When locating self/selves is enough

Sometimes clients arrive in a session with lots going on. A barrage of thoughts, or recent triggers have created overwhelm and dysregulation in their system. A flooding of their system if you like. A system flooded with fear, anxiety, overwhelm.

In these places, it is difficult for clients to articulate their intention for our art-making inquiry process for the session. The original imprint from the pain source has been activated, the origin story of the flood is present and playing out.

This activation is so very valid and welcomed in an expressive arts therapy session with me!

This is the portal we can enter our art-making process through. The process can be simply locating and orienting to where we are, both internally and in the room. Or, the process can be locating how many selves are vying for our attention.

There are a few invitations I can make to a client from here. Slowly we can orient ourselves to the physical room to gently come into the present moment. We can slowly take a moment to look around the room. What can we see? What are we drawn to in the room? Where does our gaze feel comfortable? You are here. I am here. We can stay here, looking around the room, for as long as is needed.

Another invitation is to offer support to the nervous system through a sensory process. Hands in kinetic sand, or working with clay between our hands. Is it warm or cool to touch? Is it rough or smooth? Slowly, we can connect to what is right here, in our hands. Our breath slows down. You are here, I am here. We can stay here, feeling the sand or clay in our hands, as long as is needed.

Another invitation is to invite some art-making with the intention to locate ourselves amongst all the internal noise by including the internal noise in the making. How many internal parts are wanting your attention right now? One by one, we can find immediate/impulsive representations for the many activated internal parts, without the agenda to fix or solve anything. We are just locating all our parts, all our selves, in this moment.

This approach was preferred and initiated by a long-term client during a time of intense grief and stress. She intuitively chose colours and quality of lines to immediately find expression for each barraging layer that she was trying to contain in her head. Often she would work across multiple pages in a session, quickly moving on to a new page once the layers became too dense or no room was left.

By the end of the sessions, all the holding of forces and triggered parts were transferred from her head and body onto the pages. They were acknowledged, and now they were held by the materials themselves and the pages in front of us. Nothing had been fixed/solved. But each layer brought a little more distance from the enmeshed internal state, creating more internal space to take stock. Where am I now? What am I noticing? What else is here?

My client was now more of the observer, and not so much at the mercy of the triggered pain. Things could be seen from a safer distance as the observer. A little compassion was even available because she could see how much she was holding, wrestling with, bouncing between, raging against.

The inner child and vulnerable teenager would sometimes reveal themselves in the layers of colour and lines. Old painful wounds and patterns would reveal themselves too. All were named and known by my client.

Here in the unknown fog and onslaught of grief, new understanding began to appear like apparitions out of the fog.

My client was often critical of her art-making, labelling them “not real art”. But this authentic, bold and vulnerable art-making is as real as it gets, I reckon :)

Images provided with permission from artist/client. Words given permission to share by client.