Recently in Art Therapy Category

For last month's Expressive Arts Carnival, I had a few choices for what I was going to submit. Experiences shift so quickly. One minute I felt whole. Another I felt fragmented.

The above was the image I was going to submit. This is the normal way to represent my internal experience. Through shapes and colors which overlap in layers, sometimes blocking out any clear picture of what's really going on.

The other image I was going to submit was the unedited "Empty Chairs" photograph. The message here was alone and empty and separate. But it also held promise for what was to come (this was taken before a graduation ceremony). There is also strict order in the image.

Right before I submitted this image, I decided it needed to also portray the experience of being fragmented. So, the image was taken into Photoshop, cut up, and arranged in a more or less random pattern.

Here is the "Empty Chairs" photograph as seen by the camera (shot at f/3.2). The focus is on the section of chairs in the background which was where the boys sat separate from the girls.

In my last post titled Inside from the other day, I wrote about how the Art Therapy work I did with My Healing Guide last week in the hospital helped us reconnect in a way that had been sorely lacking for a while.

That disconnection was really not the fault of either of us. I realize the whole post was meant to tell a story that led to an optimistic outcome of reconnection. That post, however, did not represent the complete picture. While the result of that process was one of reconnection to the healing path, that connection did not at all stick. Dissociation and inability to ground (as well as basic necessities like eating and sleeping) were constant battles.

Partly, the drivers that led to the disconnection in the first place were due to the fact that we had been through a really intense and emotional period of six months, most of which was documented here. In December, our system came together to create a Contract (which we also call our "Statements of Truth"). In March, My Healing Guide and I made a visit to the church where a lot of childhood abuse happened. This helped us deal with Easter in a more holistic manner, even though I spent that time in the hospital. There was also the worldwide Catholic Church scandal as well as a family crisis thrown into the mix.

On Monday morning in Art Therapy, the directive was to draw our relationship to treatment. As you can see from the image above, I felt quite split about that question. On one side, I felt as through there was this sense of blending of colors and views, held within a container of grounding brown. But on the other, there was pure black chaos. The two sides felt completely separate.

Fortunately, sometimes such tension can be a good thing because something had to give. The crux of my problem has been that there is a part of me, a seriously self-harming part, who has seemingly not been in any sort of alliance with the healing journey we have been on for the past couple years. I recently realized that the more progress we made on healing, the more this part was left out. I also realized that my words saying that I was open to meeting this part halfway were not really coming from a place of true meaning.

Well, all that changed, quickly and dramatically.

On Monday evening, I wrote a multi-page letter to this part ending in directed questions meant to learn more and open the door of collaboration and inclusion. On Tuesday morning, I discovered there had been several text messages sent from this part to My Healing Guide during the previous night.

On Tuesday afternoon, this part came out and met with My Healing Guide for most of our session. So much happened. Many perceptions were completely shattered. Amongst many other revelations, this part declared she was not evil like we all thought, but rather a hurt child. She wanted to be part of the healing.

Tuesday night I tried to write down what I remembered from the session. Clearly something enormous happened. That evening there was all kinds of internal chatter about what all of this meant. Many parts did not trust that she could be brought into our healing circle. Many saw it as some elaborate trick just to get out of the hospital. Some saw it simply as not being real.

Wednesday was spent trying to rest and regain strength, and have this huge change settle in our system a bit. That has continued through today. The aftershocks have been large. The chatter has persisted, as well as the doubt, and some parts are still very scared.

But there are signs of trust.

In Art Therapy today, the directive of "draw a nest" led to a very clear image, all done in charcoal. Balanced in the nest were circles representing parts coming out of the nest much the same as depicted in Towards a Model of Dissociation. But it was clear where the "new" part was. She was the furthest away from the nest, but still connected to all the rest.

Tomorrow, I will leave the hospital. Despite all the recent huge changes, which I could equate to an earthquake, I feel like I am finally on solid ground.

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One of the major obstacles facing me is that I have felt like I am not on the same healing path I have been on for the past two years. There are several reasons for this, some my own doing, and some external to me.

What do you do when you feel like you are not on the path? I have been struggling with this question for a while. For me, the time in the hospital has provided me with enough distance from normal life to effect a change and to let it stick.

The other day, My Healing Guide and I did a piece of work together in the hospital, meant to help us realign with each other and inside. It was the first time in a long time that I stepped out of my head or at least "over to the right" a bit.

The work we did was all about being in the process and experiencing emotions without many of the filters that get in the way. Basically, I trusted that I would be okay with the emotions, and things started to connect as I went along.

I started by choosing important oil pastel colors. Those being red, purple, black, brown, blue, pink and grey. I know what all those mean for me.

Not knowing what to do, I just started drawing blobs of color. At first it was red, blue, then pink. When I got to the pink, I knew they had to be balloons for a younger part of me. So, I started making more of them. And as I expanded the red, I started "feeling" that it should have jagged edges. As I was laying down the purple for another part, I eventually knew I had to somehow get a cross in there. The brown tree is another part. I can speculate that the red is anger or something that feels really big, like it was in my last image.

Adding the black came after all the other elements were in place. I knew I would have to get black in. Then it just came to me that the black would sort of border everything, providing compartments much like a maze with dead ends. I wanted to have a ground, and I wanted it to be gray. Ground wasn't meant to be the best place (otherwise it would have been green grass).

This piece was extremely emotional for me to do. I cried while blending in the colors at the end. The process of blending in elements already laid down was very important to me. I had the feeling that I didn't have to "do" any more to the image; just that I was allowing everyone inside to "feel" the image by the act of blending. I felt like I was really doing something with and for parts of me in a way that felt very much like what we used to do.

After, I felt that this was my work. I know that the path I have chosen is not only absolutely right and healing, but remarkable and awe inspiring.

No more church news for me. Well, I know there is news, but I have been making a conscious decision to tune it out and not read any. The fact is that I was really destabilized by all of what has been happening.

I had thought I left the hospital last month in better shape than I really did. Unfortunately, it was one of those situations where I actually left standing on quicksand, and life quickly got out of control. There were very highly functional parts of me in the fore, but also very dysfunctional (and dangerous) parts were equally in the fore. I could not keep track of everything, hence the post We Have Met the Enemy... from a couple weeks ago.

And so I am back in the hospital. So far here, it feels like I have still not really been able to gain any traction. Though this post may be one step towards gaining some.

This morning's art therapy group was focused on self-assessment, with the directive to represent body sensations, thoughts and emotions contained in a circle. With many of these directives, I have to think a lot about what I want to do and why and I am very deliberate. I did not do that this time. I just focused on the process.

I see this is the first art posting on the blog using oil pastels. I rather like working with them because once you lay down the vibrant color, you can use your fingers to blend and it becomes a very tactile process.

The only conscious decision made was to choose red and black.

Looking back on the image, I see the black jagged barrier as separating me in two. The black splotches represent parts of me. It appears they are trapped. But it is unclear to me that they would be any better if the barrier would be removed, since the top half of the picture is the same scary red as the bottom half.

All I know is that we are separated now. The collaboration is not there. And I am stuck.

It is difficult not to pay attention to the stream of news regarding clergy abuse in the Catholic Church. It is on all the major news sites I frequent, plus the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests issues daily e-mail press releases.

I really do not want this blog to become about clergy abuse. That is not at all my intention. My focus here is squarely on understanding trauma and dissociation particularly as they relate to my own healing.

But I do have to comment when I read something that begs for comment. I feel like it is sort of my public duty. So let me hop onto my blog soapbox for a moment.

The latest news is that Pope Benedict met with clergy abuse victims during a trip to Malta and 'weeped.' The news story included a press statement from the Vatican, which was telling:

One does not need to know much about any facet of this ongoing saga to know that everything said in that statement, after "he prayed with them," is demonstrably untrue.

It is also interesting as to who these "victims" are. They were undoubtedly hand picked and expected to say things like "[I am] trying to regain my faith." But those seeking to restore faith through the Catholic Church do not represent the vast majority of those abused. What about those whose faith has been shattered? Whose spirituality has been twisted by conflicting messages, teachings, and actions? How can that spirituality possibly be truly restored within the walls and constructs of an institution with such weight as the Catholic Church?

I struggle. In my head mostly. And I write. And I talk. And I pay attention. And I draw and paint.

The image above was done as an art therapy directive last week right after leaving the hospital. The directive was to "paint about something lost and something gained." What I lost is a spiritual direction. What I gained is a family, and an ability to ground and contain, and heal.

I know that someday these two sides will have to intersect. I cannot imagine that now, but perhaps they already are. I have had experiences of spirituality not tied to any religion. If you look at the early posts on this blog, you will read about my "consciousness" or "enlightenment" experiences. I also know that parts of my internal system have had similar wondrous experiences that were tied to religion. They were protected for those parts. But as I do the hard work of looking at myself as a whole, I cannot help to know they were really taken away.

That reality poses a huge dilemma for me. It is also one of the big questions that those of us with dissociative disorders have to face.

It could be asked in this way: How do I integrate parts of myself that were protected with parts of myself that were not without going crazy?

Or it could be asked in a much simpler way: How do I heal?

Perhaps this journey, partly documented here, is my spiritual path. Perhaps I am meant to heal. Perhaps I am meant to live.

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I first learned about Wordle from a post last month by fragmentz. The other day Castorgirl made the post "Lost for Words". They both got me motivated!

I am a firm believer that diversified means of expression are necessary for healing, especially for those of us who struggle with dissociative problems. But, one could easily argue that this is important for any person to live a healthy life! Being able to express ourselves in different ways helps us be more flexible, encourages creativity, and just plain makes us more interesting people.

The connection to dissociative problems is particularly important. Through dissociation, we become accustomed to having parts of us handle very specific areas of life in mostly extremely rigid ways. If you look at such a person as a whole, one would most likely see all the variety that person possesses, and rigidity would probably not be the word that would come to mind to describe the whole person. Instead, the most common phrase I hear is "remarkably adaptive". That's little comfort most times to the person who routinely dissociates. The experience for someone who routinely dissociates in more extreme ways is usually one of fragmentation, lost time, and discontinuity.

The prognosis for dissociative disorders is good, I think, because we already have within us the necessary components to live interesting and creative lives most everyone strives for. I am not meaning to trivialize the process of healing or the struggles we face, but healing really is within our grasp and the destination is, I think, a wonderful place to end up and the journey itself isn't that bad either.

Art therapy, some aspects of my photography, piano, writing, and poetry have been very helpful in my healing. They have all provided ways to bridge what I know intellectually in my brain with what I feel in my heart. In many ways, through these means, I've been able to create a sort of glue that holds all the pieces of me together.

Wordle is very easy to use. In the simplest way, you can just enter a list of words in a form, and it will create a visual representation for you. More advanced uses allow the ability to weight the sizes of particular words and assign colors. From there, you can use the menus to decide how you want the software to lay out the words. You don't have strict control over word placement. But you can fiddle with the settings and create as many variations as you want.

I suggest to make screen captures as you go along because the software doesn't have a history function. Further I suggest you keep your list of words (and size and color tags if you use them) in a text editor. Then if you want to change anything, just change it in the text editor and paste that into the form.

What does what I created mean? The short answer is that these are the words taken from my "Contract" that have particular meaning to me. I weighted "Balance" the most, and that and "truth" are the only words in white. The pink words are kind of in the same class as balance. Grounding words are green. Nouns are in blue. Action oriented things I have to do to heal are in red. "God" is in purple.

To create your own, head on over to: Wordle.

For something similar, yet different, check out Tagul. It gives more control than Wordle, but many of the things it does you can do in a text editor with a little script control. But it's worth checking out.

Finally, if you are interested in words, see Visuwords, an online graphical dictionary and thesaurus.

If you click on the image above, you will see a higher resolution image.

Here are some early morning ramblings after not sleeping all night.

I was reading an interview just a little while ago, on the somewhat unrelated topic of "intelligence gathering", and this was said:

I thought it was a rather interesting comment, because intelligence gathering and trauma healing are not so dissimilar. But I think he missed the point a bit.

I like to think of healing as having to put together a bunch of puzzle pieces (with a lot missing and without the picture). But on those puzzle pieces are the little dots, and as you put the puzzle together, patterns start to emerge and you get better and better at predicting and making decisions.

This photograph is of some work I did with my therapist last summer. I painted puzzle pieces of various sizes and arranged them in a way that made some visual sense to me. I had many color options, but I chose only red, white and black. We never quite finished, having intended to go back and rearrange and reshoot. The pieces are still sitting in my therapist's office on top of her bookshelf. Perhaps we'll take them out again soon.

On my A Healing Journey page you will see an image of a dissociative identity (DID) awareness pin. And if you follow the link on the bottom of that page you will see another. I took the inspiration from these, and Castorgirl's blog header.

In the hospital this month, during an "art therapy" group, we were asked to "draw a symbol for yourself". This is something I've done before. Often, the symbol is not one object, but a collection of many objects, and this particular drawing was no exception. Being in a particularly fragmented state, I drew on the left what I wanted my symbol to be (and what I knew it could be); a rather smooth whole with different colored parts. On the right, I drew where I actually was at the time. The colored parts were rough and jagged and the "core" of me felt very small and colorless.

I also noticed, quite to my surprise, that it has been several months since I've put up any art, aside from photography. It's definitely something I intend to do more of in the future. You may also be interested in Kate's new list of Creative Healing Blogs and Postings.

Note: I've replaced the original image posted here (which was a merge of two scans) with a photograph. I'm going to use that approach for images larger than letter size.

Related Posts:

• The Core and Flow (May 2009)
• Mental States (May 2009)
• Radiating Parts and Finding Balance (May 2009)
• 24 Hour Timeline (April 2009)
• Safety (April 2009)
• Introduction to Art Therapy (October 2008)

I've shared a somewhat similar drawings emphasizing a sense of internal harmony and safety. I wrote about the role of drawing in healing and the need for finding balance. I certainly don't always have a sense of an internal protected core, but I am finding that I am learning how to achieve it and how to maintain it. Communication and collaboration are the keys.

Related Posts:

• Radiating Parts (May 2009)
• Safety (April 2009)

I've written before about how I use drawings to represent my mental states. Sometimes you just cannot get your point across using words. These are from my journal back in December, but they are plenty relevant now. I drew four major states, but made it clear that they exist on a continuum of states. I'll resist the temptation to describe them, and just assume they are self-explanatory. I would love to know what others think about them. Do they resonate?