PTSD Survivors Speak: Using Visual Arts For Holistic Healing

Tweet

Guest post by BJ Halliday Crawley: Writer, Painter/Photographer BFA, Maryland Institute College of Art/Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Her blogs include ”Talking About Peace“, a political/art site focused on ideas and solutions. Plus, ”River Of Art”, a discussion of hard boiled detectives and their work and the forthcoming “Green Striped Heaven”.

A Lay Person’s View Of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Reflections On Holistic Options

Dr. Michael Grodin of Boston University (while treating Tibetan Monks who suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after being held by the Chinese Government and sometimes tortured daily) discovered that meditation was useful in breaking the patterns related to PTSD symptoms.

The prevalent symptoms being: Nightmares, intrusive thoughts, remaining in a state of high vigilance

By using meditation to keep the mind in the present moment, neither in the past nor worrying about the future, just looking at what is happening in this exact moment, he found that the symptoms could be lessened.

Thinking about this example I wondered if there were other “Holistic” methods that could be used in conjunction with the standard medical treatment. (I am in no way suggesting that any method I discuss should be tried instead of professional care, just ruminating.)

By holistic I mean a treatment or action that affects the whole body in a positive manner, which then works its way down to the injured part by creating a system/body more in tune, whose immune system ultimately is stronger so it can then focus on the weaker parts of the body whether they be mental or physical.

Reasons why PTSD develops:

All people with PTSD have lived through a traumatic event that caused them to fear for their lives, see horrible things, and feel helpless. Strong emotions caused by the event create changes in the brain that may result in PTSD.

Most people who go through a traumatic event have some symptoms at the beginning. Yet only some will develop PTSD. It isn’t clear why some people develop PTSD and others don’t. How likely you are to get PTSD depends on many things. These include:

• How intense the trauma was or how long it lasted
• If you lost someone you were close to or were hurt
• How close you were to the event
• How strong your reaction was
• How much you felt in control of events
• How much help and support you got after the event

Many people who develop PTSD get better at some time. But about 1 out of 3 people with PTSD may continue to have some symptoms. Even if you continue to have symptoms, treatment can help you cope. Your symptoms don’t have to interfere with your everyday activities, work, and relationships.

Where to Implement Holistic Methods

Looking at that list the last three areas seem to be likely candidates for tempering by holistic methods. In a general sense what holistic methods could do is attack the patterns that become entrenched in the physical system as it tries to sort through the event. (By giving you flashbacks and/or nightmares for example. )

I am speaking from personal experience. I myself had a hidden memory resurface about five years ago. As I was working on this essay I realized that my emotional trauma and the way I worked to recognize it (look at what it meant to me) and then finally being able to let go of the memory (although it never really goes away) by writing about it and drawing out the images, helped me to see patterns that lay beneath, patterns that showed me what my heart was trying to say to me.

One of the first ways I used to break a pattern was by learning to talk to myself, question what the event means to me and ask how I can use this event to better my life and try to understand the purpose of the experience. ( See Tony Robbins “Get The Edge”, an audio system for empowerment training .)

One way to start that questioning process is to start looking directly at the images – not avoiding them - by using drawing, painting and writing.

Now you might say that is ridiculous but in little ways it creates fissures in the imagery and makes them less powerful. Anything that you can use to remove yourself from the event to give yourself distance will allow you to start to have some control over the symptom.

Periods of Healing

In my journey I recognized two distinct periods where I used different methods. One is what I call the decompression period where you are actively trying to understand what is happening and adapting to it. The second period, the recognition period is when the symptoms begin to form patterns of behavior that you might not want. One way to diminish the confusion is to try to organize the images you are experiencing. This can be achieved by taking a series of classes in drawing painting or writing.

Or you can just start drawing or painting the images, it does not have to be a formal class. You could start by merely keeping a journal and every time a flash back or nightmare occurs instead of trying to push it away, move towards it but with an analytical mind set, which is what art teaches you to do.

In other words to paint a picture or draw a figure you have to analyze what is in front of you. This process of drawing (for example) the image naturally moves you away from the object/event so you can see its structure and recreate it on paper.

It is this artistic distance that I think would be invaluable to someone experiencing say, nightmares. By getting up the next day and writing down what you saw, and then, after collecting a week or month’s worth – start looking for patterns, similar images or words said.

Then research the meaning in the images. (Crystalinks is a great site for this, it has an alphabetical index listing metaphysical, historical and scientific information and symbolism on many subjects. A very well done and valuable site.) Maybe, just maybe, there is a positive message in there some where, something you can learn from, maybe those images relate to something in your emotional past.

Benefits of Holistic Healing

It is through this artistic process that, besides finding meaning you also begin to form a technique for moving back from the trauma and lessening its effect on you and then finding a way to live with it by integrating the experience into your life in a positive fashion.

One more thing I tried was to fill the void between the traumatic happening and my life as it is now, by stuffing it with as many expansive and challenging activities which then could create a mind cushion, as it were, of thoughts that one can fall back on while trying to divert painful ones to the outer reaches.

1. Going to first Fridays (An Art event that is held in most cities, where the galleries are open to the public for free all night and they provide drinks and food as an enticement. )

2. Taking up a challenging activity that you always wanted to do such as fencing. Activities in which you learn something, as shown in brain studies, create new synapses which can replace the ones lost through stress or injury. This in turn could strengthen the coping mechanisms in your brain.

Some of these ideas may seem trivial when the problems of PTSD are so severe and horrid but they allow a person to create some actions (control) that they can do for themselves which cost little and are at your fingertips.

They create a small cloud of control where one can rest, think, reflect ultimately move away from the injury.

‘Survivors Speak’ is a weekly feature written by or interviewing a survivor/PTSD experiencer about some positive aspect of healing. If you would like to participate in the series (anonymously if you prefer), please email thoughts, ideas, and topic suggestions through the Contact page.

(Photo: Decrepit Telephone)

Tags: Healing and Overcoming PTSD, holistic, patterns of behavior, ptsd, symtpoms