You don't have to be an artist to heal with art

When I tell people my story about healing PTSD with art, the most frequent response is….but I’m not an artist. Society’s message that art should be perfect and beautiful can cripple emotional expression as adults. This critical judgement blocks a basic instinctual relationship we all have within and prevents us from a wholeness enjoyed as children doing art with abandon and purity of self. Throughout my career as an educator and art advocate, that has been a reoccurring struggle as I try to inform about art as a tool to heal, not something that alerts critique, social standards and ‘shuts up’ our deepest relationship with self.
                                            
                                                   What Matters is the Act of Creating and the Process          
                                                             
The process of interacting with materials and expressing feelings is what’s important. Frida Kahlo helped me see the importance of making ‘ugly’ art….it represented my true feelings, therefore validated a very fragile part of me that usually hid or fled  in reaction to PTSD triggers and social attitudes.  My ugly art is what eventually freed me from my PTSD prison of fear and numbness.
I will not lie; this was a difficult journey and took great determination to unravel my ball of yarn. Well worth it though, as I am now able to live as a functional person in this wild and crazy world and successfully manage my triggers….most of the time. PTSD triggers are something one needs to learn to recognize and cope throughout the remainder of life and art is one of those tools that can help, along with other supports, such as exercise, nutrition, nature, animals, and whatever hobby rocks your soul! Building things, listening to music, dance, computer interests, community involvement, cooking, writing and style are a few ways that access our creative cord within and communicates our deepest relationship with our core self. 
                                                                    
The benefit of art making provides us a tangible reflection of intangible feelings that then build a thread to ground us- resulting in a sense of belonging. There is much information in artwork that can be studied and used to reconnect a dissociated spirit within and provide direction for the next step toward healing. Feelings can be an overwhelming mess, but through texture, color and patterns, those feelings can be represented with or without the use of words.
The key is to not allow these critical and judgmental attitudes to block the making of art. The goal is to allow creativity and materials to give voice to feelings. No matter how ugly or ‘unacceptable’ they are we need to listen to and honor them so that we validate and respect our expression, self-esteem and true identity, which then leads us on a healing path.
                                                             
 

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