Mental Health: Year 1 pt. 1

Psychotherapy: Illustrating my Journey

Year 1 (2017) | Part 1

Two Chairs no.1, 2017 | pencil & ink on paper

Perfectionism is the nemesis of creativity. In making this first drawing I struggled to accept the ink drip, it’s a mistake. We talked about how an apparent need to control things seemed to be surfacing along with a reluctance to accept that to heal we must be open to the unattractive, painful and negative parts of ourselves and our lives.

At this point it was becoming clear that therapy was going to be painful - having to face all the bad stuff. My therapist suggested I read The Dance of Fear by Harriet Lerner where control is described as “an illusion - a fact you will learn very fast if you become ill, or have things fall apart in some other way.” She continues “when we understand vulnerability and suffering as an essential part of being human, our individual fate can be easier to manage".

For as long as I can remember I’ve had an image in my mind of a family tree that we return to when we die and it’s comforting. We discussed how in this drawing the merging leaves suggest a connection to others but the trunk (the self) is bare, undefined and floating without foundation despite the vibrancy that surrounds it. At this point the questions began to come thick and fast. Why is there emptiness, what’s with the relative absence of substance?

Seemingly in this shaky family portrait there is not enough ink left for the third child. It’s suggests a breakdown of connection and support. Nurturing seems less available for the distanced, vague, incomplete fifth entity. If we can’t find a place within our own family how do we find a place in this world? If we don’t feel like we belong, or exist, how do we trust our own existence - our own bodies? Enter stage left - Health Anxiety!

The early stages of therapy bring up all the shit. I’ve learned that when the shit doesn’t know where to land or how to be released it creates a blockage and this translates into anxiety symptoms (somatization) and fear. This picture relates to having children and how becoming a mother, for me, obliterated all that went before. Which part of ourselves does becoming a mother replace? It’s suggested that there is a strong connotation of sexuality here; a defective yonic funnel. It hints at an inability to feel sexual. Perhaps the colours represent the different parts of me that suddenly feel unreachable in this new role.

Inside Series, 2017 | pencil, acrylic & ink on paper

In depressing our feelings a tension inside threatens to explode - disturbing the calm facade. There is only so much burying we can do before the mess starts to present itself as physical pain and obsessive anxious thoughts.

Attempting to find the root of what created this anxiety reflex in me has unearthed a whole lot of anger. This anger needs to go somewhere but just swills around showing itself in ringing ears, numb limbs and visual disturbance prompting addictive safety behaviours like seeking reassurance from others.

What was first intended to be a positive drawing shows itself as something more complex when explored in therapy. I’m taught about the ‘Shadow Self’ and it seems that in this picture there is a desire to conceal mine as there is only half a sun. What part of my authentic self am I not wanting to see or be seen? Why is there shame?

At this point in my therapy journey small bouts of progress surfaced. For me the spine is significant as it’s the main focus of my health anxiety - a morbid fear of becoming paralysed. Simply drawing it’s form is challenging as it triggers obsessive thoughts but we discussed that there is positivity here. Thinking about the significance of colours, yellow represents the birth of something new. Here one single colour has been released in contrast to the earlier ‘Blockage’ illustration where a bunged up mess showed resistance. There is now strength, growth and blossoming trust but due to the detail of the drawing it’s suggested there is still a need for control.

It was difficult to accept that I’ve created addictive behaviours to cope with my anxiety - particularly a reliance on others to make me feel physically safe. This inadvertently gives power to others over myself leaving me in a constant state of vulnerability.

Living with Health Anxiety is essentially living on the edge of life. We create a warped safety blanket by permanently ‘keeping an eye’ on the worse case scenario so as not to be caught off guard. This results in keeping doom, despair and fear close by at all times. In his book The Power of Now Eckhart Tolle describes how learning to live in the present frees you from fear of the future - “The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger…and is of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now. You are the here and now, while your mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap.”

Crouching Figure, 2017 | pencil, acrylic & ink on paper

This image of the emerging self hints at the beginnings of faith. There is a release alongside suffering which bares heavily. Healing is painful. We discuss how the figure appears to be birthing in a primitive position. It’s a difficult labour to allow yourself to move on when moving on means letting go and having to process loss.

A year after bringing this image to therapy we revisited the drawings. I realised that at the time I withheld half of it. Only the right hand circle was shown which sparked the suggestion of withholding, again. I’ve been pushing down the extent of my rage even from my therapist and I was quite resistant to hearing this due to be being a raving people-pleaser. So out of my comfort zone we dove into exploring the difficulty in expressing anger.

Sometimes in therapy I would not talk about my drawing at all. I can now see that at times there was a lot I wasn’t giving over in our sessions and my therapist would often take note of my ‘containing’. We talked about finding transitions problematic. At times I clearly find it easier to stay in the dark to avoid looking at reality which holds pain.

Blue Circles, 2017 | pencil & ink on paper

This painting is inspired by my experience of social occasions. It’s suggested that the blue ink represents me and the circles are the already established friendship groups who are self-knowing and confident in their cliques.

It’s suggested that the holes represent tunnels (which are subconsciously threatening) leaving a feeling of disconnection. There’s a constant searching of ‘place’ in waking life, but am I actually engaging or just being present?

Two Chairs no.2, 2017 | pencil & ink on paper

I feel like a psychological breakthrough is visible here as colours are released, but contained, within the therapy room, not trapped within myself. Two comfortable empty, equal, chairs suggest that I’m trusting this process more and more. A therapist acts as a mirror for us to face what’s needed to be worked through and it was a long time until this was understood and accepted. Dissatisfaction and anger towards your therapist is actually dissatisfaction and anger towards yourself.

Confusion sets in when some days are euphoric and some are desperate. It needs to be accepted that reality is the balance of yin and yang, highs and lows and acceptance of the unknown. In this drawing the figures are ambiguous - are they looking up or down? I feel duplicitous when the healing part of me is pulled back by the comfort seeking, fearful, self.

My illustrations are beginning to contain more form and detail. If I compare this tree with the empty, ungrounded, trunk from a year before I see growth. In colour theory green is a marker of safety and faith in nature.

In Terry Rubenstein’s book Exquisite Mind: How a New Paradigm Changed My Life…and Is Sweeping the World she discusses the possibility of change and growth instead of being dragged down by past losses and pain. The Three Principles she outlines deal with how we mistakenly create our experience of life based on thought and that we can change the way think….and therefore the way we experience life.

Figure Dipping Toe, 2017 | pencil, acrylic & ink on paper

Despite feeling like motherhood has rendered me an empty shell, in this picture it seems I’m experimenting with new ways of seeing. There’s a willingness to dip a toe into the messy unpredictable currents of life. Am I preparing to accept the inevitability of the unknown? Hiding myself away creates a misconception of feeling protected but actually allowing myself to be visible - and therefore vulnerable - is the only way to invite opportunity and love.

This drawing is a reaction to the news of another terrorist attack. Slightly embarrassingly it suggests the desperate need to order events and make sense of them in futile effort to feel some control. This is a learned behaviour that has become more and more unhelpful - living in a fantasy world of denial, and avoidance, rather than learning how to digest reality. I’m finding this recurring theme deeply uncomfortable and unsettling.

As the months went by I experienced a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Where we unearthed some dark shit that was horrible to face, faith in life started to emerge. During this time I absorbed multiple books and was struck by the widely suggested idea that our thoughts are basically absolute fuckers if we let them get in the way. More succinctly put, Terry Rubenstein describes us as “innate perfection” claiming that we can choose if “thought is the divide that creates a chasm” or “the bridge that builds connection”.

I understand that letting go is the key to connection and awareness - the cure for anxiety and depression - but also that it can feel impossible when you’ve accrued toxic coping mechanisms your whole life.

Nine Figures, 2017 | pencil & ink on paper

This painting is about battling engrained learnings in childhood. For me private school expectations created a Jekyll and Hyde contradictory monster of competitiveness and confidence but also excruciating self doubt. Not simply because of the pressure to perform but because it instilled in me an unhealthy mantra of ‘nothing but the best is good enough’. And I’m not just talking about being the best at everything or having all the best stuff; this unmaintainable ideal created a tainted lens and bled into my thoughts warping them - infecting every waking experience. My schooling was toxic in that it bigged up successes so success became addictive and, worse, necessary for self worth. When your bar is that high in real life, with its inevitable disappointments, you eventually crash, and crash hard.

Figure Looking Over Shoulder, 2017 | pencil on paper

Michael Singer’s book The Untethered Soul talks about “the voice of the mind” and how through awareness “eventually you will see that the real cause of problems is not life itself. It’s the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes the problems”. Eckhart Tolle supports this idea by claiming that “Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is!”

This newly discovered approach sparked excitement in me as I actually started to believe that I may be allowed to not be so fucking on guard all the time. But how do we allow ourselves to walk away from self perpetuated misery when it’s been dressed up for so long as comfort?

In therapy we explored this anger which was not easy for me, like I previously said - Grade A People Pleaser - not to mention avoidant AF. Looking someone in the eye and telling them why they have angered you is difficult but when discussing how anger is simply your unique reaction to your own thought I had a mini ‘mind blown’ moment. If our thoughts are unique to us, and are not part of other people’s experiences, then surely they are not wholly ‘real’. Enlightening seeds started to be sown…

Continue via the links below:

Year 1 (2017) | Part 2

Year 2

Year 3