Art therapy teaches us something simple but powerful: creating helps. Drawing, painting, writing—whatever the medium, it lets you express things you might not know how to say out loud. It helps you understand your feelings, reduce stress, and work through your thoughts. You don’t have to be a professional or even "good at it"—you just have to do it.
Now, look at roleplaying games.
You create a character—not just rolling stats, but imagining who they are, where they come from, what they want, what they regret. Sometimes you pour in little pieces of yourself without realizing it. Sometimes you build someone completely different from you—someone you want to understand or become. That process alone already touches on identity, self-reflection, even healing.
Then you build a world. It might be a creepy dungeon, a haunted kingdom, or a peaceful forest where mushrooms talk—but that’s storytelling. That’s symbolism. You’re creating a place where ideas and feelings live. It’s not always conscious, but it reflects you. Sometimes you design the kind of world you wish existed. Other times, you explore your fears or frustrations through fictional conflict.
Improvising scenes, acting out dialogue, reacting emotionally in character—that’s expression. Real expression. You’re trying out different responses, different personas. You can be brave, angry, heartbroken, charming... and it’s safe, because it’s a game. But your brain doesn’t fully treat it like fiction. It learns from those emotional experiences. It processes them.
And it’s not just at the table. You might draw your character. Write their journal. Build props. Paint miniatures. Make a playlist or theme song. Create handouts or maps. That’s artistic output. That’s craft. That’s you turning imagination into something real, something visible. And every little act of creating—even scribbles or nonsense ideas—is still working your emotional and cognitive muscles.
It’s a whole ecosystem of art. Of creativity. Of personal exploration.
Psychology even has names for this stuff:
Narrative Identity: We understand ourselves through story. When we create characters, backstories, and arcs, we’re playing with identity—ours and others’.
Flow State: That feeling when you’re so into drawing or writing or running a scene that time disappears? That’s flow. It’s good for your brain. It lowers stress and increases focus and happiness.
Constructive Imagination: Pretending isn’t “just playing”—it’s how we explore possibilities. We can mentally rehearse real feelings and test reactions in a fictional setting.
Creative Self-Efficacy: Believing you can create makes you want to create more. Every little success, every drawing finished, scene played, or idea shared builds confidence and emotional resilience.
All of this is what art therapy aims for. But a lot of us have already been doing it, just... with dice and dragons.
Roleplaying games give us the tools to imagine, create, and express in ways that are playful and profound. They’re collaborative, emotional, artistic experiences that can have real benefits—whether you're aware of it or not.
So if you’ve ever felt better after a session, or discovered something about yourself through a character, or calmed down just by painting minis or drawing your wizard... now you know why.
Roleplaying is art therapy in disguise.
You don’t need permission to benefit from it. You just need to keep playing.
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