Art to free your mind.
A therapeutic arty approach for muddled thoughts, fear, loss and belonging.
That sounds a bit deep, it is, deliberately deep. I’m sure I’m not alone in experiencing some of the above. In fact, I know I’m not alone. I have, just this week, spoken to two amazing women who’s lives revolve around helping people who are dealing with exactly what I’ve described, and more besides.
Ute and Hannah thank you.
The Good
They shared with me their vast knowledge and experience of psychology, wellbeing, and how people they have worked with are gaining control of their mental health and their lives.
I think I naturally lean towards people like this because they have so much respect for the power of the mind and so much knowledge. They have studied how we can attempt to master and control some of that power.
They work with science, they work with facts that have been proven, they continually learn, are open to new thinking and are fully aware there are no quick fixes when minds become damaged and broken by experiences.
The Bad
It’s one of those quirks of time, coincidence, fate or whatever it might be called that I also noticed an upsurge in quackery on social media. Yes, I know it’s always been there but these leeches seem to creep out of their damp places, in the shadow of the professionals, clinging to the backs of those who are championing the sharing of our vulnerabilities, like a mouldering death shroud. Feasting off the energy of those that have knowledge and compassion, training and ability to genuinely help people who are in crisis.
These murky pond dwellers peddle their pseudo-science as though it is fact,to the desperate, the vulnerable; and they are dangerous. That’s pretty emotive language I know but this is my blog and I’ll use it as I see fit.
They are dangerous because they prey on some of the most vulnerable people, they prey on people desperate to find a solution to something.
The vulnerable are very often younger, spending a lot of time on social media, and these influencers must know what they’re talking about because they have thousands of followers…right?
Wrong, they are aware that people are searching for solutions, they are aware that people are still reluctant to seek professional help, despite the many, many campaigns to encourage them to do just that.
They are aware that if they, as an influencer, claim something radical, and new, and unique that they will get more and more followers. They are not trying to make you well, they have no knowledge of how that could be made to happen.
The Helpers
The Vulnerable
I’m going to share my vulnerability. I’m going to share something that helped me. This is my personal experience. It may bore you or there may be a little spark of recognition of yourself or someone you know.
Unlike the influencer I have in mind today, I am not going to claim that what I am going to tell you will be a cure, a soother, a useful therapy or a replacement for a trained, qualified professional.
I am sharing it because it was my refuge when I needed it.
When I was at my worst, I saw a doctor, well, as we were in the middle of a global pandemic I spoke to a doctor on the phone.
My self help, was helping, it was part of me getting along and getting through, but I got help from my doctor and a councellor.
My ‘therapies’ were part of my getting better and getting through and so were the talking and the little pills.
I don’t believe there is a one-stop-shop for getting better, or getting on, or getting through. We need a balanced mind-diet as much as we need balanced body diet. We need mental exercise, just as much as we need physical exercise.
My world was turned upside down, bit by bit, parts of me that made me who I was, broke down, crumbled, broke and died.
With the help of my doctor I fought back, feebly at first, and put my life in a new direction of my choice.
I wouldn’t have been able to do it without thinking-time. The first thing I had to do was steer my mind away from the things I couldn’t change.
This was not easy, it’s not like flicking a switch, it takes time.
Now the weird thing here is that I had to teach myself to follow the rules I used to teach.
I used to teach art as a therapy so not really teaching.
I was enabling, I was an enabler.
Art was a means of communication, a shared experience, a connecting of senses.
What I taught was how to use art, the process of creating, as a way to sooth, calm, connect with yourself and NOT to try and produce a masterpiece in that process.
I worked on how texture and colour can combine in any way you feel it.
I t wasn’t a prescription for getting better. It was a medicine or a crutch; to help healing, if you needed healing; it was a means of communication if you needed to communicate; it was a space to be, if you needed to just be.
I enabled the process; any product or technique picked up along the way were purely incidental and as important as you wanted it to be, to you.
There were some flexible rules
I don’t compare what I do to others. This is the first step.
Don’t try to be like anyone else.
Don’t imagine what people will say about what you are doing.
Art is so much more than a ‘finished piece’.
It is the process that is the art. What is left at the end is extra, opinions of it matter not one bit.
Yours
your story, your mood,
your moment, your senses,
your colours, your textures,
your beginning,
your ending,
your process
I enabled a therapeutic art group for children. The art and the group enabled the children to be…
Very few people saw what happened in those sessions.
I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that the transformation of those children was something I will never forget. Inside that safe space; quiet children spoke, loud children were peaceful, angry children were calm and smiling, children in conflict were collaborative. It was transformational.
If you want a personal endorsement of the benefits of art for all people of all ages of all abilities I am qualified to give it. It’s beautiful, it’s treasure.
calm collaboration.
colour together.
The reason so many people loose touch with their creative side at a very young age is the obsession with having a ‘thing’ at the end. Techniques are taught with the aim of producing something that looks like something someone else has produced already.
The creativity is smoothed out, and artistry is judged on ability to mimic.
If creativity was meant to be mimicry like that, then how did we end up with Shakespeare, Orwell and Roger Hargreaves?
Yes I know that’s writing, but creativity comes in many guises.
Tchaicovsky and Marley… Ok I’ll stop now, I know you get the picture!
World Book Day 2016
Creativity meets creativity…well, sort of!
Hargreaves’ Mr Messy!
Back to me again. In the past I have had in my mind an image I have wanted to create.
The disappointed
One such image has stuck with me because I ‘spoiled’ the final piece. It was beautiful and I took so much time and had so much pleasure creating it and I spoiled it. It was not technically good, it was anatomically awful but I loved making it.
I wanted to give it one final last touch so it would ‘look’ stunning. I wanted to show it off because I loved it.
I very, very carefully outlined it in very fine black ink.
At the very end, the final point where I was going to declare it a masterpiece(to me) I moved; a teeny, tiny bit and my masterpiece was ruined. A dot, not much bigger than a full-stop, blighted the end of my faerie’s nose.
One dot had ruined the product. The satisfaction in the process I had enjoyed in creating it, was obliterated in my disappointment, my failure.
Vanity meets a bitter end.
‘Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account…’
Lady Macbeth, William Shakespeare
The peaceful
I might show my art, in fact I do, it pleases me if people enjoy it but I still have private creative moments, times when I know nobody will see what I have made. Sometimes nothing is made, no picture or sculpture created.
If I aim at anything it is to empty my mind of muddled thoughts, I concentrate on the act of what I am doing but not where it will end.
Some of my calmest times have been with mixing colours, watching the shades change, the intensity of one colour blending and combining with another.
I have used a soft pencil and covered a whole sheet of paper with shades of grey, deep and pale sitting side by side, curved lines and jagged edges touching or mirroring one another.
I’ve doodled and covered paper with minute, intricate patterns.
whirl and swirl and mix and wave and light and shadow and texture.
It was what it was, it is what it is, to me it is a mood to you it is a..?
There is no perfection, aim, style, or point to what I do other than it being a pleasurable experience.
No expectation
No judging
No critique
No beginning or end.