before we’re ready to speak. That doesn’t mean we should avoid it. But it does mean we need to approach it with tenderness, with pacing, and with the right supports in place.

Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash

The Invisible Expectations Placed on Marginalized Creators

These dynamics can intensify for marginalized artists. There is an unspoken expectation that we will make our pain legible. That we will turn our trauma into testimony. That we will participate in the redemptive arc, not just for ourselves, but for the audience watching.

Especially for artists who are queer, disabled, neurodivergent, or people of color, the stakes are different. The pressure is not only to create. It is to create work that transforms pain into something inspirational, digestible, even marketable.

This can lead to an impossible bind. On one hand, we want to be seen. To tell the truth of what we’ve survived. On the other hand, we know that certain truths are easier for people to hear if they come with a resolution. With a happy ending. With a healing arc already completed.

But sometimes, the pain is still in progress. The grief is still unwritten. The body is still exhausted. And the art, if it comes at all, is raw and incomplete.

That’s valid too. That’s art too.

To make without the burden of transformation is a radical act. To let the work be what it is (even if it doesn’t make anyone feel better, including ourselves) interrupts the productivity mindset that colonizes creativity.

Healing as Relationship, Not Resolution

What if healing through art is not something we achieve, but something we engage with?

Carl Rogers described healing as something that happens in relationship. Not in advice. Not in performance. But in the space between. Between people. Between the self and the work. Between the body and the image or text or material we’re shaping.

Creative healing is not a product. It is a relationship.

And like any relationship, it requires listening. It requires consent. It requires the capacity to say, “Not today.” It requires the freedom to step back.

In somatic trauma practice, we learn about titration. That’s the careful pacing of emotional experience. Not everything needs to be processed all at once. Not every feeling needs to be excavated to its root. Sometimes, the wisest move is to pause. To rest. To stay near the edges of the emotion, rather than plunging into its center.

Our art can follow this wisdom too. It doesn’t need to reveal everything. It doesn’t need to finish itself. It doesn’t need to do more than it’s ready to do.

We can relate to it as we are. Not as the healed versions of ourselves we think we’re supposed to be.

Let the Art Be Honest

If you’ve made something and still feel awful... if the words brought no peace, if the image brought no release... you haven’t failed. You’ve simply touched something real. And reality is not always soothing.

Let the art be messy. Let it stay unresolved. Let it be a site of honesty, not obligation.

You are not broken because the art didn’t fix you.

You are in process. (And, arguably, do not need “fixing” anyway.)

And sometimes, the most healing thing is not the art itself. It is the choice to keep showing up to it, gently, without demanding that it carry all the weight.

Let it be what it is. Let you be what you are. And trust that healing can unfold, not in the finished piece, but in the quiet moments of noticing what the process is teaching you.

Even if what it’s teaching is, “I need to stop now.”

I love working with people to find ways to engage in healthy creativity. Learn more about my 1:1 Healthy Creativity Conversations here.

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