Musings on Creative Alchemy

I had a thought this morning. Take everything I’ve got twisted up inside of me and paint it out. Like Morning Pages ala Julia Cameron from The Artist’s Way, but with paint and brush. With all the madness, violence and injustice in our world, it easy to want to numb out. Practicing creative alchemy is an alternative to the numbing that can take whatever we are feeling and transform it into something life-giving and life-affirming. No, it doesn’t have to be pretty. It just needs to be real.

It’s a practice I have been doing more and more of over the last five or six years. I started doing when I had my first and only art therapy session at the Rape Crisis Center in Albuquerque in 2006. I loved it. It was visceral-gut and heart wrenching-yet deeply liberating. Emotions that had been trapped inside me for decades were finally able to see the light through paint and pencil, screams and tears. Instead of covering them up with alcohol and drugs, blaming and shaming myself or another, or any other way I was adept at numbing out emotions and difficult past experiences, I felt them. I expressed them.

Emotions can be big and scary. Especially because most of us are not really taught how to feel them and let them move through us in healthy, aware ways. We can become quick to judge ourselves or make up stories in our heads as to why we are feeling a certain way and blame others and spin out in ever widening arcs of unhealthy emotional dysregulation.

We begin by taking responsibility for our own emotions as we gently hold and witness ourselves with loving compassion and whatever emotion is arising and let it express itself in a healthy way.

For me, expressing it in a healthy way can range anywhere from deep, guttural screams of rage sitting in my parked car or into a pillow, sobbing on the floor until the grief empties out until next time, or taking whatever emotion is welling up for me and bringing it to the canvas. Or allowing it to move through my body as wild dance or soft gentle movement. Or alchemizing the stuck emotion though whatever sounds want to arise out of me. Each of these ways, and so many others, are ways that we can witness the parts of ourselves that are hurting and sit with them, be with them, listen to them.

This is the work of creative alchemy for me. Transforming stuckness into flow. Unawareness into awareness. Powerlessness reclaimed as a radiant inner power steady and true.

So often we get angry or upset because others are unwilling to see, hear, or understand us. But how often do we do that to ourselves? Here’s a little challenge: the next time you feel a difficult emotion coming up, before reaching for your numbing agent of choice (phone, alcohol, pot, tv, food, meth, this list goes on…) see if you can give yourself a little space by taking a breath or two and pause before reaching for that thing. Imagine the feeling as a young child in need of support, put your hands over your heart and tell that part of yourself that is scared, angry, sad, or elated (we numb out “good” emotions, too) that you hear and feel them and that you love them. In this way we can begin to build a rapport with our inner selves and learn, little by little, how to create the time and space to feel emotions and let them pass through us rather than becoming stuck in the quagmire of repression, suppression, or outright denial of all feelings. In this way, we learn to become a safe space for ourselves.

I deeply recommend finding a qualified therapist in IFS work (Internal Family Systems), founded by Richard Schwartz or Somatic Experiencing, founded by Peter Levine if you have a trauma history. The extremity of emotion that can arise requires the help of a professional in navigating both the depth of despair and possible rage that can arise. Most especially if you have a history of suicidal tendencies. Having the support you need and safe space to express is crucial to healing trauma.

With All My Love,

Amy

PS. The photo is of a canvas that was kind enough to let me work out my anger and grief on that had been trapped inside my body and was keeping me in a state of depression. After I was done, it was like a thunderstorm had past and the air was fresh again with chirping birds. I think I may stitch it up with golden thread as another act of creative alchemy.

No AI was used in the writing of this blog.