Expressive Art Therapy for Motherhood: One Mom's Story

Do you feel like you are drowning in motherhood and unsure how to get to shore?  Are you tired of feeling stuck? Want to know a simple way to boost your mood? Are you buckling under the constant pressure of gentle parenting, meal planning, or other significant life events?

Lately, I've been asked for my perspective on why I do expressive art therapy for moms as a social worker and therapist. In this episode, I share one mom's transformation with expressive art therapy and how she started the journey toward the shore. 

PSA: While a single session inspired this story, it has been changed and adapted to be non-identifiable and moulded to represent the stories I hear from mothers in my therapy sessions. 

I'm honoured to share my admiration for the rebels who dare to traverse the less-trodden path of self-discovery through art.

Ah Ha Moments: 

• How you rebel against the silence that often keeps mothers from understanding their true selves. 
• Understand the significance of the unconventional method of expressive art therapy for mothers. 
• Witness the metamorphosis when someone bravely steps into the atypical spaces where art meets the heart.
• The impact of being seen and supported on one's journey to healing.

Chapters

• 0:02 Art Therapy and Overcoming Blocks
• 11:24 Expressive Art Therapy and Self-Expression

Transcript

Kayla Huszar: 0:02

Welcome back. So the last two guests have really highlighted the importance of art, or at least mentioned my part in it, and I was inspired to share a story with you today, and I just want you to know also, you know, in terms of the therapy space, that I haven't shared any identifying information about this person, and that's on purpose. You know we have a code of ethics to follow and and I have asked permission to share the story, and so if you are a client who identifies with what happened in this particular session and think that it could have been you it wasn't I asked the actual client who it is about for her permission, and so any likeness to this story that you may resonate with is purely coincidental. I had a client who I hadn't seen in like a year and she came back to me and she opened with this I still have that collage on my wall and it's become a collage within a collage. I hold on to it because it opened up a piece of me that I had long forgotten. I knew I needed to book with you because I wanted to create art, I wanted to express myself in a way that only art can access, and I wanted to be witnessed in the process. I wanted to overcome the blocks I have about creativity and expression and I wanted to disrupt my pattern of negative self-talk.

Kayla Huszar: 1:45

We explored this metaphor in her blockage, the barrier to accessing her creativity. She called it the dark. We then engaged in another collage process where she cut and glued and stickered to represent the dark. About five minutes into it she said this is really different from the collage we did the first time and I said, yeah, the first time we were doing a collage about getting to know you that was a little lighter, and right now we're leaning into something that we normally just engage with. We're moving, looking directly in the eye at what keeps you stuck in that dark place.

Kayla Huszar: 2:30

She created for a while longer and in the silence her body posture changed and I said what's going on? What are the body sensations you feel right now? Taking a deep breath, she said I'm not breathing. I could see her body clench. It feels so tight. I took this opportunity to ask her what body posture looks like if she's in the dark. She knew immediately what to do.

Kayla Huszar: 3:07

She curled up into the fetal position and started to cry. I asked her if she felt safe to stay with that for a moment and she did Tightly wound into the fetal position. She allowed her tears to flow when it felt appropriate. I asked her is there a younger time, a previous memory that this physical sensation was also felt? And she said yes. I prompted her to then take a moment to honor that experience. Whatever it was, she didn't need to tell me about it. And I said, whatever happened that you ended up in this position, I want you to allow yourself to feel it. A short while later she said no. A short while later I said I want you now to go back to this moment and provide comfort, love and affection to younger you.

Kayla Huszar: 4:18

She stayed in that position and I could actually see her face start to relax, her breath soften and a little while later she moved her body, remembering she was in the fetal position. First, her legs dropped to the floor and she turned so that she was lying on her back. She put her hand on her chest and her stomach and she breathed. She came back to a sitting position and said you know, this collage doesn't do it. It doesn't quite represent what I'm trying to get at here the barrier, the blockage, the darkness. And then she said maybe it's the fetal position. So she drew on her art, she reflected on what the dark is and then I said what would the posture or body movement look like when there's light coming from the darkness? She was headed in a direction. She was headed towards lightness. She didn't want to be in the dark, she wanted to understand it, but she didn't want to stay there. What is the posture after the fetal position? And she said I know that I can't get rid of the dark. I know that I have to walk through it, but it feels so uncertain.

Kayla Huszar: 6:09

We were quiet for a moment. She moved to the edge of the couch, flexed her fingers and toes and stood. I could feel the internal struggle, the energy in the room that she wanted to stay in the fetal position. The fetal position meant safety. The darkness, while uncomfortable and stuck in all of the things, was safe.

Kayla Huszar: 6:44

Eventually she opened up her hands in her arms and said I know that that dark stuff is behind me and I'm going to take a step. She took a step, paused, took another, paused and another. She'd walked across the room. She looked at me and smiled and said I just have to look back to see if it's still there. And I said the darkness is always going to be there and sometimes there's going to be this gigantic elastic that slings you right back to that place, right back to laying in the fetal position, crying, not knowing, not understanding, frozen, and she giggled yes, you're allowed to laugh in therapy. Yeah, the darkness isn't going away, but I am the only one who can stand up and walk through it. So she walked a little further, picked up her collage and said now it's done Her homework and, as an expressive arts therapist, this is the kind of homework I give.

Kayla Huszar: 8:11

Her practice was to go from lying in the fetal position to sitting, to standing, feeling that strength. She described this sensation as feeling like a kindergartner on the first day, saying to herself I can do this With her arms sturdy and by her side, sometimes in the fist of audacity, authenticity and confidence, and sometimes with a soft, open hand allowing whatever to come. An experience like this from the expressive arts therapy room can be hard to qualify. I couldn't even have imagined that she'd still have that collage on her wall and still be adding to it, since our session was like a year and a half ago, and I know that she will be leaving with another piece of herself opened up another piece of herself that feels brave, another piece of herself that has gone from stuck, that has gone from stuck to unstuck and that angry or gross or yucky stuff from her past she knows. She knows that she can move through it because she's done it, she's practiced it outside of the situation, she's practiced it with a witness. She has practiced going from the field position to standing outside of the moment when everything feels emotionally charged. She can hold on to that glimmer of light If for just a moment she can enter that strange and wonderful place of the dark and feel deeply, she knows that she can stand up and move into the light. And so I thank Kelly and Jen for the organic conversation that took place around art in the two previous episodes.

Kayla Huszar: 10:34

And if I'm being vulnerable here, I don't share a lot of the expressive arts parts of myself because I think I have told myself this story that people don't want to hear it. It's too woo-woo or whatever a narrative that I'm working on with my own therapist to step into my power. But this is my first step. This podcast episode is my first step to sharing more of what it's like to be an expressive arts therapist, because no other title or intervention or therapy style feels like me, I will always bring it back to the creativity Not always visual art.

Kayla Huszar: 11:24

Sometimes that happens through conversation of metaphor or sharing a moment of music. It's not always the actual act of making visual art, and I'll record another episode maybe about what expressive art therapy actually is, but for now I just want to say thank you for being here and allowing me to go back to my original intentions of why I started this podcast in the first place, which was to be a little bit rebellious and atypical and disrupt some of those normal things that we just believe. And I think art's part of that, creativity's part of that Self-expression is part of that, and so I am so profoundly grateful for being able to witness this process in my clients. They trust me to go to these places where things feel weird and I'm walking across an office and I'm laying in the fetal position and I mean I could, if you were a fly on the wall and express the heart studio. It's different in there and I just want to thank you for being here. Thank you for listening and holding space for me as I share the story with you.