Post-Election Healing with Art Therapy
No matter your position—we all can’t escape the turbulence and worry as power changes hands in our American election process. In post-election, life continues to roll on with grief, holidays, medical diagnoses, strained relationships, past traumas and the like. At the same time, we also forge new friendships, see changing seasons, hold laughter and joy with the daily promise of a new dawn day. Collectively, the political environment may exist as a negative undercurrent affecting us all but rather than falling victim to the avalanche of position-based battles and sensational news, you can mindfully choose to practice self-care for yourself and others. Let’s look mindfully through a process using therapeutic art to bring understanding and healing to our body, mind and spirit.
First, we can take an inventory of the external influences that may be driving our negative internal experience. Connecting with your body, somatic bottom-up processing helps us to explore as our body does, through our senses of sight, smell, taste, sounds and touch. <So, thinking takes a pause.> The exploration is one of curiosity and no judgment. You can begin with a grounding practice. Sit comfortably with feet flat on the floor and take a calm breath in and long exhale out. Then, hold in mind how you see, smell, taste, hear, and touch. Then while flipping through magazines, choose and cut out images that positively connect to your senses. You can arrange and glue down the images as one collage. When making art in this way, the emphasis is on exploration and healing rather than the final product.
Through this journey, the process helps us in “perspective taking,” where you discern what should be priority in your life. You may have “discoveries” about yourself. Many times, we may connect to a “macro view” of life to see the bigger patterns of daily sun rises and sunsets or seasons changing from renewal in the spring, long growth in summer, change and decay in the fall and stagnation in winter. The current climate of life may be turbulent and stormy, but with a mindful creative practice, we can begin to recognize these external patterns, know our emotions and maintain a flexible point of view. By connecting to our body, we may experience a renewal of the mind, pointing us to healing and trusting that inner self and spirit.
Are you seeking rest and renewal in these changing times? With a trained Art Therapist, making images together can help you connect to insights for healing. The presence of an art therapist can guide you safely and ask the questions so you can gain own learning. Feel free to reach out for a free consult.
You can also learn more about the work I do on the Meet Andrea page.
Looking forward to supporting your unique therapy work,
Andrea Sutrick, ATR-BC, LMHC