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

Growing up my grandma who raised me always said, “friendships and learning to connect with others help us cross the bridges of life” 🪷 ୧ ‧ ˚ (this is roughly translated to English)

A couple of decades later, I find myself circling back to her wisdom, because building connections and friendships is active resistance to capitalism and individualism. Friendship is a refusal of a culture that tells us to stay polished, self-contained, hyperindependent, and endlessly ‘productive’.

But here’s the question, how do we actually build real friendships when we’re swimming in a culture that glorifies capitalism, perfectionism, and even buying into community, when it's dressed up as 'self-respect'?

via Pinterest

-`♡´- -`♡´- -`♡´- -`♡´- -`♡´- -`♡´- -`♡´- -`♡´- -`♡´- -`♡´-

Reciprocity is the heartbeat of relationship.

Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us that reciprocity is the heartbeat of relationship. The Earth offers us gifts—berries, shade, clean water—not so we can hoard them, but so we can learn the joy of giving back. Reciprocity flows in a circle, isn't one-sided, sustaining everyone involved. It also reminds me of generosity, a value my mother taught me.

When we strive to live in the rhythm of reciprocity instead of keeping score, we learn to offer, and make room to receive. 

We make listening as important as speaking, holding as important as being held. 

 Reciprocity doesn’t keep score; it trusts that when we give, it returns in another form, in another season.

-`♡´-  -`♡´-  -`♡´-  -`♡´-  -`♡´-  -`♡´-  -`♡´-  -`♡´-  -`♡´-  -`♡´-  

sleepover and zine making a friend~

Prioritize connection > productivity! 

Individualism and capitalism teaches us to prioritize our needs above our communities and view relationships as transactional.

It's literally designed to keep us in disconnection and in loneliness.

There were so many days when I find myself after a full day of work and feeling so exhausted to make plans with people who support my nervous system and would interrupt these cycles of anxiety.

snippet of my friendship mantras zine!

✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅

Rest and pleasure are portals to receiving care and love ♡

Especially when we are trained/conditioned to work, serve, and over-function, choosing rest, joy, pleasure, and time with friends is a way to restore love’s presence in our lives. Communion helps us interrupt cycles of hurt: healing personal wounds with relationships and those passed down through generations and systemic oppression. 

Prioritizing our needs is not above our relationships (capitalism/individualism) nor is our relationship above our needs (relational trauma/wounding).

✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅✦ ‧₊˚ ⋅

via Pinterest

⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹

Communion is the antidote to loneliness and alienation! 

Communion counters loneliness and alienation. Our culture reinforces individualistic behaviours, which shape how we maintain—or let go of—relationships, like the drifting or disappearance of friendships in adulthood after life changes such as moving away, starting a new relationship, landing a new job, or having a child.

bell hooks reminds me in Communion that true connection invites us into intimacy, belonging, and presence. 

I’ve been practicing little ways of stepping off the hamster wheel, where I prioritize friendships and relationships instead of letting the system dictate my pace. I’m learning again and again that connection can be one of our greatest sources of nourishment and healing.

When we slow down enough to be with a friend, we’re pushing back against the myth that our value lies only in output.

Whether it’s cooking a meal together, walking or playing at the park, or even having an adult sleepover (SO fun), friendships are how we choose connection over keeping score, competition, and the endless busyness capitalism asks of us. 𖦹

⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹⊹₊｡ꕤ˚₊⊹

So here's to choosing each other in a culture that doesn't.

₊˚🍏 ྀ౿ written by yours truly, Linda

Community building events coming to Decipher this Fall/Winter!

✮ monthly TEAR CLUB! (anti-perfectionism) with Chloe, our art therapist .ᐟ.ᐟ ˚⊹

 

✮ weekly OFF-SCREEN HOURS art therapy drop-ins with our interns coming soon .ᐟ.ᐟ ⋆˙⟡

A space where we can build community, make art, and connect more deeply with yourself and the world! Think of it as a group therapy session, but in a fun, casual, community-focused way, away from screens and winding down from our week.

Also a perfect activity for rainy days with a friend or two in our studio located in downtown ‘Vancouver’.

Check back soon for updates!

quick note: this blog post is not written by AI. The writing below features ideas and wisdom of artists, personal journalling and newsletter writing, curated to what a therapist feels the world is needing these days. 

Image via @realizationbypea

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

Be real with me… what is your relationship with time like?  ୧ ‧ ˚ 

When I am overwhelmed, time feels like the scariest, most unattainable currency that I cannot get back once it pasts by. From the hours, minutes to seconds, I find myself reacting to my thoughts, the ‘standards’ and shoulds on how I need to be spending my time and transforming it into something valuable, productive, ~rich~.

This obsession leaks into how I see money, work, relationships and I'd hate to admit this, my entire sense of self.

I’ve met so many people who try to force outcomes to ‘shape their reality.’ That might look like getting a perfect job with no career gaps or trying to appear as though they have their life together by a certain age (we're not even on linkedin btw •̀ ᴖ •́). Over time, those expectations can attach themselves to our identity and perceived reality.

via pinterest

The more we obsess over time, the more it breeds fear, frustration, hesitation and misalignment.

Did you know? 
Your energy is your most VALUABLE resource in life.

Therefore where you put your time and attention determines everything.

Instead of forcing outcomes, what if we start curating your reality with alignment, creative direction, and thoughtful refinement. Like an artist curating their work 𖦹

via pinterest

I journaled this the other day: “my relationship with time is kind, sweet, caring, full of life, light”

Perhaps mourning/stressing about time and next thing, which is heavy in weight, is dictating a relationship with time that isn’t valuable to me!

We cannot time hop in multiple streams of consciousness. 

So disappointing, am I right? It's really too bad that we can’t live in every parallel timeline like we are everything everywhere all at once. Trying to juggle all the goals, tasks, and “what ifs,” whether it’s making our days off perfect or savouring the end of summer, usually just leaves us with an abstract and confused state of feeling.

HOWEVER, I’ve been thinking a lot about quantum leaping, also called timeline jumping. The idea is that if you’re on level 1 and you want to get to level 8, it’s really about giving yourself room to believe that level 8 is just the next step, waiting for you.

Time is not something we need to centre and obsess over.

Thanks to this tiktok I watched last month, I've been on this case ever since. Obsessing about time traps us in procrastination, locks us into overwhelm, and confines us to cycles of productivity and capitalist urgency which are the very things we don’t want taking over our lives.

When our most easeful and fluid path (the realm where time flow exists) starts to blur under pressure, how can we anchor ourselves to remember how we want time and life to truly feel?

Here’s your art journalling prompt:

Draw and describe how fluid time is to you currently. Draw a portal that allows you to experience time the way you want time to feel.
 

Use your fave mediums: Mine are stickers, collaging, digital media like Pinterest images, sparkly gel pens, words, pencil crayons, oil pastels, coloured pens to express myself.

From this prompt, TIME IS A MEADOW came up for me. I call her, Mother Time. Instead of me trying to micro-manage/control time, or duelling it out with time, she is here to support me. This isn't a battle. I also don't have to mother time. Time is here for me and with me. I'm rolling with it and curious to what this art prompt will reveal for you!

TLDR; or don't feel like journalling? Try reflecting on this in the month ahead:

✩ Gently build curiosity by learning your unique rhythm and pace.

✩ Practice your ability to redirect and focus with purpose and intention. 

✩ Slowly expand your capacity for flow instead of control with time.

I see you! ⋆˙⟡ written by yours truly, Linda

“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 :-)

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!