Lesson 3: Coping and self-nurturing with creation

Introduction:

The goal of this self-help coaching lesson is to support you with the power of creating art, to cope with heavy feelings, as well as understand your situations and the occurring feelings better.

For this exercise, you will need a place to make art – a larger table, or enough space on the ground, as it fits to you. You also should choose the tools you enjoy using: colourful pencils, markers, painting, pictures from magazines, photos, glue, or duct tape. You will also need a larger and stronger paper for the art itself.

Before starting to work, assure that you have:

enough time: at least 45-50 minutes of undisturbed time for each exercise
enough and safe space to work without interruptions and being disturbed in your process
you can use this planning tool alone or if you have a person of confidence, you can also invite others to do it with you.

Objectives:

To help you to assess your personal feelings

To let you immerse in a creating process, which helps for repower your energies

Time needed:

at least 45-90 minutes, depending on personal tempo and needs

You can download the exercises of this lesson HERE

Exercise 1: Thinking through your situation

The beginning of the exercise is the same as in Wheel of Feelings.

Step 1: What is the situation you would like to understand more?

First we invite you to think of a concrete situation, which /causes, caused you difficulties, maybe you found them also overwhelming. For this, we propose you to find a comfortable place, close your eyes, and just let the situation open up / unfold in front of your inner eye.

What happened? How did the story go?
With whom you were? What is your relationship with them?
How did you feel? Focus on your body to see where do you feel those feelings within your body
What did you do? How do you feel about what you did?

Step 2: Create a short description

Please describe your chosen situation in maximum 2-3 sentences in writing. You can also write a longer description, but after that go through it, underline the most important parts, words of your story and based on that make a summary.

Exercise 2: Create a picture of your situation!

Now you can turn to all of your tools to create. Cut pictures, draw lines, create montage, or colour. There is no good or bad result, you should remind yourself. Let the feelings within you help your hand. If you like listening to music, you can also listen to a music, which fits your feeling.

Example:

Here we provide some examples, but not ideas, to show you that there is no good or bad picture.

Exercise 3: Explaining and sharing

Now after finishing your piece of picture, try to explain it to yourself, or to others. Be your own art analyst. If you look at (your) picture, what do you think the artist felt, or tried to show?

Try to find as many feelings as possible, that you face in that situation, and try to explain how they are represented on the picture!

Examples (of the previous pictures):

(Pic 1) The mixed up lines show being confused
(Pic 2) The dark colours show a feeling of sadness /// hopelessness
(Pic 3) The wolf in the background is for internal strength /// aggression
(Pic 4) The figure is alone, showing loneliness

We encourage you to keep your picture. At the back of the picture, you can write the short description of your situation (from step 2), and the date of creation. You can write there the feelings you identified.

Exercise 4: Sharing with a friend

You can also share your picture with a friend (especially if you do the exercise together). You can even ask your friend to share first what feelings she (he*) sees on your picture, and reflect on what s/he shared.

Look for her answers: How much does it fit? How much does it not fit? Have you learned something new from the situation?