Topic 1(2): "The Target of My Anger" painted with the non-dominant hand
1. PAINT YOUR PAIN ..
...and ANGER, STRESS, RESENTMENT, REJECTION, HURT, LONELINESS, GUILT, SORROW, RAGE, AGGRESSION, JEALOUSY etc.
When there are no words, paint!
Nightmares and flashbacks of trauma appear to most people as unpleasant visual content and can be emotionally intense causing normally fear.
According to Dr. Robert Scaer the definition of trauma may be any situation where one is faced with a threat to one’s well-being, one’s survival. And that can be like losing a job, and a situation that is combined with a state of helplessness where one has no control over that event.
“Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.” ― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
Social rejection, to be excluded, or rejected by peers/others causes pain and also anger that over time can turn into rage, resentment, aggression and acts of violence and revenge. Perpetrators of school massacres often have been refered to as excluded, lone wolf or bullied.
The pain of rejection activates many of the same brain regions involved in physical pain. As humans we are social beings with a fundamental need to belong, to feel understood and to be seen.
Conscious access to traumatic memories and their meanings in a verbal context may be difficult or impossible based on the memory mechanisms that operate in traumatic stress. Traumatic memories tend to be stored in an emotional or somatic context, and the victim simply may not be able to express or experience them in words. Alexithymia, the inability to adequately express emotions or body sensations in words, undoubtedly relates to this problem. (Scaer, p. 161)
Alexithymia is a common occurence among prisoners, who have numbed their feelings as a self-defence mechanism to avoid feeling anything in the first place.
2. WRITE YOURSELF RIGHT
Put pen to paper and write yourself right!
There are scientific links between handwriting your notes and memory. Children who drew the letters activated three distinct areas of the brain according to research, psychology prof. Karin James of Indiana University.
There are vast benefits from keeping a journal (visual journal) thanks to a unique relationship between the hand and brain, sparked by the composition of thoughts and ideas. The James Pennebaker study
3. MAKE SENSE OF YOUR SENTENCE (AND THE SENSELESS)
In prison with a purpose: never to return and to grow as a person. The only way OUT is to go within.
”X-PAIN-T® has made me aware of how much I have suppressed.” - prisoner (33)
We begin to make progress when we are able to understand and make sense of the ”senseless” and get in touch with our emotions and the reasons for those emotions.
Dr. Eugene T. Gendlin's theory. The supposition of this theory is that people begin to make progress, sick people get better and healthy people become healthier, when they get in touch with their emotions and the reasons for those emotions.
X-PAIN-T®has proven to facilitate the integration of experiences, both verbal and non-verbal processes and to decrease the impact of a negative memory by releasing the associated emotions, feelings and thoughts.
4. GET PAST YOUR PAST = Resilience & Empowerment
To use the stumbling blocks of the past as building stones for the future.
Resilience, to bounce back from adversity. Post traumatic growth.
Resilience – to bounce back from adversity.
Trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk states that emotion regulation is the critical issue in managing the effects of trauma and neglect. (van der Kolk, p. 209) and empowerment is the ultimate goal of all trauma therapy – it removes the state of helplessness that is essential to the trauma experience according to Dr. Scaer in his book 'The Body Bears the Burden'. (Scaer, p. 180)
The benefits and transformations with the X-PAIN-T® Self-Awareness process suggest that it also provides interoception as explained by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk in The Body Keeps the Score:
The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux and his colleagues have shown that the only way we can consciously access the emotional brain (where most imprints of trauma reside) is through self-awareness by activating the part of the brain that notices what is going on inside us and thus allows us to feel what we are feeling. The technical term for this is ”interoception” - Latin for ”looking inside”. (van der Kolk, p. 208)
METHOD
What does X-PAIN-T® have in common with the Japanese art of Kintsukuroi, to repair a broken bowl with gold?
X-PAIN-T® does to a person what the gold does to the bowl.
It fixes the broken!
X-PAIN-T® is a safe 'hands-on' outlet for emotion regulation and an individual process that helps people help themselves and that may be started without the recourse to words, which is helpful to persons who have difficulty in expressing themselves verbally due to language- and cultural differences as well as cognitive challenges.
This non-verbal approach feels to many less threatening and less intrusive than face-to-face counseling where much can be avoided by simply refusing to talk about it/or by not having words to explain the feelings and/or events that have been suppressed and cannot be remembered by the conscious mind.
With its non-verbal emphasis X-PAIN-T® allows considerable and individual variation on the level of verbal (and written) input during sessions. It is a process in self-exploration that requires determination, courage and individual work, of which writing is an essential part. Clients are encouraged to continue independently applying the X-PAIN-T® method through journaling and painting using a X-PAIN-T® workbook and acrylic paint.
The paintings can also been seen as a bridge between the internal and external reality. The finished product is a three-dimensional record and it can be looked at, shared and discussed about with others as well as disposed of which can be of great symbolic significance within the process.
X-PAIN-T® does not rely on previous artistic skills, nor does it involve any judgment of quality. The painting serves as a communication tool and a mirror. Acrylic paint and plastic cards are used, no paint brushes.
The methodology of X-PAIN is based on focusing on the underlying causes of symptoms/problems i.e. suppressed trauma and suppressed negative emotions (especially ‘anger’) which lay ground for conflict and offending behavior and that cause dysfunctions in some area of life. Since ‘anger’ – and suppressed anger – is the main culprit of violence and destructive/criminal behaviour, it is pivotal to have a constructive and safe outlet to release anger and other challenging emotions. Anger is only one letter short of d-anger.
The success of X-PAIN-T® Bilateral Expressive Painting is based on a twofold approach with two topics and tasks (paintings) per session:
1) X-PAIN-T® helps release - the first ”the negative” painting with the non-dominant hand
a) Challenging/destructive feelings – especially anger, shame, guilt, grief – of the past that have been suppressed but that still continue to cause discomfort.
b) Un-resolved trauma that has been suppressed and stored in the subconscious mind in the past but continues to cause dysfunctions/disorders/discomfort in the present.
2) X-PAIN-T® helps build self-confidence/empowerment - the second ”the corrective/the positive” painting with the dominant hand).