Art Therapy for Young Adults | Cristina Lugo

Not every feeling has words yet, and that is okay. If you have ever sat in a therapy chair and felt the pressure to explain something you cannot quite name, you already know how exhausting talk alone can be.

In case you're new here, I'm Cristina Lugo, a licensed psychotherapist specializing in holistic, trauma informed therapy for young adults. If art therapy caught your attention, let's talk about what it actually looks like, who it helps, and how it can open a door that talking alone sometimes cannot.

Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy that uses drawing, painting, collage, or sculpture alongside the therapeutic relationship, not instead of it. You do not need any artistic talent or a finished product. The value is in the process, in what your hands and attention reveal that words sometimes cannot reach yet.

In my practice, art therapy is often paired with EMDR and somatic awareness. Creative expression gives us another entry point into patterns and memories that talk therapy alone can circle around without quite landing. For clients untangling family patterns or quieter childhood wounds, having a nonverbal way in can make the work feel less like an interrogation and more like a discovery.

• Talking in circles: you have done a lot of talk therapy and can explain your patterns intellectually, but nothing shifts
• Going blank under pressure: when a therapist asks how you feel, your mind goes quiet even though your body clearly has a reaction
• Overthinking every sentence: you edit yourself so much in session that it is hard to get anywhere close to what is actually true
• Big feelings with no shape: something feels stuck or heavy, but you cannot describe it in a sentence that feels accurate
• Shutting down around certain topics: family conversations in particular tend to leave you flooded, foggy, or strangely blank

Here are a few questions worth sitting with:

• Do I understand my patterns in my head but still react the same way in the moment? That gap between insight and change is often where art therapy helps close the distance.
• Do I feel embarrassed or exposed when asked to talk about my childhood directly? Creative work can lower that guard because the image, not you, becomes the subject for a while.
• Do I shut down or feel foggy when a memory gets too close? Art gives your nervous system something to do besides brace, which often makes it easier to stay present.
• Do I already turn to journaling, drawing, or music without realizing it is a coping tool? That instinct is worth building on intentionally rather than leaving it to chance.

If several of these sound familiar, art therapy may give you a way in that talking alone has not.

My approach blends art therapy with EMDR, somatic awareness, and trauma informed talk therapy. Art is never the whole session and it is never mandatory. It is one more tool alongside the others, used when it fits what you are working through, especially for clients processing complex or cumulative family harm that does not come from one dramatic event.

A typical session might start with checking in verbally, then move into a piece of directed or open ended art making, followed by talking about what came up as you made it. Sometimes the art stays wordless for a while, and that is fine too.

Progress tends to show up first in small ways: an image that surprises you, a color choice you cannot explain, a memory that finally has a shape. Over time those small moments build into real clarity about what you inherited and what you actually want to keep.

• Processing family patterns and childhood experiences that are hard to put into words
• Working through anxiety, identity, and the ordinary weight of your twenties
• EMDR preparation and integration, using art to resource and ground before and after reprocessing
• Cultural and multicultural identity, especially for clients navigating two worlds at once
• Rebuilding a sense of self separate from the roles you have always played
• Reconnecting with creativity and play as part of healing, not separate from it

• Keep a small sketchbook or notebook nearby for moments when words feel too small for what you are feeling
• Try drawing your breath, slow lines that rise and fall with your inhale and exhale, as a simple grounding tool
• Notice color and shape choices without judging them, they often carry information before you consciously understand it
• Give yourself permission to make something unfinished, the point is expression, not a final product
• If a specific memory feels too big to draw directly, start with how it feels in your body instead