Creative and Somatic Therapy Tools: Going Beyond Talking in Counselling

Why Talking Therapy Sometimes Isn’t Enough

Most therapy begins with conversation. You show up, take a breath and start to explain what’s going on. You reflect on how you feel, what’s been happening and how it all fits together. Sometimes, that alone helps. It clears the fog. Things begin to shift.

But not always.

You can talk something through a hundred times and still feel stuck. You might understand it completely in your mind, but your body tells a different story. It’s like trying to decorate a cake that hasn’t cooled yet. On the surface it looks fine, but inside it’s sinking.

This is where creative and somatic therapy tools come in. They offer another route into healing, especially when words alone have reached their limit.

What Are Somatic Therapy Tools?

Somatic therapy focuses on the body. It invites awareness of how emotion shows up physically, such as tight shoulders, shallow breath or a clenched jaw. These signals are not random. They are patterns, often shaped by past experiences that still echo in the nervous system.

Learning to notice these sensations and respond to them with curiosity, can be transformative. Tools like body scans, grounding exercises, breathwork and mindful movement help bring stuck energy into awareness. This isn't about dramatic breakthroughs. Often, it’s quiet, subtle and deeply powerful.

For therapists, somatic practices also offer a way back into presence when the work becomes too cerebral and the narrative is persistent. They are a reminder that healing doesn’t just happen in the head.

Supporting Men in Therapy Through Body Awareness

Somatic approaches are especially helpful when working with male clients. Many men have not been encouraged to connect with their emotional experience, let alone feel safe doing so in their bodies. Living in the head often becomes a survival strategy.

Using body-based tools in therapy with men can help gently reconnect them with what’s real. It might be as simple as asking where a feeling lands in the body or noticing how breath changes when something difficult is named. These techniques provide a doorway into the kind of authentic connection that many men didn’t know they needed.

Using Creative Therapy Tools to Reach Stuck Emotions

Creative therapy tools offer another way in when words are not enough. When clients feel overwhelmed, numb or caught in cycles of overthinking, creative expression can help them access what’s hidden underneath.

Drawing, metaphor, movement and visualisation allow clients to bypass the logical brain and speak from a deeper place. One client described their anxiety as a tangled scribble with a bird trapped inside. Another drew their internal critic as a clipboard-wielding sergeant shouting orders. These images bring insight, soften shame and often create more movement than hours of talking.

Parts Work and the Many Selves We Hold

A growing number of therapeutic approaches recognise that we are not just one unified self. We all carry different parts within us: the responsible one, the avoider, the inner critic, the part that just wants to be left alone or the one we bury.

These are not symptoms to be treated. They are strategies, developed over time to keep us safe. Somatic and creative approaches allow us to meet these internal parts without judgement. This is at the heart of many models, from Internal Family Systems (IFS) to newer integrative approaches to parts work.

Whether you are the therapist or the client, learning to hear these parts with compassion can bring clarity and lasting change.

Why Therapists Need These Tools Too

Somatic and creative tools are not just useful for clients. As therapists, we benefit from them just as much. When we draw, move, breathe or journal in our own reflective practice, we reconnect with something honest. Something that isn’t about theory or performance, but about presence.

It is easy to stay in your head, especially when you are holding space for others. But these tools bring you back into your own body. They help you notice what you are carrying and what needs attention.

This is where genuine empathy lives.

Insight Doesn’t Always Come in Words

Sometimes the biggest shifts do not come through sentences. They come through a pause. A movement. A breath. A laugh. A colour. A sudden sense of calm or clarity that arrives before the brain has caught up.

That is the power of working with the body and the imagination. It allows something important to surface without needing to be explained straight away.

Try Listening Differently

Whether you are a therapist, a client or both, ask yourself this:

What might happen if I stopped trying to fix this with words alone?

You do not need to be especially creative. Or bendy. Or into mindfulness. Just open to listening in a new way.

And maybe let that overthinking part take a break while you put the kettle on.

Book a session with therapist Kaz Hazelwood and learn how working with the different parts of you can help you gain new insights and understand yourself better.

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