Therapy for artists and creatives.
People who choose to go into creative fields have incredibly complicated relationships with art. In the beginning, art might have been a solace, and escape, or the first thing you received praise for as a child. But now it’s what your livelihood is based on, you have deadlines that kill what used to come naturally, and you feel a sense of loss. What used to help you make sense of the world isn’t working anymore.
I take art seriously. This is an invitation to those seeking a way out of inauthentic work, inhospitable relationships, unsustaining professions, and any other dead end. I think you can untangle your relationship with art and find not just pleasure, but meaning.
Chart a way out of inauthentic work, inhospitable relationships, unsustaining professions, and any other dead end.
Quiet self-doubt and criticism enough to hear your own creative voice.
Find relief from rigid ideas of worth and productivity.
Art and trauma.
Our Healthcare system places a strong emphasis on logical and concrete ways of thinking–but trauma doesn’t work in logical or concrete ways. What is lost in a medical model is the connection we all have to our bodies, our souls, and the full range of what it means to be human.
Art lends itself to a different kind of knowing. It helps us access the other parts of ourselves that contain mysteries of pain, wounds, grief, anger, longing, and hope. We reach for it when what should never happen happens. It is a way to re-remember the fragmented, forgotten parts of ourselves for the sake of healing and understanding.
“What’s the difference between art and a person?”
— Sal Randolph, The Uses of Art