1st 2 Stages of Healing

Happy New Year!!!!!!
May this upcoming year be full of peace, love and health…and of course art, which will facilitate the others!
Last year’s incredible challenges will require much repair. Some experienced PTSD for the first time and others fell victim to trauma symptoms of old. Stress unleashes the beast of PTSD and underscores its constant presence and difficulty to manage.
I hope everyone has read my blog on my website from the first post forward as it is intended to introduce newcomers to the concepts and steps when preparing to do art for healing trauma. If not, I would request you do that so the content going forward is best utilized.
My website introduces 10 stages of art healing I experienced over the course of 5 years of art therapy and this is what I will focus on in the upcoming newsletters.

REMEMBER, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE AN ARTIST TO HEAL WITH ART!

This is a judgement free space!!! No art is too ugly or awful, it needs to be heard and validated, only then will it start to change and be released.

The art healing stages are: Exploration, Safety, Expression, Clarification, Identifying, Redressing Trauma, Reconciling Trauma, Rebuilding, Identity, and Connecting.

Exploration:  Make sure you are in a safe environment, music helps and limit conversation. Start with your intuition and listen to the deepest voice within. Instinctively choose colors and textures that allow your inner child to play and communicate. This discovery artwork is often scribbles, stick drawings, child-like impressions, general, messy, and vague with poignant moments appearing.  

If you see a therapist, show and communicate your art with them. Make sure the sharing is not judgmental but as a supportive witness to the work. There is no right or wrong, if another’s interpretation doesn’t ‘feel’ right, it more than likely isn’t. This is the work….to hear your OWN voice/impressions and learn self-compassion. 

Safety:  Creating safety is possibly the most important part of the healing process. Exploration of feelings initiates a flow of internal information that can feel threatening and lead to fight or flight behavior. The idea is to establish an internal protected place to go to when the psyche feels vulnerable and frightened. Images, colors and concepts that remind you of better times when you felt whole and happy can ground and shield you from the war within.

 If you can’t find that part of yourself, make up what you wish you could have to feel safe and then invent art to represent that.  An artwork that stirs up negative emotions can be reworked to feel safe. For example in the image below, I cut the frightening art in half and inserted a shield that contained positive protective images, which resulted in feeling empowered as opposed to intimidated.