Speaking the unspeakable: Artistic expression in eating disorder research and schema therapy

• Drawings in eating disorder research can give women a voice.
• Social discourses define the link between child sexual abuse and eating disorders.
• Drawings in Schema Therapy can access emotions inaccessible through words.

Offering the opportunity for research participants to draw pictures can be useful in uncovering multiple meanings to develop, support, and supplement other research findings. The processes of research engaged in this study, exploring experiences of eating disorder and sexual abuse, gave women a voice to describe and process their historical and current responses. The first section reports the response of one research participant in a study that used spoken, written and visual data to examine seven women’s experiences of eating disorders, and child sexual abuse. The second section presents a case study to demonstrate how drawings created by clients in Schema Therapy for eating disorders can provide a pathway to access emotional states, which may otherwise be inaccessible through verbal dialogue. Using drawing enables research participants to share insights and experiences in non-verbal ways. Drawing as part of schema therapy can provide the opportunity for the practitioner and the client to feel and experience complex emotional states related to current and past experience.