✮ monthly TEAR CLUB! (a soft space for inner child-like joy) with Chloe, our art therapist / counsellor.ᐟ.ᐟ ˚⊹

✮ weekly OFF-SCREEN HOURS digital detox drop-ins with our interns, Nikki (art therapist/counsellor-to-be) and Michelle (counsellor-to-be) .ᐟ.ᐟ ⋆˙⟡

Need an artist date ASAP? No idea where to go on a rainy weekend? 

Join us at tear club! with Chloe: ​Welcome to tear club! — a monthly, soft-guided, open studio style collage workshop. Every month, we will connect with our inner child-like joy, with the Sanrio character, Pompompurin as our cheerleader for November!

​why tear club? ✂️✨

A lot of us want to slow down but don’t always know how.

the purpose of tear club is to…

⭑ calm/connect with your nervous system to reduce stress levels.

⭑ spark creativity + problem-solving skills!

⭑ build social connections + feelings of joy outside of work/capitalism.

⭑ embrace our imperfections with curiosity instead of pressure.

📅 Upcoming: Sunday, Nov 23rd @ 1:30pm - 3:30pm

​🎟️ Tickets: $20 ; 6 spots max! Save your spot

​📍Location: Decipher Counselling Art Therapy Studio
Room #316, 402 W Pender St, Vancouver

🍎 About the Facilitator:

𖦹 Hi, I’m Chloe! Currently taking on new clients for individual therapy sessions!
𖦹 Qualifying counselling art therapist + art school grad
𖦹 Avid Sanrio fan + recovering perfectionist
𖦹 tear club! is my way of mixing nostalgia, comfort + the healing power of art.

Follow Chloe's art on Instagram @hichloekwok and if you’d updates on future art therapy workshops, check out @deciphercounselling or visit our website.

Lately we’ve been feeling how hard it is to be human in a world that never stops. 

Notifications, deadlines, the pressure to always be available and productive. We’re constantly connected, yet more disconnected than ever.

Off-Screen Hours is a space to step away from the noise. 

To rest, make art, and heal in community.

Intentional breaks from screens and the grind of constant doing, slowing down long enough to feel present again. ˚⊹

⊹ ࣪ ˖ Series 1: Digital Disconnection explores how technology shapes the ways we connect, communicate, and care for ourselves
 

Nov 14 → Algorithmic Loneliness — isolation in the age of constant connection (1 spot left)

Nov 21 → Digital Ghosts — what remains of us in digital spaces, and releasing what no longer serves us (4 spots left)

Nov 28 → Lost in Transmission — what gets lost in digital communication: the emotions and presence screens cannot carry (5 spots left)

Expect gentle art making, reflection, and conversation as we find our way back to ourselves and each other. ˚⊹

📅 When: weekly Fridays 3-5pm starting on Nov 14th.
🎟️ Tickets: $20 / workshop [coupons on lu.ma]
📍 Location: Decipher Studio B [room 317 - 402 west pender st.]
max 5 participants | masks encouraged

Your facilitators:

Nikki Hayashi (she/her), a mixed-race, neurodivergent, and queer practicum counselling art therapist grounded in intersectional feminism + narrative therapy. Helps you reclaim the stories that feel most true to you.
 

Michelle Jeong (she/her), a queer, neurodivergent, chronically ill practicum counsellor and eldest daughter of Korean immigrants. Brings warmth, curiosity, and 10+ years of supporting survivors & folks navigating trauma.

We believe rest is resistance, and that healing happens together.

✨ Come as you are. Take a breath. Log off for a while. 🌳

DreamLab : An Art Therapy Experience Rooted in Dreams and Inner Landscapes, Inspired by Marin Majić’s roundabout as part of CICA’s Art & Mindfulness series

The Art and Mindfulness Experience Series at CICA Vancouver is designed to explore the profound connection between artistic expression and mindfulness. Rooted in the belief that art is a powerful medium for healing and self-discovery, this series invites participants to engage in reflective and grounding practices through creative expression.

Art, in its many forms, offers a pathway to mindfulness by encouraging presence, introspection, and emotional release. Whether through painting, sculpture, movement, or sound, the act of creating becomes a meditative process that fosters deep awareness and healing. Our series harnesses this transformative power of art to create accessible spaces for mindfulness that center BIPOC, women, and queer communities.

Facilitated by artists and mindfulness practitioners from these communities, each experience is designed to hold space for collective healing and cultural storytelling. This platform not only nurtures personal well-being but also elevates the work of marginalized practitioners, providing them with visibility and opportunities within Vancouver’s art and wellness landscapes.

Event Details:

Save the date: Saturday, June 14, 3–5 PM

CICA Vancouver | Facilitated by our RTC and Art Therapist, Coco Huang

Only 20 spots available

Join us for DreamLab, the first workshop in CICA’s new programming series, Art and Mindfulness—a series designed to explore the profound connection between artistic expression and mindfulness. Rooted in the belief that art is a powerful medium for healing and self-discovery, these experiences invite participants to engage in reflective and grounding practices through creative expression.
Led by Coco Huang  a Registered Therapeutic Counsellor and Art Therapist at Decipher Counselling  this immersive 2-hour session includes dream journaling, grounding exercises, and sensory art-making. The experience begins with a walk-through of roundabout by Marin Majić, setting the tone for exploring subconscious landscapes and inner symbols through art.
Together, we’ll breathe, create, and co-regulate in a supportive space centered on healing, curiosity, and community. No prior art experience needed. All materials provided.

from our newsletter, written by Linda Lin, RCC, CCC, RCAT

“When did life stop feeling like this”

In the face of rapid life changes, and in the age of escapism while witnessing brutality from dying systems, the specks of our past can feel like a cushion we lean onto, seemingly simpler, easier, and happier than today.

This tweet is what prompted me to write about nostalgia as coping:

Nostalgia feels like a temporal preservation within virtual spaces. Nostalgia acts as an island we retreat to, an anchor in the face of hopelessness and restlessness. It's as if it were a freeze response to our overwhelming reality—a coping mechanism, offering us a brief respite from the uncertainty of a better future.

In times of despair and hopelessness, I tend to rely on nostalgia as a coping** mechanism. In Mandarin, there’s this phrase, 舍不得 (shě bù dé), which roughly translates to 'reluctant to part with' — that's how nostalgia feels to me. 

I find myself bonding with friends over our childhood memories, indulging in art forms like my favourite shows, listening to music by my teenage idol at the time, BoA, and scrolling endlessly on Pinterest to curate old internet energy and Y2K aesthetics into a mood board. In these digital spaces, the collective nostalgia of shared experiences emerges, eliciting a contagious, creative energy.

*Nostalgia: Nostalgia is not necessarily remembering the reality. It’s a deep longing for space and time that has passed, people we loved and/or loved us, a version of ourselves that is no longer accessible to us. 

Sometimes, nostalgic feelings bring up feelings of hopelessness and deep sadness about current-day reality. Some people refer to this experience as nostalgic depression, where the sentimental longing for the past brings up grief and disturbance.

**Coping vs. vs. processing (watch this tiktok)

• Coping is like a bandaid, or first aid. It can be validating, brings awareness and tends to an emotional wound when it shows up. To cope is the attempt to stay functioning through emotional pain.

• Processing is accessing our nervous system (the language of our mind and body connection)’s wisdom. It recognizes overwhelming experiences will be stored in our body. It often times feels more intuitive, trusting, understanding with context of emotional wounds.

The charm and power of art making as processing nostalgia

As we make art (a collaboration between our intuitive nervous system, the environment we are in, and earthly materials), we are choosing to engage with the full moment and a fragment of our experience being preserved beyond thoughts and feelings.

Art making breeds nostalgia, eliciting a contagious, creative energy! Art making can help with release and express emotions, storing them in the image so we don’t have to carry it all.

Here’s an art as therapy prompt for you:

(the steps act as a gentle guide and are completely optional)

1. Choose a specific time period you want to revisit from your past. Choose art materials, a playlist, a space, a comfort item (eg. a stuffed toy), or a snack to pair with this time period.

2. First marks: Invite your younger self from that time period to make the first marks. Express through your inner child you want to connect with. Draw/paint/play as if your younger self is making the marks. These may be symbols that you used to draw, or describing a feeling you remember fondly from that time.
Alternative option- embodied time: Connect with a space in time and make your first marks as if you were embodying that space in time.

3. What your younger self prefers: work with art mediums, textures, colours etc. you would have chosen when you were younger. 
Alternative option: what symbols, textures, feelings, and beings inhabit this space/world?

4. An essence of support: Collaborate with your inner child by bringing in your current self. What are some symbols or imagery you engage with nowadays that you would like to add onto this artwork to bring in an essence of support and witnessing?
Alternative option: What does your space in time/world need as resource and support? Add images for this space to feel safe and comfy.

5. Gentle check-ins with yourself - with both your inner child (or the space in time), and your current self: stretch, notice your capacity to engage/disengage, go for a walk or recharge in another room whenever you need it.

You DO NOT have to finish/complete this artwork or prompt in one go. Heck, you don’t have to complete anything if it doesn’t sit right with you.

6. Honour your art piece and think of containment and storage. Does the image need borders? Maybe you can attach your artwork in a journal. Or put a frame around it, if the image wants to be seen by others and yourself often. Where does your art piece want to be?

7. Bring in community. Work with a peer you trust, someone you want to share this with or an art therapist to support your emotional health with this exercise. 

Hopefully this art as therapy exercise prompts you to engage in nostalgia as a coping practice. To bring in a time in space or reconnect and honour your younger self’s art expressions with the creativity from your current self.

Give this art as therapy prompt a try or gift this blog post to a friend who may enjoy it! :)

Here are 3 ways you can start to decolonize your creative practice.

1. Make some trauma-informed art.
   

   We need to unlearn rules around making art that has been tying us down. Have you been feeling like your work is not enough? Are you censoring or policing your creativity and the process? As Yumi Sakugawa says, we need to ‘transmute shame to freedom’. Giving ourselves the permission to make ‘imperfect’ or what I would call, trauma-informed art, is core to trauma-healing from a world that gatekeeps what art should be.
   
   

2. Allow for creative accidents.
   

   Creative accidents are things that happen when we are working with art materials that lead to exploration in areas that you may have never thought you would explore.
   Being untrained artistically can actually be an advantage when working with images and intentions because having less training can sometimes mean you have less control over the art medium you are working with. Having less control means that there is more of a chance for something “other” to come through on the page.
   
   

3. Respect what you create.

   
   Our art carries so much life. Our art holds meanings and inner wisdom as well as curiosity, and carry emotions that may not be ready to be seen yet or ever. I hope you get to learn to enjoy and seek beauty in the process

Current thoughts as an art therapist.

Something art therapists see too often is when folks we work with are reluctant and avidly rejecting art making.

There are many ways the art therapy and mental health field gatekeep therapeutic art making as a 'modality'. This makes it harder to debunk the myth that 'art making is a luxury' and a skill that only certain folks who gone through clinical training can practice day to day.

As a newly registered art therapist, I am brainstorming ways to decolonize the field of art therapy. I've been so excited to see some art therapists publicizing art as therapy knowledge in the public eye.

For myself, my role is gravitated towards having conversations and collaborating with folks to make art around art-related trauma or experiences of invalidation around art, art therapy or therapy.

In my work, ‘making art’ doesn't have to be drawing or painting. I find many folks are more familiar and comfortable creating metaphors around their experiences.

I hope you get to heal and practice decolonizing within your creative practice too!