Forcibly unwinding from overwhelm and trying to restore our bodies with a set time period during the holiday season is not easy. Coming back into the new year, I sense that so many of us are intentionally trying to find ways to slow down and are realizing that we aren’t the best at it.

Behind the front of busyness

You don’t get the point of rest yet. You may only know how to bounce back after hitting burnout, dealing with illness, or facing challenges.

But rest... what’s that again?

Symptoms of not knowing how to truly rest:

• irritability

• sensitivity around time

• indecisiveness

• permanence anxiety: “this is what it will always be” “I’m always going to be behind in life”

• internalized oppression and shame
  

You might not have noticed but...you are in survival mode.

Note the survival math:

• Pressure to achieve x y z by the end of the day or else the day will be wasted or ruined.

• The need to make sure activities for rest/enjoyment will work out and have benefits → “If I were to make art, it will only be worth it if I feel calmer.”

• Free time spent on others = acceptable
Free time spent on myself = time wasted

I don’t know who needs to hear this but...

You do NOT have to be a continuous improvement project for the new year.

Rest is NOT something that is earned or deserved!

DIS-EASE is a disease.

Two questions I have for you to reflect on are:

What are you preoccupied by when you are engaging in ‘busyness’?

Is this where your pain resides? Or is your pain located/hiding somewhere else?

Since reading ‘Rest is Resistence’ by Tricia Hersey in the wintertime, this era has been an opening for new portals for Rest.

 I've been feeling the Abundance!

I’ve been unlearning that treading on the hamster wheel is not how I can continue keeping up, but a response I feel from internalized individualist, capitalist and patriarchal messages I’ve been taught all my life.

And when I compulsively convince myself that I can’t ask for help, that I have to fend for myself to soothe the anxiety around my mental health or business side of things… a big chunk of this burden comes from individualism and historical experiences of scarcity from my family lineage that I have often heard about and witnessed growing up…

When your body has been activated in this state for this long, you may begin to mistaken this as the norm. 

Abundance is pretty new for me, and it's the opposite of capitalism's agenda, so it is supposed to feel ‘different’ and ‘not like myself’.

Being able to recognize that ‘not being able to rest’ has its roots in internalized messages of cultural legacy burdens from racism, capitalism, ableism, materialism, individualism and other -isms has been so helpful.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

One July night when I felt Abundance, I had to capture the moment. Here is what Abundance felt like that night:

”When Abundance is felt in my body, it’s the most satisfying, fulfilling sensation ever. Like the best nap I’ve ever taken. Or watching the prettiest sunset beaming through a landscape.

I feel myself put value and pride in the work I do, even when the workload seems invisible.

Abundance is noticing the space, expansion and openness to receive, being myself, not taking myself so seriously. 

Tempering my body to live a bit more courageously and authentically everyday.

I’m writing down these words immediately because I am still welcoming in Abundance from a culture struggling with scarcity.

I want to learn to embody Abundance.

I want to be Abundance.”

Here is the story of Ubuntu (credits to Abby who introduced this in our monthly peer group).

That’s what culture/community in Abundance can be like. 

And it exists already!

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

I appreciate each and every one of you who resonates with some of these experiences: having complex feelings around slowing down, trying hard to unlearn and smashing the encoded messages around scarcity, capitalism and all the other -isms.

Investing in Relational Justice for our sacred bodies and minds. 
Collective Abundance and Rest is what will sustain us and help us survive this climate.

“Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art; the art of words…the name of our beautiful reward is not profit, it is freedom.”

— Ursula Le Guin 

“This is not how a human face looks” “The proportion is not right”

At first, resistance towards making art sounds like the inner critic.

That “my drawing is not up to par so I am not an artist”. 

 

I’ve been noticing that these critiques are ideas that originated from colonialism of what art is and isn’t.

Colonization of art has changed the way we see art culturally, politically and socially. 

Under censorship and control (aka. capitalism), our creative practices has become commodified - where art should be made for profit and for some form of gain.

Art is an act of resistance

How can we start to make art for ourselves as resistance from colonialism and for joy?

How can we connect with our images and art making that isn’t based from a lens towards the fine arts?

…working with art and images as a means to resist socio-political oppression.

Anti-oppressive art therapists are working to reclaim our creative practice and decolonize art making with art therapy and contesting to structural oppression from the psychotherapy field.

Shaun McNiff wrote in his book, Trust the Process: An Artist's Guide to Letting Go, that “art therapists are like refugees from the art world”. I’d like to think of us as rebels of the art world instead.

So how have you been rebelling in your creative practice?

“All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS. What are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren’t writing about kings? All good art is political! There is none that isn’t. 

I’m not interested in art that is not in the world. And it’s not just the narrative, it’s not just the story; it’s the language and the structure and what’s going on behind it.”

―Toni Morrison

Some forms of art as resistance I have been working with are: 

• Making zines: a form of self-publishing art that came from feminist, activist movements popularized from the 80s. When I first started working as an art therapist, I created a workshop called, Zine Therapy (I was obsessed with making them). Zines are easy to distribute, low budget, and the content is filtered through the creator’s POV. My current faves are by Bianca ✨

• Cartoons and memes: sometimes opinionated, other times sensitive, maybe brightly coloured or humorous, through a critical lens through doodles/animations or storytelling with images … like my friend's work by John! ✨

• Clay/pottery: when I play with this earthy medium, themes around politics of the body and ‘smashing’ the patriarchy come up (💁‍♀️to get those air bubbles out). I love the meditative and trance-like feeling when I’m on the wheel… the way this medium holds memory and can be both delicate and forgiving—like healing with trauma.

If you wanted to share your thoughts, feel free to email me at linda@deciphercounselling.com.

Save this practice and come back to it for another day. If you know someone who may like this, share this blog post with them!

Thanks so much for being here :-)

I have been reflecting how from the outside…

social justice-work,

work by creatives or

those who want to make change in the world,

…have become romanticized.

It's the work that drives us to go around what's been already mapped out.

It can be deeply healing and rewarding, and can also be gritty, hard work.

So, what does social justice-oriented care look like? It means that we are committed to providing care that is anti-oppressive and rooted in social justice principles. This means that we work to identify and challenge systems of oppression. We aim to practice being in accountability and collective care with one another. We know that social change is a slow and difficult process, but we are committed to the long haul.

Here are some justice-oriented practices we, as a group therapy practice and as therapists, are committed in doing:

1. We are committed to the unlearning, decolonizing and working with values rooted in the principles of anti-oppression/anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, racial justice, gender justice, disability justice, and HAES alongside you. We are also committed to examining our relationships to whiteness, white supremacy, colonialism, patriarchy and cis-heteronormativity as we talk to folks who come across our practice.
   

2. We aim to organize and redistribute wealth as much as we can. We reflect and actively work through a scarcity and charity mindset to one that is in solidarity and in community. After all, this work is survival work.
   
   

3. We aim to uphold anti-carceral care towards nuanced experiences and mental health cases we work with. Aka fighting for a world free from policing. Consent is highly prioritized in our work with folks. We are continuously reflecting on what the therapy field does that may perpetuate harm and power dynamics in and out of the therapy room. 
   

4. The effort to flatten hierarchies in systems. We work from a horizontal decision making structure in our team where we have as many people and members make decisions as possible.
   

   
   Note: We get that many of the folks we work with are struggling with or don’t work in settings where they can advocate/speak up for their values, are acknowledged, and are feeling stuck. In therapy, we may be brainstorming ways to support you in these oppressive spaces and find ways to name out what is going on more clearly.
   

5. We aim to support people in most dire conditions and center in marginalized folks and voices that are most impacted first, always.
   

6. Generative conflict and communication. Dean Spade’s book Mutual Aid discusses how conflict can be reworked into something positive and generative rather than something to be avoided and left to fester. This can look like clear decision making everyone is trained in.
   

7. We are committed in our own healing. Because some of us have been through similar stuff like the folks we work with and part of their journey speaks to parts of us from different points in our life that we are still working on. This is probably a big reason why we want to do this work alongside you.

We want to work together with you to end oppression in all of its forms. When we say "with you", we mean it. Everyone has a role to play in social justice, whether it is big or small. Because social justice in therapy can support folks to be heard and felt.