Making Whole: Negative Emotion Monsters

by Diane Steinbach

Making Whole is a bi-monthly art therapy column focused on art to heal. 

Negative feelings and emotions, if allowed to run rampant, can take on a life of their own. If you allow yourself to perseverate on self-doubt, self-destructive thoughts or self-bashing you can create a monster that can haunt you and continue harming and hurting your life.

Acknowledging your own tendency to beat yourself up for your past mistakes is the first step to stopping the behavior and forgiving yourself.

Once self-forgiveness is achieved, we can begin to heal our lives and our relationships with ourselves and others.

This art process asks you, the artist, the imagine the beast of your mistakes, regrets and "sins." What kind of ugly little monster have you created with your own self-doubts and flagellation?

Use markers, paints or colored pencils to draw out your creature and make it as frightening and crazy looking as you want. Make it big or little, colorful or black and white. Think about all the things that you have used to create it and let it represent all the things that you have used to hurt yourself with, and that you now want to let go of.

If you'd like to create a more three dimensional model or "ugly doll," use felt and craft stuffing material to create a fabric doll representation of your monster. Draw out your monster on the felt first and then cut two matching pieces to sew into a pocket that you can stuff with the filler material. Enhance the creature with additional colored felt and embroidery thread.

When you are finished drawing or sewing together your creature take a good look at it. Does it represent all of the things you have been punishing yourself with?
Sit back and think about your monster. How can you control it. Can you tame it? Love it and make it sweet? or must you destroy it?

When you are ready, use your art materials to change the monster to make it non threatening. Rip up the paper, put it in a cage or make it into a less threatening creature. This may not happen right away and may be something you do weeks later after much consideration.

 Whatever you decide to do with your monster, let it remind you not to allow your past mistakes or decisions to become whips with which you continue to punish yourself with for the rest of your life. You must face each event and learn your lessons from them and then let them go so that they do not become a monster that needs to be tamed or destroyed.

Only by confronting our monsters and releasing ourselves from our own self-punishment can we heal.

Image: 

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Diane Steinbach is an art therapist and the author of: Art As Therapy: Innovations, Inspiration and Ideas:, Art Activities for Groups: Providing Therapy, Fun and Function and A Practical Guide to Art Therapy Groups

Making Whole: Healing a Broken Heart

by Diane Steinbach

Making Whole is a bi-monthly art therapy column focused on art to heal.

Living with a broken heart is something that many, many people do for one reason or another. Sometimes broken hearts heal, other times we just make do and keep going.  No matter what caused our broken heart, a trauma, a broken relationship, the loss of a loved one or any number of other causes, the first step to healing the heart is acknowledging the wound.

This art project helps those of us with a broken heart visualize the pain and hurt we feel that no one else can see. When we use paint and collage materials to illustrate the damage and repair our hearts need, we can share and show our feelings in a concrete way.

What you need:

Watercolor paper

Watercolor paints

Brushes

Superglue

Black permanent markers

 Miscellaneous closure items like zippers, buttons, band aides, snaps, safety pins, staples etc.

1.     Use the watercolor paints and paper to paint a representation of your heart on the page. Fill in the heart with color and paint in the background.

2.     Once the paper is dry, use the glue to apply some of the closure collage materials to indicate the areas where your heart has been broken and is being mended and repaired.

3.     Use the black marker to add text if some words come to mind that you’d like to include to help to illustrate your feelings.

Reflect on the repairs you have made on your broken heart. Look at the colors you choose. What is the overall feeling of the picture? Is it dark; are there a lot of closure devices holding your heart together? Then you are at the beginning of healing your heart.

Do this exercise again in a few months. Compare the two hearts. Do you see improvement? Do you see the colors getting lighter or more vibrant? Do you see less mends or closures? Is your heart healing? If not, what can you do to work on healing?

Continue to do this exercise every three or four months to check your own progress.  Be kind to yourself and love yourself to heal your heart.

Diane Steinbach is an art therapist and the author of: Art As Therapy: Innovations, Inspiration and Ideas:, Art Activities for Groups: Providing Therapy, Fun and Function and A Practical Guide to Art Therapy Groups

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Making Whole: Yin Yang of You

The Yin and Yang symbol is an ancient Chinese symbol that says so much with its simplicity. It represents balance, not opposition, a philosophy that dark cannot exist without the light, that beauty cannot exist without things that repulse, that day cannot exist without night.

Embracing that philosophy means accepting ourselves for all that we are. That without having made mistakes, perhaps we would not be the loving, caring people we are today, that without having felt pain, we would not be able to heal others. It is with that in mind that we can use the basic Yin Yang symbol to promote self acceptance and healing within ourselves.

You'll need:  a digital camera, printer, scissors, drawing paper, dry glue stick (optional: this can also be done on a pre stretched canvas, with Modge Podge and acrylic paints)

Use a digital camera and take a bunch of photos of your very best feature. It could be your eyes, your hands, your hair, your smile...whatever you think is your very best, the physical thing that is the best about you, take a shot of it.  Take pics at different angles, have a friend take some images and upload the images. Crop the shots so that you have isolated just that part of you that you think is your very best feature. Re size the images so that you have a variety of sizes and shapes to work with in a collage format. Print them out on lightweight card stock or heavy printer paper.

Now, pick up that digital camera again and take some pictures of what you consider your very worst feature. It could be your toes, your crooked teeth, your ear lobes, your broken finger nails, whatever it is, take some photos of it in all its unhappy glory. Again, upload, crop and print as you did before.

Draw out a classic Yin Yang design, a circle with a basic curve design in it that both divides the circle and yet brings the two halves of the circle together in some way. On one half of the circle, cut and paste the Best Part of You features into the space, covering the white of the paper entirely all the way to the edges of the circle and to the separating curve in the center.  Save a small circle of Best part of you image for later.

Yin Yang Collage in Process

On the opposite side of the circle, cut and paste the images of your Worst Parts of you in the same way. Save a circle of the Worst part of you.

Now, glue the circle of the Best part of you onto the Worst part of you side in the upper section to mimic the classic Yin Yang design, repeat with the other side and the Worst part of you circle.

(If you are doing this on canvas you can apply the Modge Podge Decoupage sealer over the entire collage now and allow to dry. Then, once dried, go back over the project with acrylic paint to define the Yin Yang symbol's edges  and to enhance the image as you desire.)

Now, when you stand back and look at your work, what do you see? What do you feel? Do you want to make any further adjustments to your image? Any further enhancements? Why? What does the Yin Yang symbol teach you about accepting your two sides? Can you accept them? Do they balance you? Can they exist without each other? Write out your revelations if you choose around the perimeter of your Yin Yang symbol to complete the project.

Another Option for this project: Instead of using photos, use colors and words to express the personality traits that describe the best parts of you and the worst parts of you, your best traits and worst traits. 

This project has so many different options and various interpretations it can be done over and over again and provide you with new insights each time.


Diane Steinbach is the author of: Art As Therapy: Innovations, Inspiration and Ideas:, Art Activities for Groups: Providing Therapy, Fun and Function and A Practical Guide to Art Therapy Groups

image: flickr

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