Resourced, Resilient, and Reattached

In my therapy work, I use resourcing, resiliency building and re-attachment techniques to help build the inner and outer safe containment that my clients need in order to move ahead in their lives. Resourcing is sensing into the body to find a positive memory, image and or sensation of a person, place or thing that helps us feel stronger, safer and more attached to others and ourselves. It is body based and helps the nervous system regain its balance. You feel calm, centered and present as a result. When you experience trauma, the sense of self can be shattered Often it feels like you are disconnected from yourself, others and the world. The autonomic nervous system is no longer in a relaxed state and you may be living in a state of high alert, or dissociation. Resourcing helps people situate or settle back into a way of belonging to their bodies and their life experience that is safe.

Resource Card

On a day-to-day basis we collect, store and remember certain images that create specific psychological and emotional states. We all have a storehouse of images that help define who we think ourselves to be. They are stored in the body as sensations, in the emotions as states, and in the mind as memories and narratives. If I want to feel 'at home' in any situation, I will recall images of Pender Island where my partner and I first built our home together. My sense of belonging there is personal, cultural and spiritual. 

Resource Card

Diane Poole Heller in Crash Course has created a system to help review personal resources.

1.      Internal resources are qualities, such as your intelligence, perseverance, ingenuity, confidence, competence, creativity, flexibility, and sense of value or spirituality.

2.      External resources are supports, such as friends and family members, favourite places, enjoyable sports, and positive memories.

3.      Missing resources are those that currently feel unavailable or unused, such as lack of confidence, or lack of connection to friends. 

Exercises for Resourcing; Resource Cards

These cards can be collages, photos or small drawings and/or paintings of people, places, or things that resource you. They can be the size of a business card to fit in your wallet, playing cards or any size that appeals.

A Resource Card

 Looking at your resource cards can interrupt the internal patterned responses that are triggered if we are nervous, stressed or upset. The nervous system responds instantly to what we're reading or looking at and it's most noticeable in our body's sensations. Muscles contract or relax, heart rate changes, breath speeds up or slows down, etc. Looking at images, especially colorful and engaging ones, takes us out of rote procedure. It interrupts the patterned response and moves us into a resource.

A Resource Card

Reflecting on Art Therapy Exercises and Sandtray

Exploring body image

A Sandtray in therapy, is multidimensional experiential therapeutic tool. In a tray of dry and/or wet sand clients build worlds. Using miniature objects, natural objects, dolls, cars, shells, dishes, and others things that represent all the bits and pieces of things that make up our everyday world, they create scenes and pictures in the sand.  These scenes made by adults and children may reflect what home, work, the playground, the bedroom, a friends house or many other places may look and feel like. There is the unmistakable feeling of playing as a young child in beach sand, but also of being a giant in a world of miniatures.  We can shape new images, recreate old memories, express feelings and if we need to destroy what we just made. We can connect and reconnect with imagery through the diverse ways of playing within it. From this new perspective we can plan new futures and revisit past experiences.

Historically, it was Margaret Lowenfeld, a child psychoanalyst in London, U.K. who pioneered Sandplay in her therapeutic work with children during the 1920s. 

The therapist has an collection of miniatures for clients to work with. These maybe bridges, ships, people, twigs, rocks, flowers, cars, food, fantasy creatures, spiritual figures and many other things. They then make a scene with their collection in the sand maybe after a visualization, talking, doing a focusing session or a painting. A whole family could recreate the conflict that they had last night, a female client may express her confusion when her boyfriend cheats on her and a child may show what his new blended family looks and feels like.   

My new family

 Sometimes client may re-experience pre-verbal states, sometimes they can use the sand to make cognitive decisions and or to reconnect with a felt sense.

This is a very open ended, free, nonjudgmental way of working with figurines, objects, ideas and feelings. The therapist may be the witness to what happens for the client by holding space and being quiet, may ask questions and guide or be part of the creative process by also building. Client by communicate with the figures, write a story, poems, explain to the therapist what is happening or remain silent. Sometimes the client talks about her life issues. Clients may want to interpret what they have created or keep it in process and not talk about meaning. As with working in other mediums and with other techniques in art therapy, what happens is what needs to happen for each individual client.

My village

 Sandtray image: A child's village where an accident happened and a friend was killed.

Reflecting on Depression

Working with the sorrows of the psyche is similar to working with sorrows of the flesh. If you have a cut you don't immediately want to change it, make it into something else, you meet it where it is. You want to hear its story, find out what it needs to heal and tenderly give it what it needs. The cut starts to heal itself with your support. Depression is something that needs listening, gentle caring and holding. Childhood depression is a relatively new diagnosis.
 There is no longer room for darkness in childhood. Where do things that we as a society push away, gloss over, fix up? Instead of medication, we need to accept whatever is present. Acceptance of depression, shame, and or fear stops the mental or emotional resistance in the body and creates a space for re-alignment or resolution. Acceptance of feelings, behaviors, and /or thoughts frees the body to move to new feelings, behaviors, and thoughts. Non-acceptance sets up resistance or locks the body into rigidity. Art Therapy can be used to accept and work with what is, in a creative way. We can't push away the darkness without also losing the light. Rilke said"no feeling is final."

 

Reflecting on working with addictions

As art therapists, we bring our own paradigms to the work. When working with clients who struggle with addiction, I combine A.A., Harm Reduction, The Transtheoretical Model of Change, Mindfulness Practice, Somatic Experiencing and Focusing. The creative process itself is healing and when combined with other paradigms, it comes a powerful tool to help heal addictions. Making art can be a way to relax, change focus and mood. Clients can make art when they are feeling urges or feeling restless. Clients can review the art that they have made to see how far they have come in their recovery process.  Making art in therapy sessions can lead to a hobby as candle making, painting, or working with clay. It means that there is always something to pick up and focus on which helps the client move into a new lifestyle.  The client can feel a creative high instead of a chemical one. 

The appeal of using art therapy in recovery work is that art can bypass conscious defenses and enliven treatment. Creativity is open-ended and dynamic.  It is in direct contrast to a rigid, self-perpetuating addictive activity.  Creating also helps integrate right and left hemispheres of the brain, increases self-awareness and allows access to nonverbal communication.

Creating helps clients focus on their islands of competence. Getting into art can help people become more resilient.  Working on an art project can help provide physical and psychological stabilization.  There is no right or wrong way to create art, each person has their own individual expression, it is something that everyone can do and creating moves people towards health. Creating a piece of art gives people a feeling of accomplishment and pride. It can also give clients a sense of optimism, ownership and personal control to create something they feel good about.  Connecting with their innate creative process helps people reconnect with themselves and it enhances self-esteem.  Creating art can help foster hope. 

Reflecting on Making Mistakes

 We all make mistakes. We sometimes say the wrong thing, sometimes overreact, and sometimes move to fast into situations that are wrong for us. What we don’t remember is that everything is impermanent and temporary. Things are always changing and we can change with them. Often if I make a mistake, my mind fights hard to stay with that memory and go over and over it until I feel full of guilt. If I can forgive myself and let go then I can move away from the build up of aggression, anger, and feeling bad about myself. This can keep me in a habitual habit of blaming others, blaming myself, or seeing the world as unfair.

What I want to practice is seeing the impermanence of situations more and understanding how blaming others, is really discomfort with myself. What I want to practice is self-forgiveness when I make a mistake.  This is the way to creating peace within myself.

I make mistakes in creating art, talking to others, writing, and in my professional work. I am going to try to see future mistakes making as a way to practice compassion and forgiveness.

How do you feel about making mistakes?