As a retired therapist (after over 50 years) let me take the risk of weighing in here. I have worked with a wide variety of therapists over the years including some art therapists. (Though I am both an artist and a therapist, I do not claim to do art therapy.)
There are many ways to facilitate obtaining information from a client, assisting in opening up communications, getting at feelings and other deeply held and important drivers of behavior, and guiding a client through change. It's amazing to me that people in my field with different methods can sometimes get rather territorial about their preferred practices and sometimes dismissive of others. None of that has great validity in my experience.
Art therapy is one valid way to guide people through all of the above gently and effectively. It's not the only way, by any means. In the hands of a skilled practitioner it can be quite effective.
If this appeals to you more than other therapies on offer, I would not persuade you otherwise. In fact, if you're feeling the need (or have been diagnosed or suggested as having the need for therapy), it's a reasonable place to start. Especially if you are nervous about opening up in therapy. Realize that it is a form of "talk therapy", whether or not you experience much verbal communication, as distinguished from a medication of surgical form of intervention. Some people at some stages really do need or can use the help of medication. IME, except in psychoses, I don't assume medication is necessary. But it can supply a floor under your emotions that may help calm you enough to engage in talk therapies, and the combination of both keeps turning up as most effective in the more common emotional issues that people have, namely depression and anxiety. You can certainly engage in art therapy without medication and there's no reason in general not to consider that option.
It's not about the art. It's about communication with yourself as much as with the therapist. And it's still crucial that you "fit" with the personality and methods of the therapist, regardless of what non-pharmaceutical practice they profess.
Decades ago I worked with a young woman for years who was suffering from schizophrenia. She would come visit me at a residential facility I was managing, though it took 18 months of intermittent visits before she felt she could enroll. She would flit in and out, and she went in and out of episodes, but even though she was barely verbally communicative, she would draw for me - her choice, I didn't tell her to. She would express her emotions and her hallucinations/delusions to me with her drawings. It was as good an indicator of her state of mind as any formal test I could have used. And at a later date when she was more verbally communicative and settled, we would use her artwork as a way to work out her problems. She gave me some of her artwork later on and I treasured it.
That is undoubtedly an extreme case and I don't claim it was formal "art therapy". Just an example of how using art to explore and communicate in therapy is quite viable, even in some rather difficult cases.
My only reason for writing this is to offer some hope of help to you. If it doesn't sit with you, then ignore it!
www.goodtherapy.org
I guess it depends on the person. Everyone's unique. Also, because of that experience, I used art as self therapy when I was going through difficult teen years. It was what kept me sane. I wouldn't be here nowadays if it wasn't for art, so it has a special meaning to me. I know I'm not exactly on the topic, but still, I just wanted to say it can be beneficial in unexpected ways.
