Setting Up a Self Portrait Exercise That Actually Works in Therapy
The hardest part of a self portrait exercise in art therapy isn't getting the client to pick up a pencil. It's deciding what you're actually looking for. I've sat across from people who spent forty minutes trying to draw a photorealistic face, then cried because they couldn't get their own nose right. That's not therapy. That's frustration with a paintbrush. Here's how I approach it. I start by asking the client to close their eyes and think about one word that describes how they feel right now. Not who they are. Not their strengths. Just a mood. Usually it's something like "tired" or "nervous" or "numb." Then I hand them a blank piece of paper and a set of oil pastels or soft pencils. I tell them to draw the shape that word makes. Not a picture of the feeling. The geometry of it. This is where most people, including me sometimes, go wrong. A beginner therapist will watch someone draw a dark scribble and say "tell me about this dark area." That's interpretive leap number one and it's usually wrong. The scribble might represent tightness, or cold, or just the texture of someone's skin. I learned this the hard way with a client in 2019 who drew a jagged yellow spiral. I asked about the sharp edges and she got defensive for twenty minutes. Turns out she'd just drawn the sound of her refrigerator buzzing in an empty apartment. She was lonely but the spiral wasn't lonely. It was loud.
Art Therapy Self Portrait
The self portrait variation I use most often starts after the initial shape exercise. Once the client has a foundation, I ask them to add only two things: something that protects them and something they wish people could see. That's it. No eyes. No mouth. No trying to render a likeness. In my experience, when you remove the pressure of representation, the actual content comes out faster and more honestly. I typically see this sequence take between 20 and 35 minutes depending on the client's comfort level with materials. There's a technical detail people miss. The substrate matters more than you'd think. Standard printer paper absorbs too much pressure from oil pastels and makes the strokes look flat. Colored charcoal paper or tinted drawing paper gives you immediate contrast and depth without the client needing to layer anything. Heavy watercolor paper works if you're doing a mixed media approach. I keep a small stack of Strathmore toned paper in the middle drawer for this exact reason. It's about three dollars a pad of twenty sheets and it cuts the setup time down significantly because you don't have to explain color theory to someone who's already anxious about starting. Another counter-intuitive thing: don't let them look at themselves in a mirror during this exercise. Mirrors trigger the critique mode. I've had clients freeze for eight or nine minutes just studying their own face before committing to a single mark. Removing the mirror forces them to work from internal representation, which is the whole point. You're not documenting appearance. You're mapping internal state.
The limitation here is real and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. This approach doesn't work for everyone. Clients with severe body dysmorphia or active psychotic episodes can become destabilized when asked to represent themselves visually. In those cases, I shift to abstract collage using pre-cut shapes and magazines instead. No self-representation required. It still gives you material to work with but removes the triggering element entirely. I've seen it save sessions that were five minutes from walking out. Post-exercise, I don't ask the client to interpret their own work first. That reverses the power dynamic in a way that usually makes them second-guess themselves. Instead, I describe what I see neutrally. "I notice a lot of downward pressure on the left side." "The yellow here is layered over blue." Then I ask them to tell me if any of that matches their experience. If it doesn't, we move on. The client is the authority on their own work, not me. I've had to unlearn that habit over the years. Early in my career I spent too much time telling people what their drawings meant and not enough time asking. If you're looking for a structured worksheet to run this with a group or in a private practice setting, the one I use is available through the American Art Therapy Journal's resource library. It's free to download with a professional affiliation. The PDF is about four pages and includes the prompt sequence, material recommendations, and a debriefing guide. There's also a simplified version for school counselors that removes the clinical framing.
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