A Creative Approach to Self-Care and Wellbeing

Introduction.

As therapists, it is crucial that we have good well-being practices that support our self-care, and one of the best resources for that is to have a Creative Practice. Doing your Creative Practice on a daily or weekly basis will help you to recognise and directly address underlying issues as they arise. This prevents escalation of the kind of issues that ultimately lead to vicarious trauma and burnout. As you will know by now, a Creative Practice is a reflective practice, and this creative way of staying in relationship with yourself sustains all levels of wellbeing. In this module, we will look into the different aspects of wellbeing, which will help you recognise where your strengths and weaknesses lie and help you bring them all into balance.

As with other modules, when you have experienced the art exercises for yourself, it is a good foundation for taking this creative approach with your clients. This module begins with an art exercise rather than an explanation. I’ve done it this way around so you get your own experience of wellbeing first to place alongside the theory, rather than theory first, in which case you might unintentionally try to shoehorn your experience to fit what you’ve read. I believe doing it this way around allows the information gathered from your own experience to become the real knowledge that you may apply in your own practice. This honours a deeper wisdom that often comes through the art making, acknowledging the brain as an antenna for the greater consciousness and not just a container for information. It encourages other ways of knowing and allows the whole person to have a voice.

I suggest you read through the visualisation or record it on your phone first, so you are free go within. Allow images to come lightly. Let them begin to form as you read through the instructions. When you sit with your eyes closed, notice if you are frowning or have a tense mouth; if so, you are trying too hard. By noticing these things for yourself, you will be more attentive to them in your clients and can guide them accordingly.

Art exercise

Boundaries

Art making facilitates a sacred connection with the deepest part of yourself and deserves reverence and respect. Setting good boundaries for the work that will take place ensure that your client feels safe and held throughout.

1. Give time for the artwork and the reflection afterward. Set a timeframe i.e., alarm on your phone, an egg timer, when you are doing the exercises for yourself, anything that allows you relax and forget about time keeping.

2. If you live with others, ask for your time in the art space to be respected, no interruptions.

3. Have what you need to hand before starting, art materials, journals, pens, etc.

4. Make sure you are comfortable, warm enough, have a drink of water, tissues, have been to the bathroom, have enough light etc. Think about offering yourself the space you offer your clients.

5. If you like to listen to music while you work, have it ready to turn on with your selections already made.

6. When you feel ready to start PAUSE.

Take a moment to invite your observing self to be present. Allow this part of yourself to hold the context of the exercise. Leaving your egoic-self free to engages with the content as it emerges.

Grounding

•       Sit in a comfortable position with your body relaxed (not collapsed) and well supported. Both feet on the floor, belly soft, neck long at the back. Shoulders drop, Eyes closed and muscles around the lower jaw become loosen.

•       Bring your attention to the breath. Without changing it in any way, notice how the breath moves the body as it flows in and out. Cool as it passes the nostrils going in and warm as it goes out. Allow the breath to deepen naturally. The breath will become your anchor to come back to anytime you become distracted.

•       Ask yourself how you are in your body today. Take time to listen as the body speaks. Accept it as it is and make any necessary adjustment to be more comfortable and present.

•       Now include in your awareness all the emotions that might be there today and accept what is present in you right now. Perhaps there are fears around what you might discover, or perhaps there is excitement at doing the practice, or impatience to get on with it. Without judgment, simply allow whatever feelings are there rather than pushing them away.

•       Include now, your thoughts as you embrace the busyness of your own mind. Look at the thoughts rather than getting lost in them. Allow them to pass before the screen of your awareness like clouds floating in the sky. There could be concerns about getting it right. If you notice a thought pulling at your attention, gently bring your awareness back to the breath. Be at ease with what is.

Visualisation: Bridge of Wellbeing

Consider the word wellbeing, repeat it silently to yourself.

Then say my wellbeing and see what that feels like, does it feel different?.
Allow the words to settle somewhere in your body. My Wellbeing. My Wellbeing.

Does it have a texture or quality that you can name?
Do you feel drawn to the word, or do you pull away from it?

Perhaps you are ambivalent towards it.
Notice where in your body it lands when you say my wellbeing.

There is no wrong way to do this, wherever your attention goes is where it lands for you.

Allow yourself to bring all your attention and awareness to that part of your body and see what sensations are there.
From that sensation or part of your body, imagine a bridge.

This is the bridge of your wellbeing. Allow the image of the bridge to become clear. Let the colours become more vivid, the edges more defined.

Notice what kind of bridge is it? What substances is it made from?

What is on either side of it, and what, if anything is underneath the bridge.

Notice is it day or night? What is the temperature like, warm or cool?

What is your relationship with this bridge?

Would you like that to be different?

Now place yourself somewhere in the picture.
Are there other people about? and if so, who are they? do you know them?

In your own time, and when you feel ready, make an image from this experience. (allow ten minutes) Remember to leave the inner critic at the door.

After you have made the image, take five to ten minutes to reflect on the experience.

The subjective experience will be different from the objective expression and that is sometimes a disappointment or a surprise. Your image it telling you what you need to hear for now.

Give your image a title, other tan the bridge of wellbeing.

Reflection

Questions you might Consider in your reflections.

·        What is your first impression looking at your image?

·        Does the title tell you anything about your attitude to your wellbeing?

·        What quality would best describe the image? (not the drawing)

·        What relationship do you have to the image; liked, disliked, are you ambivalent it?

·        Doest that reflect your approach to your wellbeing?

·        Where did you place yourself in relation to the bridge? On one side or the other or are you in the middle? Perhaps you were looking on. Does this reflect your relationship to your wellbeing?

·        Were there other people involved and if so, what role did they play?

·        What is the feeling you are left with as you look at your image?

·        What insights if any, has this image offered you regarding your relationship with your own wellbeing?

Give yourself time to process this information and see if it brings up any plans or strategies you might want to implement moving forward.  Keep your image to hand while you read the information about wellbeing and reflect as you read on new ways to think about your wellbeing.

Attributes of Wellbeing

After doing the above exercise, you will have gained some insight into your own relationship with wellbeing. So, now we can look at what wellbeing means.

“a state of well-being in which the individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.” 

                                                                                            (World Health organisation 2004)

So, we could say the attributes of wellbeing are.

•          The realisation or recognition of personal abilities.

•          The ability to cope with the normal stresses of life.

•          The capacity to work productively and fruitfully.

•          The ability to make a contribution to wider community.   

True wellbeing emerges from knowing yourself, liking yourself and being able to take care of yourself. As therapists and counsellors, one of our primary objectives is to help people achieve these goals.
We often find that self-care and wellbeing is outsourced to other people, family, friends, doctors etc.
Having a Creative Practice provides you with a way to see what you might need as soon as you feel something is lacking. The bridge of wellbeing exercise will have begun the process of learning more about your own state of wellbeing and it would be interesting for you to pause here and read back on your reflections after making the image and include the definition above to see if there are attributes of wellbeing that may be overlooked.

Aspects of Wellbeing

Physical wellbeing: This generally means being well in your body, being strong, healthy, energetic and with an absence of disease or infirmity. To maintain physical wellbeing, we need to manage stress, and the act of art making is a whole brain activity which calms the nervous system, activation the para-sympathetic system, reducing cortisol levels and increases the happy hormones like oxytocin and dopamine. Any art activity will offer this so encouraging clients to doodle, colour-in, or start their own Creative Practice will help keep them in balance.

The Physical wellbeing bridge may bring insights to clients who present with; high stress, issues around their physical wellbeing like body dysmorphia, eating disorders, hypochondria, over-identification with or dissociation from the body, and pain management.

Psychological Wellbeing: Liking and accepting yourself is a good indicator of psychological wellbeing. Having good relationships with other people and managing the responsibilities of daily life is an outward expression of this kind of wellbeing. Using the imagination consciously develops the capacity for conceptual understanding and this in turn allows our psychological understanding to expand. When we make an image, we make a space between the person and the page, this provides a safe enough space to reflect on the message or meaning of the image, while we attempt to make sense of our own behaviour.

The Psychological wellbeing bridge may bring insights to clients who present with; complex grief, early childhood trauma, neurodivergence, work/life balance, anxiety, self-harming and suicidal ideation.

Emotional Wellbeing: This kind of wellbeing reflects our ability to cope with the regular stresses of daily activity and generally sees us feeling happy and satisfied with life. The naming of an emotion, feeling it in the body and expressing it on paper allows the emotion to flow through. Creativity provides a safe vehicle for expression of emotional build up, regardless of the emotion, especially when you establish your own Creative Practice. This practice provides opportunities for integration and understanding of the emotional self that may have become shut down or repressed.

The emotional wellbeing bridge may bring insights to clients who present with; a lack of empathy, victim identification, martyrdom or saviour complex, abandonment issues and addictions.

Social Wellbeing: Is where we feel like we are contributing to the community and that doesn’t have to be a grand gesture or doing vitally important work. It may be chatting with the postman or giving someone a seat on the bus. We feel part of a wider social group and generally view society in a positive way. This feeling of connection with our community is one of the strongest preventative steps to take regarding depression. Creative Practice allows us to see ourselves in context with the world around us. It can help us see that we are a single part of a greater whole. Community art projects in particular address this kind of belonging that leads to social wellbeing.

The social wellbeing bridge may bring insights to clients who present with; depression, agoraphobia, social anxiety, school/work refusal, bigotry in all forms, lack of tolerance in all forms.

Spiritual Wellbeing: Spirituality, not to be confused with religion, is a personal recognition that at the very core of who we are, there is an aspect of ourselves that is part of a greater consciousness. That can have many names, all of which are valid as they anchor us in love and let us know we are not alone. Our brains are the antenna for this connection and art making serves as successfully as prayer, meditation or Yoga to strengthen that connection. Creative Practice can connect us with a deeper Self, giving expression to our choice to be of service. To act in the service of love brings a special kind of wellbeing that affords our every intentional act a deeper sense of purpose.

The Spiritual wellbeing bridge may bring insights to clients who present with; mid-life crisis, empty-nest syndrome, meaninglessness, despair, the dark night of the soul, and other existential presentations.

The presentations I’ve suggested here do in reality overlap with each other in many cases, so when offering the bridge exercise, it is not important to specify which bridge they are connecting with. However, it is a good way for you to contextualise the aspect of their wellbeing that needs resourcing most.

It may bring a sense of proportion for a client to explore which aspect of their wellbeing most strongly resonates with their image. One isn’t better or worse than the other, it is simply about noticing where one aspect of wellbeing may have been left out, or another aspect may overpower the others. Looking at the image with an open mind, means learning about where they are in the here and now. Recognising that there are other aspects of wellbeing can bring hope that balance is all that needs to be achieved.

Clients who particularly like this exercise may be happy to work with it in time as well as over time. They may work towards repairing the bridge that is weakened in some way. To this end you might offer the opportunity for them to ‘fix’ their bridge.  You can do this by inviting them to do a second image showing what the bridge needs and from there, they get to resolve the problem themselves by working on their image.

You could invite them to make an image at the end of their sessions, showing what the bridge looks like when it is well maintained.

Having continuity with a symbol like the bridge, is a great way for a client to see changes in themselves over time as well as in time. It will surprise them to see how easily they can connect back to how they once felt by looking at the older images. This helps to show them how far they have come on their journey towards wholeness in their own words or images. To this end, I encourage clients to write the title, feeling words etc, either on or beside the image at the time. This means that when a client is processing their image, they can see where the restoration is required and check back in with themselves in order to maintain it.  Keeping the images in a folder or journal will help contain the process and are more easily able to connect with how they used to feel by looking at the older images.

The Bridge as a symbol can represent many aspects of the client’s psychological journey. Jung named the symbol as the ‘transcendent function’, the link between the conscious and unconscious mind.

A bridge can show or point towards where a person is with their own wellbeing right now and where they would like to be. It represents transition, moving from one side to the other, from the known to the unknown.

As a symbol, it brings the message of hope that things can be different showing a way forward in a situation or relationship that may have felt hopeless.

A Creative Approach to wellbeing for younger clients

The concept of wellbeing as I’ve described above may be a little too complex for younger clients to relate to at a personal level, so bringing it back to something they can understand will be more beneficial. One of the easiest ways to do that is to introduce the idea of becoming best friends with themselves.

We could say the attributes of wellbeing are;

•          The realisation or recognition of personal abilities. Friends do that.

•          The ability to cope with the normal stresses of life. Having a friend helps do that.

•          The capacity to work productively and fruitfully. A friend can help with that.

•          The ability to make a contribution to wider community. Doing that with a friend makes it more fun.

Addressing all of the elements above in a playful manner will lighten the process. True wellbeing emerges from knowing yourself, liking yourself, knowing what you have to offer, and being able to take care of yourself.

This exercise is designed for younger clients, but you do still need to adhere to the same principals of containment and grounding as given for adults.  Please remember not to comment on the art made as there is a greater likelihood of this when it comes to young people.  Gentle inquiry about the images or characters they have made is more appropriate, and invites them to tell you about the picture and what it means to them.

Follow the Creative Practice steps of grounding through the body first.
You may need to make your language more age appropriate.

Invite them to imagine a character.

What does your friend look like?

 Do they have a name?

Once they have a clear image, offer whatever art materials you have. If you have a wide range of materials, they may choose to make a three D character rather than an image. Allow them to choose; clay, soft play items like fluffy balls, or twisted paper, pipe cleaners, play dough, sticks etc.

When the character is made allow them to ask;

 How are you doing?

When a true friend asks this question, they want to know the answer.

Depending on the age of the young person they may write this down

The character cares about how you and is willing to wait for your answer.

Encourage the young person to say how they are.

Friends are willing to listen to each other and know there is more than one answer.

This exercise will teach the young person to go deeper that the usual response and waiting to see, or say how they really are takes patience.

Your friend will always ask, how can I help?

Allow the young person time to say what might help and if the first response is outside of their control help them to pick something they can do. This introduces the idea of using their own will and feeling empowered by the action, no matter how small that may be. What this addresses, is making the self-talk narrative conscious for the young person by bringing it into the room.  You will notice that it is often still the interjected narrative from the parents, teachers and peer group. Finding a friendly loving voice through the character will introduce the young person to self-compassion and if that kindness is validated by you it may bring the self-talk into balance.