From 2017-2018 I worked with an art therapist. When my life got a little bumpy the therapist suggested we use the SAFE (Somatic Attachment-Focused EMDR) modality to step through each traumatic experience in childhood, which would help me feel integrated in the present. This work ultimately was exhausting and we never made it past the summer I turned 7 despite working in this way for nearly 3 years. The therapist made me feel like it was my fault, like I was somehow dragging my heels and not doing the work.

It was devastating. I finally fired this therapist in 2021. What I now appreciate is that there is just too much for a memory by memory processing approach. It is unconscionable what I experienced as a child and adolescent. I now work with someone who is helping me use radical acceptance to hold the enormity. We use parts work (e.g., Internal Family Systems) so I can understand when I’m triggered what child part has been activated.

As part of that breakup I had my art therapy finally returned to me. Art therapists keep your work until the relationship ends. Today I started the process of scanning it. It’s the first time I’ve really been present with this work as a whole.

This morning, before heading to IPRC, I had a session with my Hakomi therapist. He suggested arranging the work in a kind of mandala with me at the center. We set it up together, with me directing, I haves drawing of my Mother s as a Hungry Ghost from this art therapy work, I put her far out of the mandala, where I could keep an eye on her! Then I just sat with the work, seeing what came up.

I left with a visceral connection to what my child selves survived. This made it feel easier to connect with respect, gratitude, and kindness for my body. It felts like a toehold in the wall of body dysmorphia i struggle with.

My therapist even got a ladder out to get the shot from high above. He absolutely understood my desire to have a picture of this process today!