Category: healing

Who do you reach out to when the blessings come or when life takes a turn for the worse? Who do you celebrate with when you get a promotion, a new house, new car, or a baby on the way, furry or otherwise? Who mourns with you and gives guidance when you are laid off from work, the house catches fire, the vehicle is totaled, or a family member is at death’s door? Too bad we cannot really call the Ghostbusters to deal with our problems or wish for a genie to stop time, just to bask in the moments of peace and grandeur. What we may not have fully analyzed, however, are the strengths and weaknesses of our current support net, maybe because of feeling too overwhelmed and alone in the traumas and trials of life. This exercise gives the opportunity to determine who is there for the joys but does not understand the heaviness of triggers and sorrows. It reveals those you can already call at two in the morning, as well as the areas that lack support and strength. It is a chance to look for the untapped resources that might already be available just a few steps away.

When I started working on this support net, it was only a few weeks after my first (and thankfully only) suicide attempt and I was an absolute mess. I had just come out of a third spiritually abusive situation a few months before, a once-balanced church that expected me to be a powerless, voiceless child as they attempted to manipulate my husband in order to control my actions. Leaving the only church my children had ever known turned their world upside down, and yet, all in one week, a few friends and family members decided to try their hands of control in our lives instead of allowing us to re-group and establish protective boundaries. I thought I was the reason for my family’s pain, and particularly my husband’s, my greatest trigger for intrusive thoughts that eventually led to a breakdown that should have resulted in admittance to a hospital. In the weeks following that day, I felt destroyed and alone, unsure of the non-judgmental arms and ears to reach out to for a subject coined taboo in our society. Our church family of five years was basically gone, we were visiting an IFB-lite church, and my own parents were clueless of my mental health crises. Through this exercise, I found my closest support net, and was to assign a symbolic fabric/material, as well as a color/pattern to represent each one of them.

• My Mom (Light blue cotton with red hospital symbols)- The cotton is comfortable, practical, gets the job done, and is dependable. I can reach out to her multiple times a day when I’m hurting, even though she is six hundred miles away.
• My Dad (Off-white wool): Wool is rough and scratchy, though sturdy. He can rub people the wrong way, but he’s strong and always there to take down a problem like a bull in a china-shop. Never mess with the daughter of a military dad!
• My Husband (Burnt-orange jersey knit): I had strongly considered denim, like that old pair of worn jeans that is comfortable and dependable, despite being often rubbed from the trials the wearer has put it through. Let us just say my husband was not exactly thrilled with this idea, but more importantly, it did not seem to fit exactly right with what I wanted to portray. I finally settled on jersey knit, the type of material maxi-skirts are made from. It is relaxed and stretchy, yet durable and comfortable. But the variation in color is from my decisions putting him through the wringer, stretched-out between his life goals and my mental health issues, our churches standards and ideals versus my needing independence and a voice, even as a woman. I was not sure how much more he could take, but he was still there. And then, of course, burnt-orange because it is the favorite color. I know, he’s weird. So am I. But the color has been growing on me over the years.
• My Therapist (Pink comfort fleece with white stars): Comfort fleece is strong, but also soft, comfortable, relaxing, warm and cozy. Her office is a safe place to express the heaviness of my heart, the depth of the rage, and the intense fear paralyzing me from moving forward. She understands the crazy and helps me to realize the freedom I need to take back from the cult-crazy.
• A friend (Fraying Rope): Through the chaos of leaving our old church, she was a rock in my life. But it seems too unstable now with a growing tension that could unravel our relationship at any moment. Note: I have since seen this almost completely unravel, but we are currently working on how to make it stronger again or leave it by the way-side. This exercise helped me to finally acknowledge that fact and prepare me for the circumstances to come.
• A friend (purple, with some shreds and holes): Stretched thin, and broken. She’s sweet and kind, but not necessarily a good choice for support right now. She has been traumatized herself and she needs time for her own healing right now. Another note: I was wrong. I really could have gone to her shortly after everything happened.
• Spiritual abuse support group (string with multi-colored beads): Different/varying views, always changing with new people, offers different perspectives, always there. The group is completely different from my Independent Fundamental Baptist mindset, which is not only strengthening, but refreshing. They understand where I am coming from with triggers and can often given insight when I do not understand my fears and hesitations.
• Moms Group (Green silk)- Beautiful, but not my norm; picture of what things could be. Going to a few meetings of this mom’s group further opened my eyes before we ever left our church about how it *should* feel being around other Christians and being part of a church family.

There are several that I did not include on here who are out of state because I was shutting down mentally and emotionally, but this reminded me that I do have varying supports around me after my safety net at church finally disintegrated. I finally know where I can go when my children are sick and my schedule is filled with fevers and appointments. I know where I can turn when a panic attack hits during church or when problems come up at home. It also gave me perspective on an unstable friendship before it started to fully unravel. There are people around me, and there are also holes that could use more support, but thankfully, as I learn more about myself in the other exercises, I am learning of many untapped resources.

*For more art therapy ideas from Managing Traumatic Stress through Art, check out the full list of exercises from the blog post: “Managing Traumatic Stress Through Art.”

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Does the trauma ever cause you to shut-down to the point of indifference and apathy, merely attempting to survive through the day only to repeat the next day? Are there hobbies or activities that you enjoy, things that pique your interest and curiosity, or is there no time, no energy, and no desire to even try? Yep, that’s me. Many times over and more days than I can count like that over the last decade. Because of trauma, people sometimes close themselves off for the sake of survival, in turn creating a situation where they do not experience the many sensory aspects of life.

For this exercise, I was supposed to write down things that are pleasant to me in terms of sight, smell, touch/texture, taste and sound, and then look through magazines for items that appeal to my senses. I cut out various food items such as gooey chocolate chip cookies with a crispy outsides and soft, tender insides, and rib eye steaks seared and seasoned to perfection with savory sides. I found pictures of furry kittens with massive eyes and little twitching ears, and long-haired dogs to imagine snuggling with and running through their long coats, smelling that all-too familiar dog smell and of course that not-so-pleasant dog-breath, something that somehow brought comfort in the known.

What I found through this exercise, that I had initially dreaded, was that there ARE things in life that I ENJOY. I started re-learning that I was my own individual person, not just a home-school mom of three little ones who has been beat-up through various instances of spiritual abuse. I’m not just a house-wife or a “help-meet”. I am an individual person with things that I enjoy and find pleasure in. The purpose is to take this book during a time of indifference or being overwhelmed, and reacquaint oneself with feeling, seeing, hearing, touch and taste. It reawakens the senses that have not had a variety of stimulation recently due to the depression or anxiety. One of my favorites in this book ended up being in a nice, warm bath. I could feel the warm water around me, touch and see the bubbles floating. I could hear birds chirping outside the small window, singing in my own little haven. I could smell the body wash as it gingerly filled the air, reminiscent of the flowers blooming outside. I had no idea how to get back in touch with the things I was missing and longing for until I was able to create a book, just for me, that had a plethora of the things that I enjoyed.

*For more art therapy ideas from Managing Traumatic Stress through Art, check out the full list of exercises from the blog post: “Managing Traumatic Stress Through Art.”

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While walking in to Walmart, excited about wearing pants for the second day in row after fifteen years of skirts and dresses, an almost untraceable yet personally paralyzing smell filled the air, taking me back to Saturday afternoons at Walmart with my mentor during college. I saw the grocery list as she progressively added to the growing price tag, remembered the soda we would purchase when we first entered every week, and yet felt the fear of the pending conversations laced with guilt, waiting for her husband to find something else to yell at me about in the afternoon.

All I needed was to get-in and get-out with a belt in about fifteen minutes before church, not spend time processing through the brokenness, longings and regrets. Unfortunately, emotions, trauma, anxiety, and depression do not care about the current situation nor the infinitely growing list of things to accomplish in a day. They do not care that one must continue to function in a work or home environment, and they spare no limit, despite the inability to deal with them in the present moment. Because of this, it is important to have a way to purposefully store these intricacies for a time, in order to deal with them when the atmosphere and circumstances are more appropriate and manageable. Hence, we have the Protective Container.

Because I wanted a way to burn the items and thoughts that went into the container, ideas flooded my mind from incinerators to built-in furnaces and volcanoes. I also wanted a place that was hidden away where no one would ever look, and the only thing that kept coming to mind was the little cemetery near where I grew up. I could disguise it as a flower vase in front of the un-visited grave of William L. Watts and burn them afterwards! If there was ever a time to be concerned a therapist would commit someone for what they might say or do in therapy, this was that exercise for me until I finally decided on the specifics of my container. An illegal incinerator in front of an old cemetery plot just seemed like grounds for hospitalization at the time. Not to mention, a single container did not seem adequate with the growing list of topics to organize, plus an incinerator beneath. As I skimmed back through the art therapy book, re-reading ideas for cassette tapes stored away to be played another day and a locked room with filing cabinets to sort out the material, I finally knew what I needed personally: A locked room with shelves, containers to store the thoughts/situations in, and the coping skills/tools necessary to safely process through them later on.

Because my anxiety loves to reveal itself through obsessive compulsive tendencies, I began with a rough draft of the shelf. There were certain subjects that needed containers of their own, while I left space for others that came to mind along the way:

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Husband
• Parenting and Perinatal
• Mentor’s Husband
• Mentor
• Church
• Submission
• Our Last IFB Church
• Suicide
• Two Blank Containers for Future Subjects (because it feels like there’s always more)

While creating these boxes, however, rather than feeling like a protective hideout, it felt like a place where I’d be locked in with all the trauma. I need a place to deal with the issues, but I needed a way out from the panic and fears. Because of this, the first three cubby spaces are filled with therapy techniques for managing my emotions and thoughts:

• Mindfulness Techniques
• Breathing Techniques
• Sensory Aides
• Lotion from Bath and Body Works (mindfulness)
• Journals and Pens for getting thoughts out
• Art Therapy Book
• Art Supplies

I also added my “Safe Place” established in the first exercise, framed above the shelf with a stuffed animal my husband gave me, flowers for mindfulness, and of course, chocolate. For mindfulness as well, right? Lastly, I added “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made,” sketched into the wood of the shelf, a reminder of my actual worth in God’s eyes, rather than the worth ingrained into my head through abusive church mindsets.

My fourth cubby on the top-right is “Prayer and Bible Reading” because those are currently infested with triggers and landmines. Someday, I hope, prayer and Bible reading will develop into useful tools and comforts again, but in the meantime, it is another subject for which I need a place to store the overwhelming emotions and thoughts. Through the author’s suggestion, I practiced visualizing my locked room at the end of the hall, balling up the overwhelming thought in various materials, and placing it in the box.

After a quick pause in Walmart, my eyes darting rapidly across the signs and colors of the store, flashing back to the weekends I used to treasure and fear, I remembered my bookshelf hidden away in a locked room at the end of the hall. As I had practiced before, I mentally walked down the hall, unlocked the room, and entered in to see the bookshelf. I took the thought of those weekend grocery trips at Walmart and the turmoil to follow, balled it up in my hand, wrapped it in wrapping paper, aluminum foil and any other material I could imagine before placing it safely in the box with my mentor’s name on it. And there it stayed until therapy, a safe place until I was in a safe-place mentally and emotionally to be able to deal with it, rather than right before the chaos and stresses of visiting a new church.

*For more art therapy ideas from Managing Traumatic Stress through Art, check out the full list of exercises from the blog post: “Managing Traumatic Stress Through Art.”

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How does your breathing change in a moment of crisis? Does it become fast and shallow? Is it difficult or painful? Do you hold it in as if it is the last bit of air to ever pass through your lungs? First tightening into a knot, my chest shifts to rapid, shallow breaths, leaving little room for oxygen to pass in or out. This exercise is an opportunity to evaluate changes in the patterns of depth and duration of breaths through mindfulness techniques. After experimenting with various strokes and lines/squiggles, a wave pattern felt most natural and comfortable to me, though awkward at first. Closing my eyes made it easier to focus on my breath, getting evermore shallow as the five minutes seemed to go on for ten. Upon opening my eyes, I saw on paper the result of heading towards an anxiety attack and my inhalations increasing in number, but decreasing in duration. While this exercise shows that not every tool works efficiently for every person, the second part of this gave me the key to working on mindfulness through breathing.

For the second step, I was supposed to count or use a mantra through the breaths, creating a longer inhale and exhale while decreasing the number of breaths, drawing the pattern of breaths for the same duration of time: Five minutes. The second photo shows the stark difference between the two.  I felt my chest getting tighter the more I focused on my breath, however, a phenomena my therapist and I discussed in our next session. What I pulled away from this exercise, though, was a mantra to help calm me down. For three counts in, “I-can-breathe,” and four counts out, “I-am-safe-now.”  When I cannot seem to focus my breathing by counting, this mantra now reminds me that I am safe and that there is room to breathe because the lack of air tends to send me into greater anxiety. So, while this exercise did not work the way it was intended in my case, it gave me an unexpected tool that has been invaluable.

*For more art therapy ideas from Managing Traumatic Stress through Art, check out the full list of exercises from the blog post: “Managing Traumatic Stress Through Art.”

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Take a moment and allow your mind to drift off to a specific location or place where you have experienced comfort. Are you by a river or stream? In the forest? In a log cabin far away from any living soul? Are you reading a book or taking a long, hot bath? Is anyone there with you or are you by yourself?

For me, we established my safe place when I was nineteen weeks pregnant, panicking over relationships at church over needless drama and preparing for the birth of our third-born in the same traumatic setting as my first. My anxiety skyrocketed to the point that it felt like my skin was crawling. Not long after, I felt my husband come up behind me, his hands on my shoulders, massaging my back. As he encouraged mindfulness techniques through imagery, my mind found solace under a tree, in his arms, away from everyone else. A hidden place away from the spiritual demands and drama, the gossiping and lies, away from the fears of repeating my first’s traumatic birth story. Birds danced through the breeze, chirping sweet calls of the day, while the water splashed gently against the rocks in the flowing river. The grass moved softly in the gentle wind, as far as the eye could see until mountains kissed the skyline. My husband’s warm arms wrapped around me, holding me safe from harm, protecting me from the people who could not care less about the consequences of their actions on my family. This imagery previously guided me through my son’s natural birth, reminding me of safety and protection in my own birthing space filled with dimmed candle light. I had no idea that this location would become my safe place following a church service after opening the art therapy book for the first time.

Sitting in the pew of a church we were visiting, I felt nervous but calm as I had the Sunday before. Unfortunately, also like the previous Sunday, an anxiety attack swept over me as we walked out the automatic doors, as if someone suddenly knocked the wind out of me. In the truck, as my husband attempted to help me re-focus, my mind wandered back to the safe place I started pondering the day before. I felt my husband’s arms. I heard the river. I saw the leaves brushing against each other in the tree above. I-WAS-SAFE. I forgot about analyzing the church’s music and dress standards, and I forgot questioning when their skeletons would come out of the closet. I forgot questioning if the pastor is real or just a facade, waiting for him to show his true colors of abuse that may or may not actually be there. The hurt of the not-so-distant past was still very real and painful, but I was safe from its grasps for just a little bit, for a chance to heal.

Following the next service, when I had another anxiety attack walking out the door, my husband was able to help me draw back to my safe place under the tree, by the river. It is a place I can hide away when I cannot physically escape my triggers and fears. The best part is that one does not have to be a skilled artist. It can be boxes and stick figures if necessary, or simple scribbles on the page. The point is developing a place to escape to within because during and after trauma, we often lose a place of safety away from everybody else. The art therapy book recommends placing this picture up in a room that feels safe in your house, or even in the bedroom until one becomes more accustomed to quickly finding that safe place, internalizing it to be make it easier to reach in times of trouble. It is my reminder that I am no longer in the abuse. Even if there is a questionable or spiritually abusive situation going on around me, I can still be safe inwardly, no matter where I am.

*For more art therapy ideas from Managing Traumatic Stress through Art, check out the full list of exercises from the blog post: “Managing Traumatic Stress Through Art.”

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