I recently started an Art Therapy Group for mental health research in creativity using all kinds of artistic equipment.
Creative art such as drawing or painting has never been one of my strengths, so you can imagine how anxious I felt when I first started attending the group.
The first session, after we checked in, I sat there feeling clueless of where to start or what to use. I have never been a confident drawer or painter.
This is a programme with forty sessions, and I am now on my fifteenth and have been confidently experimenting using some materials that I am not familiar with. But is therapeutical and fun.
I acknowledge that I am never going to be an artist but accepted that what I am here to express myself through art therapy.
Last week I designed a piece of work on a reflective gold sheet of card. I designed my own emotion board. It has some of the expressions that we use when we are feeling emotional.
I never really thought about all the facial expressions that we can show on our faces and discovered I do not show much of them and believe myself to have a poker face.
It is safe to say that having emotions is normal and if one is not able to express them verbally or physically there are other techniques that can be introduced hence the ‘emotion board’.
When questioned about my emotions I could only state that ‘I go through more than one emotion in a space of a morning. I cannot put a finger on just feeling a single emotion.’
Some of the emotions I feel on a regular basis throughout the day, are like the threads that I stuck around the inner emotion board, my feelings are entwined together.
I also associated the emotions to relate to assorted colours in my mind.
According to research our basic emotions are happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, and disgust.
Emotions are physical reactions to things often stemming from an outside influence.
The English language has more than 4,000 words that describe feelings
Feelings are a reaction to our emotional responses of our conscious thoughts and our belief and opinion of the outside world.
Negative emotions can be a burden, but the positive experiences of our lives would be meaningless without a comparison.
Some people are good at hiding their emotions, I tend to do this to protect myself, but it doesn’t stop them from feeling the internal pain.
There are days when my emotional state is unbalanced that I cannot concentrate on anything but when I am in public no one would ever guess that I am feeling like hell.
The ‘poker face’ says it all with a smile for the world even though there is a turmoil of emotions, and the feelings are hidden when not spoken.
The main thing about feelings and emotions is that we are aware of how human we are.
There are two sides to everything that is why there must be a balance.
Natalie Bleau
The Scripture of Balance
