What art-making can show us about who we are in the workplace

I recently did a workshop with a group of staff members from an organisation, and art making was an invitation for the group to get a sense of how they might show up in certain moments. With their colleagues, with their expectations of themselves, their expectations of others, the support they might need. Something about who they become in the presence of the other, became visible. 

Some questions that came up were:

• What are some of the boundaries we let go of?

• What are the roles we take on - whether we want to or not?

• What are the parts of ourselves that we leave out?

• How do we deal with challenges?

• How do we deal with risks?

• How much space do we feel safe taking up?

• What are the bottom lines we have about ourselves?

• How can the lovers of creativity work collaboratively with the lovers of structure?

I’ve always said my work is all about relationships. To self and to other, and to the spaces you create beyond that - with our partners, in parenthood, in community, in activism. Our relationships in the workplace are no different.

Especially when you consider that many of us will spend 13 years = 1/3 of our lifetime = 90,000 hours in the workplace, or navigating work related relationships. (Say a few articles I googled, but you get the gist!) 

What do you think might show up in your artwork about who you are in your work relationships?

Generous Conversations - The Origin Story

A participant recently told me:

‘My biggest achievement this week was having a full conversation with my partner’

When I asked her what made it ‘Full’, words like ‘Focus’, ‘Both listening and talking’ ‘Felt equal’ ‘Opened up’ ‘Eyes centred’ and ‘I was able to demand’ came up.

When we allow enough space - a generous space - to invite qualities like ‘centre’, ‘open’, ‘both/and’ and ‘equal’ to the table, we’re inviting a part of the other person that might have not showed up before - and whatever they bring. When I say generous, I’m not talking soundbites. Efficiency and succinctness have become such pressuring - sometimes suffocating - markers of what makes something productive and ‘successful’. But we risk losing the nuance, the granularity, the glimmers of what could be. The Full-ness. That fullness allows us to get clearer about how we become with the other, and how they become with us.

We get clearer about what choices we can practice. What we should consider next for ourselves. What the relationship needs from us. To recommit to the relationship. Or maybe not. Either way, we have clarity.

There are 3 shifts I witness in my work with others that I would say are the most powerful during deep conversations being had in the room.
Here’s how I categorised them:

1. Interruption - ‘I didn’t know this about myself’ or ‘I didn’t know this about you’

2. Articulation - ‘This is what I know about myself and my experience’

3. Release - ‘I think it’s time you knew this about me’ or ‘I think it’s time I acknowledged this to myself’

The reason I say they’re powerful is because these moments of interruption, these shifts to their routine and to their story, tend to throw them off. You see it on their faces, you see it on their bodies. They become still. Almost surprised about how they did what they did; almost uncertain about what to do with what they just found out. Either way, the shift was about being felt and seen more fully.

Interrupting rehearsed stories is a big thing for me.

It’s these cracks in your story that reveal that multiple truths co-exist within you. It allows you to see yourself in a complex and fuller image - and to be seen in a fuller image. That’s what you’re investing in when you engage in a generous conversation. The interruption. The chance to not know. The surprise. It means we, or a loved one, are ready to be seen a little more. And once we recognise that we are complex, multitudes, we can extend the same generosity to the other.

If we’re lucky, we’ll get that interruption once in a while.

The Intersections of Art & Wellbeing: Clarity, Imagination & Connection

Artmaking has been with me since I was a child. But it was while I was doing my visual arts degree in uni that I found art to be the place where I can articulate the unseen parts of who I was. Parts that I didn’t have language for.

I remember having a project where we needed to visually represent a song, and my choice was ‘What if God was one of us’ by Joan Osbourne. No one really knew it where I was growing up – which probably made it even more appealing for me – but it asked questions I was exploring.

And I remember my tutor at the time looking at my images, and just as I was about to explain them to him, he said ‘I know exactly what you’re trying to say here’.  And that moment stuck with me because I was so clear about my experience, that he saw it too. It was undeniable and non-negotiable.

I realised art is where I meet myself. It’s where I meet all of my selves.

Through art-making I was able to honestly listen to what this moment demands of me. To listen deeply on a physical, emotional and spiritual level.
It’s this clarity that I chase in the art-making process. 

Not everything I create and communicate will be beautiful, in the literal sense, because not everything I experience is beautiful. If anything, I find the art therapy process to be expansive in how it acknowledges our complexities, our nuances and how it holds space for those parts of us to breathe. 

I love Coldplay’s lyric ‘I’d rather be a comma than a full stop’, because it acknowledges the transitions, to who I’m becoming in any given moment. Seeking clarity about who we are in any given moment has become an important intention of mine in the work I do with others.

The way I see it:

When you gain a clearer sense of self  >  you can state what you’re experiencing  >  you can state what you need  >  you can re-imagine what you need to create and live a fuller life.

Imagination is not inconsequential.
It shapes movements. It shapes wars. It shapes economies. It shapes how we meet in the digital world. 

It’s the creative act of constructing a different way of being. We are now - as adrienne maree brown powerfully states - living in someone else’s imagination, in other people’s creative acts - constructive or destructive. Imagination requires hard work, an acknowledgment of what might be - and what might not be - possible. But I find it so important in working towards our wellbeing.

When we reimagine a self that is closer to who we want to be in the world, and reclaim what was once consumed by shame or guilt and that is one of the biggest leaps towards bringing healing into our spaces. I say space-S, because something I realised was that our healing isn’t just about ourselves.

People always ask me ‘Why do you focus so much on relationships?’ 
And my answer is: Our healing is connected to the healing of others.

My healing is connected to the healing of my parents and my grandparents. The healing of a marriage is connected to the healing of each partner. The healing of a community is connected to the healing of its leaders, it’s community workers and individuals.  

When we imagine what healing, clarity and wholeness is possible for ourselves, we can imagine what healing, clarity and wholeness is possible in our partnerships, our families, our friendships, and communities. Our internal health is linked to the external. When we strengthen ourselves and our communities, we would be better equipped to tackle unhealthy existing structures and systems.

In my experience, art: the visual, the spoken, the written, the performed, 

• is a means to get these moments of clarity about what we might need for our healing, 

• to help us move towards reimagining the relationships we want with ourselves

• and to reimagine our connections with others and with the collective systems we’re in.

That’s what I’m hoping to bring to the table…

Mapping A Moment

A couple of years ago a colleague of mine proposed we host a series of workshops for mums with postnatal depression and asked if I would consider being the facilitator. This was such a tremendous opportunity, and it meant so much that my colleague recognised something in me that could contribute to this.
So, naturally – I said ‘NO’.

We all have that one story that gets in the way of us achieving our fullest selves, in our relationships, our careers, you name it. And if you don’t, well teach me your ways because I have lost many an opportunity to that one story.

It’s the relentless story about what I am, or am not capable of, that disrupts every cell in my body and impacts the choices I make in how I will proceed or more commonly say ‘No’ to an opportunity that arises.
Intensely aware of this habit to eject myself from situations where I perceive myself as ‘not good enough’, I wanted to know:

What happens between the moment an opportunity is proposed to me, and the moment this relentless story steals it from me?

So I mapped the moment to get an idea of what my process is, to see where I stumble, what the byproduct of this behaviour is and what I could do differently next time. This was initially a 2000+ word assignment with a more complex map! But here’s a simplified breakdown.

Here’s a closer look:

Do you have a story that gets in your way?

Something Seeking Our Protection

When we rush to ‘block’, ‘not feel’, ‘shut down’ the strong emotions that rise up within us, we extinguish the chance of being shown something. Something worthy of our love. Something seeking our protection.

It disturbs the possibility of finding the parts of us that are asking to be seen.
A hurt. A strength. A tenderness. A guiding value.

“So my anger isn’t something that needs to be ‘fixed’… Because the root of it is me being passionate about justice, healing and fairness” a participant mentioned during our time together. They recognised the root of their anger as a strength that they could work with and transform, rather than feeling shamed and gaslit by the label of ‘angry’ and feeling the need to be ‘quiet, calm and positive’ all the time.

At times when we bypass our [sensitivity / anger / fear / sadness / jealousy / … ] we might also bypass recognising our strengths and gifts. This isn’t to say that we over-attend to, or be crushed by the weight of the emotion. But - if safe - to allow it to take a seat and be intentional with it.

Chances are, it’s pointing us towards something worth loving and protecting.

Wellness in the Unwellness

The class assignment was set.
A wall with 2 parts to it. One titled ‘Wellness’, the other ‘Un-wellness’. The task was for us to visually represent what each of these meant on a sheet of paper and stick it under its corresponding title. It seemed straight forward enough.

Only when I touched the paper did it become clear to me:
This is a false binary.

I remember so vividly how my body immediately signaled to me these states of being are not separate. I took both pieces of paper and nestled them within each other.

There is wellness in the unwellness.
The search for what is already well within me in times of dis-ease. The questions that were birthed. The growing that was seeded. The words that found voice. The constellations of clarity against what needed to fade away.

There is unwellness in the wellness.
The recognition of what happened. The traces. The disbeliefs that accompanied new beliefs. The ungraceful changes. The inconvenient truths. The growing pains. My altered shape coming out of where I was, into the next step.

My experience of wellness / unwellness was: Symbiotic. Collaborative. Communicative. Responding to. Back and forth. Light and shadow. Angular. Laced with.

One side of the wall wasn’t enough to hold my experience.

25 Indigenous Organisations & Fundraisers to Support Against Inequality & Violence

To join the global movement against systemic violence, police brutality and racial inequality, means to acknowledge and fight the same oppressions in our own backyard towards First Nations peoples.

Here is a list of organisations and fundraisers we can support to address systemic inequality and violence against Indigenous Australians. Click on the title to link through to the organisation’s website.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a collection I gathered via articles from NITV, ABC, and Vice Australia.

1. National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation
   The national peak body representing 143 Indigenous health services.

2. The Healing Foundation
   A national organisation that partners with communities to address the ongoing trauma caused by actions like the forced removal of children from their families. 

3. SNAICC
   The national non-government peak body in Australia representing the interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

4. Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory
   The peak body for Aboriginal community controlled primary health services in the NT.

5. Indigenous Literacy Foundation
   Gifts books to remote Indigenous communities and runs programs to inspire communities to tell and publish their own stories.

6. Lowitja Institute
   A national institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research.

7. TSYRSA
   Provides sports funding, financial support and community grants to Indigenous people within the Torres Strait region.

8.  The Justice for David Dungay Junior fund 
   To fight for justice in the case of David Dungay Junior, who died in custody in December 2015.

9.  Sisters Inside bail fund
   Focusing on Aboriginal women in custody, paying fines for those who can’t and freeing women from prison.

10. Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service
    Aims to address the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the criminal justice system.

11. Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria (Djirra)
    Providing support to all Aboriginal women and particularly to Aboriginal people who are currently experiencing family violence. 

12. AIME Mentoring
    Creating pop-up Imagination Factories on university campuses to unlock the internal narrative of marginalised kids.

13. Black Rainbow
    A national advocacy platform for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTQI peoples.

14. Bush Mob Aboriginal Corporation
    Helping people having hassles with any drugs through residential and non-residential treatment.

15. First Nations Telegraph
    Australia's first free national First Nation specific e-newspaper.

16. Grandmothers Against Removals
    Advocating against the forced removal of First Nations children from their immediate and extended families.

17. Gunawirra
    Working with communities to improve the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island mothers and children.

18. IndigenousX
    Creating a media landscape where Indigenous people can share their knowledge, opinions and experiences with a wide audience across the world.

19. SEED
    Building a movement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people for climate justice.

20. The Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency
    Aboriginal people have the right to the care and custody of their own kids, raised in Community and Culture.

21. Wangan and Jagalingou Family Council
    Fighting to defend our lands from Adani and the Queensland and Commonwealth Governments.

22. Wunan
    Driving long-term socio-economic change for Aboriginal people by investing in people’s abilities,  encouraging and rewarding aspiration and self-responsibility.

23. WAR: Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance
    Committed to the cause of decolonization and the philosophy of Aboriginal nationalism - resistance and revival.

24.  Yirra Yaakin
    Producing award-winning, world-class theatre that is exciting, entertaining, educational, authentic and culturally appropriate.

25. Pay the Rent
    Show your solidarity with Australia’s First Nations People by paying a regular amount to the traditional owners of the country.

Our Healing is Connected

I was recently asked why I always bring my work back to relationships. And well... how can I not?

Our healing isn’t just about ourselves.

Our healing is connected to the healing of others.

How we relate to others is a reflection of how we relate to ourselves. When you imagine what healing, clarity and wholeness is possible for yourself, you’ll have a better idea on what healing, clarity and wholeness is possible in your partnerships, your family, your friends, and your communities.

This might seem more evident when we talk about intergenerational healing, such as with a parent with their child. But these patterns, behaviours, triggers, thoughts and wounds also extend to relationships with family, partners, workspaces, organisations and belief systems.

Apart from the immediate impact, I also strongly believe how we relate to each other has an impact on a global scale. So much about the state of the world today and the policies in place that govern us are about how we were taught to relate to the other, how to perceive those we believe might be different to us, how much space we believe we can take and what rights we believe we have over others.

Our healing is connected to the healing of others.

When We Disappear

I recently worked with participants processing experiences of racism in the workplace, and here’s something I noticed we - myself included - do in such uncomfortable situations:

We make ourselves disappear.

• When we over-function to prove our worth and competence, we disappear.

• When we contort and shrink our bodies to brush off an inappropriate comment, we disappear.

• When we stand in the corner of the room at an event to scan bodies and stares we disappear.

• When we trap our anger in our breath to avoid being ‘confrontational’ or ‘difficult’, we disappear.
  

When I disappear - for the comfort of the other - they remain fully intact,
while I’m now left to tend to my body and the harm that has landed upon it yet again. 

What can grow for us when we:

• Stop apologising for the discomfort felt by the other when we bring up our own truth? 

• Walk a little slower and more fully in our bodies to reclaim space, time and energy because: we deserve to be here.

• Reflect the burden back to the other person for them to self-educate and do better - rather than us always reconfiguring ourselves?

To Speak The Words You Speak

It’s important to me that I don’t rephrase or sugarcoat what a participant tells me in a session.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
When a participant shared with me ‘I bear all the crap’, I made sure I spoke back those exact words loud enough for him to hear. It wasn’t ‘I carry the load’ or ‘I’m feeling burdened.’

No, listen. – I.Bear.All.The.Crap.

As soon as I attempt to change your words, to soften your words, to make them more ‘suitable’, I lose sight of you. I give the impression ‘you shouldn’t feel what you’re feeling’, or ‘you don’t know the extent of what you’re feeling’. Or ‘I can’t handle how you’re feeling.’⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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My promise is to speak the words you speak and make you hear that I hear you. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We will taste these words, let them tongue meaning and find new language in our presence.⠀⠀

Handing Dogma Over to Questioning

Dogma wraps us safely in our stories of certainty. But it restricts us from the critical reflections we need - and are responsible for - to evolve ourselves and our interactions with the world.

When we sculpt a story that we’ve assigned ourselves, and held onto so tightly, out into the visual we create the opportunity to interact with it as its own living, breathing, complex organism, rather than an abstract set of concepts locked up away from sight.

As we face it, fiddle with it, speak to it, taste it, we allow for a dialogue that is open for meaningful deconstruction and construction. 

We hand dogma over to questioning.

Not only can this unraveling profoundly destabilise the story’s grip and credibility, but it invites possibility into what could be released and nurtured in its place.

What dogmatic story of yours needs handing over to questioning?

A Brick to Our Miseducation

The deeper I engage with Art Therapy, the stronger I feel about its place within advocacy and activism.
So how can I not use it as such?

• Every story we penetrate about who we are - or who we’re told we are - is a brick to the miseducation we’ve received about our ‘role’ and our ’place’.

• Every opportunity of ‘not knowing’ is a new self that can breathe in a system that chokes us into boxes and bottom-lines.

• Every reminder of something we once housed within us is an act of preservation.

• Every moment we slow down and reclaim from the fast-paced structures we’re set in is a chance for regeneration and transformation.

• Every rising sense in our body that we move towards, is a resistance to the numbing fleetness of the everyday.

• Every seeded curiosity about our next step can be a toxic cycle broken.

So how can I not use it as such?

To Step Into Being You

Not everyone is ready to step into themselves.
So, I mould my body into your posture. So that you can see you when you’re not ready to step into being you.

I mirror you back.
I imitate that gesture you did without realising.
I lower my back as far as you tell me when you speak of carrying that load.

‘It’s difficult to see… I didn’t know I do this to myself’ he said.

But it’s how I can show you: I’m off balance when I’m in this position. I’m in pain. I can’t breathe well. I need to slow down. And chances are, your experience is causing you the same - mentally, spiritually, emotionally or physically.

Using my body as a modality to communicate what was living within me was something I avoided when I first started out in art therapy. The words I used, the terminology, the stories, the imagery, the proofs I used were well rehearsed and already sustained me in my experience.
But once I invited my body into the conversation, pretending it didn’t have a voice felt insincere to my knowing and healing. It rebutted what I thought was obvious. Shaped what I couldn’t speak. And revealed what no longer served me at that point in my life.

Using the body can be a simple hand gesture, a bending of the body, or simply positioning yourself in the room. It is an entire apparatus of feedback and information that could lead you to what needs to be seen and unlearned.

Your whole body is voice.

When 'Both / And' Live Within You

There's something to be said about the ability to have feelings of 'Both / And' live within you. To expand yourself into a capacity that holds multiple and sometimes conflicting emotions and mindframes.

This isn't to be confused with being neutral, or an inability to make up your mind with a definitive choice. You are deeply invested in multiple states of being at once.  Rather, this is an invitation for the hard conversations:

How far from yourself will you allow a thought, a commitment, or an emotion take you?

It is an acknowledgement to the complexity we can embody when an experience holds many truths.

In a ‘Both / And’ experience, I can be:

🔸Both empathetic to your hurt/ And strong standing in the boundary I drew. 
🔸Both joyous that you're pregnant / And grieving that I can't be.
🔸Both respectful to your person / And critical of your stance on an issue.
🔸Both understanding of your frustration / And reject you throwing your anger at me.
🔸Both honouring of your pain / And supportive of your partner's decision.
🔸Both loving to a parent or sibling / And holding them responsible to the trauma they caused.

What examples do you have where you needed to exercise being 'Both/And'?

Guiding My Presence with You

I knew when I first launched my art therapy practice that I needed to gain the trust of those coming into my space and allowing me into their experiences before they even met me. One way to achieve that would've been to tell you all the things I strongly believe in and hold firmly from the get-go.

But here’s the thing, values are one of those findings you discover along the way and hope to grow into. The more relationships I built and the more connections I was introduced to, the clearer the virtues I reached out for to better serve you as a companion.

So, now that I've had a chance for some discovery, here are the values that guide my practice and my presence with you.

Community

To come into deep knowing of how we are in the world is to have an awareness of how we are affected by the systems our life is embedded in, and how we feed back into them with our behaviours and actions. Doing the work in solitude is different from doing so in isolation. You are not the only one experiencing what you are, or feeling the way you do. My hope is to encourage you out of isolation and ‘undo aloneness’ within spaces where we can be witnesses to and co-creators of our healing and strengthening.

Questioning

At the root of what I do as an Art Therapist is to be curious about the stories we tell ourselves, questioning and discovering them alongside you in ways other than your rehearsed expression of it. It is through the questioning that honesty can be invited and possibility generated.
Why do you prop the piece of clay upright every time it falls over?
What is the story you tell yourself whenever this happens?
Why did you think it would always have to be this way?
In this space, we are both explorers. 

Imagination

Reclaiming a space once consumed by fear, guilt or doubt is one of the biggest leaps into reimagining a self that aligns with how you want to be in the world.  To construct a different way of being means to break away from the present, while daring to move into an abundant vision of our future selves and lives. It's a process that needs rebellion to be nurtured within us, against the narratives that stifle the transformations we need and are capable of. I want to bring space for this imagination to breathe, be supported and strengthened before you take it into relationships outside the therapy room. 

Awareness - before ‘fixing’

The self-inquiry process is not a swift one and nor should we burden the process, and ourselves, with that expectation. With patience, the therapeutic process can widen a capacity for clarity and transformation within ourselves and in our relationships with others. Uncertainty might rush to fill up the silence. Shame might whisper 'Fix it now'. Productivity, as we know it, might be raging 'What's the next step?'
But sometimes, the next necessary step is in the stillness and the 'not-knowing’ of here.  

Unlearning

My commitment to your wellbeing doesn’t mean you’ll be the only one doing the work. Ensuring your safety guides my care in approaching your health holistically. This can mean setting up a comfortable environment, encouraging rest or providing nourishment during our sessions. It also means recognising my own biases, unlearning colonised influences and misappropriations, and unpacking assumptions that might impact my practice and my relationship with you coming into my space.

Meeting You As You Are

We’re all at different stages of our self-knowing and inquiry.
The experiences that shape each of us, how they govern our behaviours and the needs that emerge from them, will vary from one person to another. As your companion, meeting you where you are – as you are – with compassion, non-judgement and curiosity is my guide to being present with you in your experience. 

Befriending the New

Things reveal themselves differently when you approach them differently. The process of art-making encourages you to immerse yourself into your experience beyond a single form of expression and provide a richer understanding of it. What you once defined as ‘good versus bad’ with words, might reveal itself as deeply interconnected in sculpture form. Staying open to the surprises and befriending new perceptions of how you are in the world is part of the exploratory attitude.

The Multiformity

I once told a tutor ‘F*ck you’ in front of everyone in the room.

Just hear me out..

It wasn't intended to the poor dude - which I later explained, but to the assignment he set us: To write a ‘reduction’ of who we are. A concise statement that captures our essence.

It can be quite powerful to bundle who you are at any given moment into such clarity. I'd always quote Whitman's ‘I am multitudes’. Why didn’t I just use that?

But something was different that day.
I was a visibly Muslim woman in the 'era-of-ISIS'. Reduced almost daily to the same standard labels on the street, in the media, in government policy. Make that the same ONE standard label when Muslims made the front page.
In this case, the Paris attacks had occurred days before. I was at wits end, full of resentment from the anxiety Muslims and people of colour carry whenever an attack takes place.

Individuality is a privilege that isn’t extended to all. Expecting someone to stay shrunk and obedient within the confines of a stereotype, whilst others freely roam, thrive and enjoy security is jarring.
Artmaking has always allowed me the multiformity that other spaces might've not welcomed, or benefited from. To not use it as such during times of bigoted narrowness was to go against how I used art in the first place.

Being reduced has been my reality for years. It is nothing new to me. But I will commit no such violence to myself.

In the Spaces of Shame & Guilt

Reclaiming a space once consumed by shame or guilt is one of the biggest leaps into reimagining a self that aligns with how you want to be in the world.

To resolve conflict.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To rebuild a relationship.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To repair self-talk.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To show yourself to those closest to you.
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As part of a teaching demo by my tutors, I revealed the inner works of a relationship so intimate to a room full of colleagues. I knew when I volunteered that I needed to set the shame, guilt, and concerns of 'people talk' that riddled my thoughts aside.
'What will they say about me? What will they think about my relationship? About the 'other' in the relationship? About my upbringing? About my culture?’

It was a shaky moment stepping into full view so willingly, but it was necessary and memorable. As I stepped into the spotlight I also stepped into a strength I didn't know I had at the time.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

My desire to deconstruct and reimagine this relationship had become far more amplified than any concerns that had previously suffocated the relationship from breathing and thriving. And bullied me from doing the same.

'And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.' - Anais Nin

What might grow for you in the spaces taken over by guilt and shame?⠀

How You Are Will Show Up

Who you are -and how you are- will show up in how you work the material.

We were exploring who we become in our relationships and the roles we take upon ourselves. She chose the wire. It's a 2.5 meter-long length of wire so I offered pliers to make it shorter and easier to work with.
The pliers remained on the floor, by her side, unused.

She worked the entire length in silence for twenty minutes. Folding, bending, threading. A negotiation of surrender as the wire swung from one side to the other, eventually getting shorter with every loop and twist.

Straightness was knotted into a form complex with being and entangled in meaning.

Some words she shared about her piece:
'Seeing how it will go.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Seeing where it will take me.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Patience.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Giving it a chance.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Creating support for others.'

Already, something about who she becomes with ‘other’ becomes visible.

What do you think might show up in your artwork about who you are in relationship?

When I was Listening

“I didn't think I had any emotions at the start…” - H. Ali

There’s something to be said when someone’s need for truth and resolve overcomes their need to be someone else. Especially in a group setting.

A participant from a session I facilitated shared the shift between what he was prepared to experience to what he actually experienced. Rather than obliging to a perceived sense of self, he did one of the hardest things anyone can to do – He listened to himself. Deeply listened.

The shift happened during the making stage where participants were invited to creatively represent a certain aspect of their lived experience. Witnessing moments like these have a profound impact on me, and I wanted to know more about his process.

Here’s the exchange we had..

What was your thought process before and during the making of this piece?

Initially I didn't think Art Therapy would help. I had been to a couple of different sessions all of which focused on using emotions to illustrate a piece. Here I was motivated with one intention: to present how I feel, using whatever was available.

To me, ‘feeling’ is the journey leading up to an emotional reaction, and this session was different as there was more focus on understanding how you are feeling and using that to create a piece.
Having options other than illustration provided an outlet of creative expression. With the aspect of ‘feeling through’ I was able to touch, hold, grab, pick, pinch, pull. This process in using our feelings made the difference.

What made you choose the materials you did?

I felt that the materials chose me - as weird as it sounds. I was drawn to materials that I felt could convey exactly how I was feeling.

What made you listen to your actual experience - using white fluff, stones, string and glue, rather than follow your pattern of using only pen and markers?

I guess what I was feeling was complicated and I realised pen and paper just wouldn't cut it. It needed more than a 2D representation. Having access to an array of materials that could be attached, tied, glued assisted me in unraveling the layers of what I was feeling, and viewing my issue as a ‘whole’ entity.

What was your emotional process?

I didn't think I had any emotions at the start. But when I was listening throughout the session I began to gauge deeper feelings that were affecting my mental health. I felt quite vulnerable at the end, as my guard and defences were down for me to creatively express myself without any judgement.

When you commenced your facilitation you ensured there was an element of trust, confidentiality and respect. This agreement between all participants allowed individuals to really divulge how they were feeling. There were no right or wrong answers, just an opportunity to engage how one is feeling.
I felt you assisted in creating an environment where an individual can listen, absorb and reflect.

What did it feel like afterwards?

I felt relieved and quite amazed as to what had been expressed. Seeing something in 3D form made me feel there is more I need to delve into.
Art therapy addressed issues without actually mentioning the issue. 


Generally speaking, for a man to address his emotional issues has always been ‘taboo’. I feel growing up in Melbourne, as a Muslim, I witnessed that topics of mental health were never addressed. Issues that could've been dealt with just by speaking to a guidance counsellor, psychologist, or even your local doctor.
Understanding our feelings, stresses and mental blocks may not be an immediate process. Art therapy with you assisted me with the tools to understand what I may need to address long-term issues, as sometimes having a step-by-step plan can be easier to overcome issues than tackling the obstacle all at once.

There's No Map for this Place

'Memory is often a hindrance to creative experience.'
- Abraham Joshua Heschel

It's always necessary to encourage participants in my sessions to go beyond their usual patterns and behaviours, and to honestly listen to what this moment really demands of them. 

To listen deeply on a physical and emotional level, and how they each inform the choices in their artwork.

Not only can memory hijack our creative experience in the art making process. But also in the imagination of seeing ourselves, and others, differently and more expansively. Beyond the narrow narratives we have defaulted to ourselves. That we can move through an experience with more imagination - and a little rebellion - than we dared.

It’s hard work to go beyond the contours of what's most familiar to you. And it can be damn scary sometimes to dip into what you are capable of.

I get chills every time I see someone push against the edges of their known self.

I'm not going to lie though, I also get a little scared because now we're both in this new territory together and well... There's no map for this place.