How Art becomes a Resource

Art therapy is an invitation to get to know yourself in a new way. It provides you with a way to check-in with yourself often, and on different levels. Think of it as having a conversation with yourself that always starts with the question,

How’re you doin?

Fine! doesn’t qualify as an answer, even when you think it’s accurate.
The mind may say fine, but other aspects of who you are might have more to say on the subject. Aspects like the body-self or the feeling-self may have become so used to being ignored, they no longer register in the conscious mind when they call for attention.
Art can come to the rescue and become a language for those parts of ourselves we have forgotten about. Parts of we no longer care for or want to own as part of ourselves. They are there nonetheless calling for your attention, and not always in ways that are helpful. Finding a way to communicate with these parts will create a path towards wholeness and integration.

LET CREATIVITY GUIDE YOU HOME.
Feeling like there is an inside you and an outside you the rest of the world sees is more common than you might think. This can leave you with the feeling that somehow you have lost yourself along the way and are simply going through the motions of your life on auto pilot.
If that’s you, it’s time to stop.
Pause.
Take time to wonder about how you got here before you take the next steps. Without some level of self-awareness, we just repeat the same old pattern over and over again.

Wondering is a lovely way to consider your life. It’s broad enough to include your experiences and doesn’t have a ‘should’ attached. You can simply wonder about your choices.
Drawing is a great way to see your wonderings from a different perspective, whether they be about yourself, a situation in life or a relationship.
Sometimes the very act or willingness to see things in a new way opens out the vantage point and you see new possibilities. The images you make can be simple, so remember it’s about the process not the picture. Asking yourself, what do I need to see and then just making an image will allow a new voice to be heard.

Draw like you were a four-year-old

Give yourself permission to draw whatever flows from the pen.

Suspend understanding until after the drawing is finished.

Pay attention to how you feel in your body while you are drawing.

Notice what emotions arise for you as you draw.

Allow your thought to wander as you draw and make note of keywords or memories that might pop into your head as you draw.

Overcoming your own resistance to working this way may be harder than you might think. Expect resistance and learn to recognise the voice of those defenders who try to protect you from painful feelings.
The ‘inner critic’ is the defender who will say you can’t do it, you’re not good enough.
Another defender that may arise is ‘the perfectionist’. The perfectionist says things like; I don’t draw because I’m such a perfectionist it would drive me mad not to get the drawing exactly as I see it in my head.
Or your defender might sound like ‘the cynic’; drawing pictures isn’t going to change anything, how could I even express the depths of my suffering.
The pragmatist’ may tell you drawing feelings may be well and good, but that has nothing to do with real life.

Accepting this inner dynamic as part of the process means meeting whatever arises within you, without judgement or attachment. Noticing who your defenders are is how you begin to understand how your personal psychology works. The thing about defences is, they work. There is a reason you have shut off from parts of yourself. That reason was that it was too painful to stay connected with it. Those defences served their purpose at the time but now they continue to shut you out in an unconscious way. The critic may be trying to prevent you from feeling the pain of rejection, the perfectionist protecting you from humiliation, the cynic defending against disappointment and the pragmatist doesn’t want you to suffer disillusionment.

These are all pretty dark feelings for young children to experience and without defences, they would become overwhelmed by them. That’s how defences are formed in the first place and it all happens at an unconscious level. If the defences remain unconscious, we don’t have any control or choice about using them and our younger self may be protecting us from the life we want to live. Art can bring awareness around your defensive behaviours and show you how to better serve your needs in the here and now.

By accepting the imagination as a bridge between the conscious and unconscious mind, our images and pictures can be explored to offer insight and understanding of deeper processes at work. That’s a very practical and pragmatic reason for using drawing to understand what might be going on with you at any given time.

Recognising that your imagination is a bridge to the deepest aspects of who you are means you don’t have to go traveling the world to find yourself, you just pick up a pencil and draw what’s happening inside. Reflect on what you’ve drawn and consider it all in the context of your life right now.

Let’s look at an example of a difficulty in a relationship. The person doesn’t understand what the problem is and makes an image about it.
The image while they were making it, represented the two different energies intertwined in the struggle. As the person was drawing, they could feel that twisting energy in their stomach. The emotions arising were anger and resentment. The thoughts that ran through their mind was the familiar story they had about how difficult this person could be.

Let your picture do the talking

When the image is made reflected upon it. See it with the distance between you and the page included. The image this person made now looked like a rope, which reminded them of the tug of war that always went on with their sibling. Upon further reflection, many aspects of this other person reminded them of that sibling and a lot of that earlier relationship was being projected into the new relationship unconsciously.
Awareness of this inner dynamic makes it possible for the person to remind themselves that this is not their sibling and that it can be different this time.

Becoming your own best listener is one of the many ways of using art as a resource.