I have a unique way of journalling and it may not be for everyone but it certainly works for me.
During my time studying for my Bachelor's degree in Arts Psychotherapy, I learned a lot of beneficial and often powerful techniques in the use of art to help express and process our experiences. I discovered a lot about myself during this time. One thing I have learned about myself is that I thrive on expressive communication, whether that is through art, through my voice or through the written word, I need to express myself to get the 'thing' out of my head - the 'thing' being whatever it is that is taking up space in my head. Unfortunately, there isn't always someone I trust available to use my voice and talk to and thus, this process was born.
I have been doing this for a long time now and I have come to love it for many reasons. This process:
* Allows for safe journalling.
* Allows for creating something aesthetically pleasing if I so desire.
* Allows expression.
* Facilitates acceptance or shifting in perspective.
What do I mean by safe journalling?
This style of therapeutic journalling allows me to write or scribble on the page everything and anything I am thinking or feeling without censoring it. The good, the bad, the really, really ugly, it all goes on the page, word after word until I feel like I have emptied all the words out of my head. Those intrusive thoughts? Write them on the page. Those thoughts you might feel ashamed about having? Put them on the page. This is where you get to express EXACTLY how you are feeling even if you know or worry that you are being unreasonable, harmful or something else. A lot of the people I have learned my art skills from over time do this as well, such as Effy Wild and Tamara Laporte and more, this isn't original to me.
You might be thinking NO, what if someone reads it, I would be mortified! What makes this safe though is the fact that firstly, you keep writing over the top of your words, turn the page and write over the top some more until it is all out and eventually your page is so full of overlaying words that it becomes difficult to make any kind of sense of what was written. Secondly, this is just the very first layer of the art journal page. Once we have all the words out of our head and on the page and we feel like we have emptied it all out, given it space to exist on the page, and witnessed first-hand what was stuck in our head going around and around, we can then start to go over the top of it!
The end result is all these brutally honest words you wrote will be covered with your art instead and at most perhaps a word or half a word might be seen through the layers here and there but only you will know what was spewed forth onto the page.
Why create something aesthetically pleasing?
Now, this is where my brand of art therapy can differ to the training I have had and this is just a personal choice for myself. I love the brand of art therapy where I just scribble and be messy and I'm not creating a finished product but instead am simply expressing using marks and colours, which is incredibly powerful and beneficial. However, I value my art skill. People call me talented but I really am not. My art is a skill I have honed over decades of my life, hours and hour and hours of practice and learning to get to where I am today. It definitely did not come naturally. It took me consistent practice, persistence and so I value my skill and I love being able to create something I like to look at or can feel proud to have produced.
Because I have spent so much of my time as a human on this planet honing my skill and I spend so long being trained to be an arts therapist, I want to be able to combine and use those skills in a way that can help me process my 'thing' in a way that can allow for new insight or perspective.
How does it allow expression?
Not only does it allow me to express my thoughts and feelings in words, the creation that lands on top of the words tends to have a life and will of its own. I never go into the art part with a plan or expectation of how it is going to look. In fact, there are times I don't even like how it looks in the end and that is a test of accepting what is in itself. I follow my own internal nudgings when it comes to creating the face I like to put on top and it never ceases to amaze me what comes out of that.
Because I have the basic knowledge of proportion and placement of facial features, I can then break the rules and I do, all the time. I follow what wants to come out on any given day. Perhaps this person wants a long neck, a long chin, big eyes, wide eyes, a tiny nose, maybe it wants its mouth covered with something or its eyes closed, maybe this one is bald. Another spread might want to be monotone, this one might want to be bright and neon coloured, and another might want to be metallic. I find over time I go in cycles where they will, for a time, all have elven ears or red eyes or black lips. Whatever it wants, I give it and I just trust the process.
Trusting the process is the most important part and why? Because in the process an expression might arise or a symbol might show up or when you look at the finished product it might have a message to share or a story to tell and this:
Facilitates acceptance and a shift in perspective!
As I said above, the end product often has a message or a story to tell and sometimes I even write the message in the hair or on the spread somewhere. Sometimes the message is waiting before I even start the art part and I make sure to incorporate the symbols to go with it right from the start. In the end though, for me, the most important part of this entire process is simply to acknowledge we are human and we have thoughts and feelings and that is a valid human experience. It is ok to think and feel the way we think and feel. Sometimes society tries to make us feel like we are too much, being overdramatic or unreasonable or that what we think or feel is wrong or shameful. This art process is designed to help us accept otherwise. This process isn't for society. This process if for ourselves alone. The only person judging it is you and this gives you the opportunity to see if it really is YOU judging it or a conditioned response, a voice in your head that doesn't belong to you. A voice from an old teacher, a parent, a politician, a doctor, an ex, a boss, society or culture as a whole, mass media, social media... this process helps you find YOUR truth away from all of that noise. It helps you accept the way you are right now in this moment instead of always trying to fit into someone else's mould.
If this brand of art therapy appeals to you and you think you might like to try it but you would like some guidance and someone to help you with the skills or to witness your process alongside you, please reach out to me. I offer individual or group workshops on Therapeutic journaling. You can find and contact me all over social media here:
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As always, I would like to acknowledge the traditional indigenous owners of the land I live and work on and pay my respect to the Elders past, present and emerging.
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