Hey there, Overcomer! Today I’m sharing the final lesson of the four most important lessons I have learned from art and the practice of art therapy. If you haven’t heard my first three, you can go back and catch the last three episodes… Okay, so here is thing number 4 that art and art therapy have taught me:
Art has taught me to play, to let go, and to trust my intuition.
Narcissistic abusers have trained us (they’ve brainwashed us) to not trust ourselves, to always defer to them, to please them, to not consider our own wants and needs.
We need to learn to trust ourselves again, and we can learn to do that within the safe space of the artmaking process.
We can play, we can let go.
I always say within the creative process, there is no impulse control required. As long as you’re not damaging property or damaging or hurting yourself, or hurting others, you can do what you want.
Within the safe space of the piece of paper, of the artwork, you are free to let go. To practice what it feels like in your body to trust yourself, to trust your decisions.
I encourage you… Play with that!
Play with what you can create!
It’s safe.
Trust yourself. (or if that seems scary, at least give it some practice)
I’ve shared some of this story before on the podcast fairly recently…I can’t remember where, but I thought it relevant to share here too:
Back when I was an art student in college (in undergrad, before going back to school to study art therapy), I got to a place mentally and emotionally with my art where I think I was on the verge of being burned out, and I was getting sick of all the pressure I felt to create “good” art.
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