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I recently shared this drawing, 'Bubble Of One: Landscape Of Trauma' on my Flourish Insta and Facebook. I'm finding that I post less and less on social media now, for many different reasons. One of them is that I prefer to connect with you directly through my website, blog, newsletters and updates. If you know someone you feel would enjoy my newsletters and blog posts, please feel free to share the subscribe link which is at the bottom of each web page.
I'm not an artist so initially I felt a little vulnerable sharing Bubble Of One publicly. Often our minds present us with a myriad of justifications why we shouldn't do something, but the heart offers us only one. And so I share this drawing with you because of its subject. I like to draw for relaxation and to explore different perspectives of the world, myself and my therapeutic work - I find it very meditative when I ignore my inner critic! It helps me approach something that I'm not skilled at with an open, gentle mind and an encouraging, loving heart. This is something that is incredibly important for all of us, but especially for those recovering from trauma.
In this I tried to highlight the struggles and isolation many of us have been experiencing this past year. As a holistic, intuitive and shamanic therapist specialising in trauma recovery, many clients find it incredibly difficult to describe and verbalise what they are feeling. We've all felt this at times. Personally, if I cannot pour it into a blog or short video, I'll create something else. It might be a drawing, a meal, a reading for myself, a remedy, a cake. For you perhaps it's knitting, crochet, building, sculpture, crafts, painting, interior design, a diary, writing poetry or songs, playing music. Art, in whatever form it takes, really does help us to make sense of our inner and outer worlds.
There are so many emotions that are triggered by our body responses, learned during our survival of traumatic times that we have experienced before. Trauma's effect on our mind, body and soul is deeply complex but there are many ways to heal from it.
The head in the drawing you may recognise as based on Victorian phrenology but instead of the section functions of the brain, there are a range of the emotions we dip in and out of when experiencing trauma's close, and often constant, companion PTSD. Grief, anger, self loathing, worry, fear, depression; emotions from previous wounds. When we are in the whirlwind of unhealed trauma, we are still in survival mode.
The circle in the drawing is intended to be both a bubble of isolation but to also give the illusion of a looking glass, magnifying the isolation and offering a clinical, under-the-microscope perspective, which is often how both society and conventional medicine treat people experiencing trauma, as a range of symptoms and mental conditions and not as individuals where every part reflects the whole.
My approach is holistic, integrative (and perhaps a little unconventional), using a wide range of therapies, techniques and tools that I have professionally and personally studied, researched, applied and developed over the past 20 years. As a survivor, I also bring personal witness and a deeper level of empathy to my work. For many years I lived a life through the lens of trauma and PTSD; the approaches that I use, teach and share with my clients in their own recovery and healing are the methods I live myself. This is incredibly important in therapeutically understanding what you are experiencing and in assessing the support best suited to you at different stages of your recovery. And recovery is possible!
PS. There's also a hidden message in the drawing, if you can find it...
Take care of yourself,
Andrea
If you would like to discuss beginning the process of trauma recovery, initial contact for new clients is via telephone and Zoom consultations, available to book online https://www.flourish.scot/prospective-clients
All content, artwork Copyright A Doran, Flourish and Contributors. Information is for personal use only.