Neuroscience-Informed Creative Group Therapy for Processing Trauma and Developing Resilience During Wartime

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Therapeutic Arts

Background:

• Traumatic experiences profoundly impact safety, self-efficacy, and relationships, often leading to anxiety and depression.
• Embodied and subjective trauma manifestations necessitate personalized therapeutic strategies focusing on resilience.
• Group Creative Arts Therapies (CATs) offer a promising avenue for trauma recovery through relational aesthetic interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a review and conceptual framework of group CAT interventions for wartime trauma.
• To examine how creative aesthetic approaches facilitate trauma processing and resilience building.
• To explore the neuropsychological underpinnings of trauma and the modulatory effects of creative group work.

Main Methods:

• Review of literature on group CAT interventions during wartime.
• Conceptual framework integrating predictive processing and Triple Network Model.
• Examination of body awareness, self-efficacy, and autobiographical memory challenges.

Main Results:

• Group CATs support interoceptive awareness, multisensory integration, embodiment, and emotional-cognitive processing.
• Creative techniques foster bodily anchored self-awareness, self-efficacy, and memory reconsolidation.
• Aesthetic experiences induce changes in brain activation and connectivity through embodiment and meaning-making.

Conclusions:

• Group CATs provide a neurodynamic framework for trauma processing and resilience cultivation.
• Shared creative engagement promotes brain-body synchronization and interpersonal connection.
• These therapies offer a pathway to address intrapersonal and interpersonal impacts of trauma.