Healing Through Self-Expression

Listeners, I've been putting off making this week's podcast, because we're in the middle of a pandemic and a lot of things are a struggle. Many work places are closed. Many people are home, others have to scramble to find work or scramble with their finances to figure out how they're going to take care of their families, how they're going to live day-to-day. There's the fear of the virus too. There's a lot going on in our world.

Watching the news is enough to overwhelm anyone right now. It is overwhelming me, which is why I see it as a little hypocritical talking about healing on this podcast during this time. But despite how I feel, I also know it needs to be done, so I'm going to go forward.

This week's topic is self-expression. Right now I am feeling unproductive, because as a teacher I have been sent home. I miss the children I teach. And online crisis learning is not the same. I'm very overwhelmed, but regardless of that, I would like to talk about what in the past has worked for recovery and what I hope in the near future will work again for tapping into my self-expression. 

Back when I was married to a man who was emotionally and psychologically abusive, I found that my only outlet was through writing. I used writing as an escape.

Now the thing about writing is not everybody likes to write. 

I have a learning disability that particularly effects my ability to write. I can be expressive, but generally speaking the mechanics, the spelling, the capitalization, and the structure of the sentences have always been difficult. So much so that when I was in grade school, I had to get extra help with those things. I had a class where I was trained to go through my writing and look for errors because I would often overlook them. It was sort of a visual processing problem where I didn't see the errors. So to make everything right I had to go back and look at the same sentence 10 gazillion times. 

It’s an extreme twist that I will be spending so much time talking about writing today and how that turned into my outlet. I'm generally an auditory person. 

I love to sing. 

I love to speak. 

I love to hear my own voice if it's appropriate, and I remember things better when I hear them than when I see them. For me this podcast medium is ideal. It comes naturally to me. Writing has never come naturally to me and has always been a struggle. It takes forever, is extremely difficult, and grammar, oh my goodness, don't ask me to explain grammar! I write what sounds correct when I say words out loud and that's about it. Despite all this, I consider myself a writer.

So how did I get here? 

I was in a psychologically abusive marriage for 14 years, one where I was not allowed to voice my thoughts when he was around without being punished. Being in that environment I had two choices: I could either find another way to express my voice or I could lose it all together. I chose not to lose it, which meant I had to write. 

The last few years of my marriage I would sit down in front of a laptop and write poetry every day, or I would write a scene in a fictional book I was coming up with. 

Every. Day. 

My first year of writing, everything I wrote was terrible. I don't even have that writing any more. It was so bad that I spent a year revising it. At the end of that year, it was still terrible. None of it was worth reading. 

Writing is hard. Doing it well is hard, but I had to do it for my sanity at the time. So I put my perfectionism on the shelf and wrote.

I discovered writing has many healing benefits. The way it helps you depends on the kind of writing you're doing. So I’ll go over three different types of writing and how they can help. The first is stream-of-consciousness. I first discovered this while reading a book by Julia Cameron called The Artist’s Way. It's very famous. A lot of people have read it. In the book, she prescribes this exercise to get your creative juices flowing and to unblock you artistically, to free you from writer’s block essentially. Ms. Cameron instructs you to wake up every morning and pull out a pen and paper, then write longhand for 15 minutes stream-of-consciousness. Don't think. Don't plan. Just write, and whatever comes out comes out.

I highly recommend this because if you do it everyday…  Well, at first when I was writing stream-of-consciousness, everything that came out was just garbage. It was like my laundry list and the things I was worried about, the people I was angry at, the things that I was ruminating about, and all the stuff in your brain that gets in the way--all the junk that clogs your brain when you have been mobbed in the workplace and driven out of a job. Naturally, you have a lot of rumination going on, asking yourself about how this could have happened. You may be writing pages of profanity every morning. I kid you not. There will be so much reliving past events while writing stream-of-consciousness, but that stuff needs to happen. There's a catharsis there. It's important to get it out. 

Anyway, as directed I was doing the morning pages for 15 minutes every morning without judging what I wrote, just writing whatever came out. And it really cleared my brain. I got out all the junk. I got out everything that was blocking me. There it was on the page so I could put it aside. 

Turns out, I could then think about something else. 

Stream-of-consciousness writing is highly recommended for clearing out the clutter in your brain. I should be doing that right now during the pandemic. It would help me. This is a side note, but I can't push myself right now to do things I would otherwise push myself to do. I can't push myself to have a rigid, structured routine. So what I do is set myself very simple goals: I will wake up at 9 a.m. If I wake up by 9 a.m, I can throw myself a little party. “Yay, good for you!”

I will take a shower every day in the morning so I feel clean. It helps me to have that routine: wake up by 9, take a shower. 

If I want to feel beautiful, I put on a little makeup. Not a lot. I'm not going anywhere. I don't wear sweats every day. I could. If you want to and it helps you feel better that's fine but for me, I find if I at least change my clothes every day and make sure I'm clean, make sure  I feel good, make sure I have a little bit of a routine, I feel better. I'm able to retain some sense of normalcy. The morning pages can be part of that normalcy. So that's the first kind of writing.

Stream-of-consciousness is very useful for healing, to get the clutter out. It allows you to get the anger out, the rumination out, and for you to move on to the second kind of writing: poetry or fiction. I like poetry because I find if I write poetry, I can focus on details--sight, taste, smell--things that ground me in the moment. When I focus on those things I'm more in touch with my environment, but I’m also more in touch with my feelings.

Poetry is about perspective. It’s a little more reflective in nature. For example, when I was in the awful marriage, poetry was one of the few things that really helped me process. I was able to paint a picture of myself and my environment through poetry.  There was one poem in particular I wrote: I had just gotten a job against my husband's wishes, a weekend job teaching violin and viola. It was on Sundays. My husband was super Mormon, so he did not approve of me working on Sundays and didn't really want me working at all because he was a controlling man. But I was getting stronger and he couldn't keep me from it at this point, so I took this Sunday job teaching violin and viola at a music store. 

I would wake up, wear nice clothes, put on makeup, and I would have my morning cup of coffee. In the poem I wrote about how when I went into teach, I felt like a human being. I felt strong. I felt capable. The moment I walked through the music store doors, there was this drummer who would stand behind the counter that smiled at me. He would flirt a bit and he was always really nice. Made me feel good. Made me feel happy. I enjoyed being  around someone who treated me like a human being, because when I woke up on these mornings, my ex-husband was always grumpy and angry and irritable with me. 

I would make coffee and he would wrinkle up his nose in disgust. As I ate breakfast, dressed the kids for church, everything I did… he kept making these facial expressions. He would stomp around and sulk, make it clear that he was disapproving. And that I was a horrible, awful wicked person for working on a Sunday, for drinking coffee, and for not believing in the church that he believed in. 

I didn't feel like a person. I felt like less than a person.

So in my poetry I compared myself to fruit, which is objectifying. But In fairness, it helped me at the time. In the eyes of my husband, I was like a lemon. I was sour to him because anytime I walked into the room, his whole face would pucker up like he was tasting a lemon. Every time I walked into the music store and was treated like a human being by this other man who was behind the counter, I felt like a peach. He treated me like this sweet, nice, kind, good person. A total contrast.

At this point in my marriage, I was trying to leave but I was having these dreams where I was having an affair with the drummer, because the drummer made me feel like a human being. I never would have done it. Affairs are reprehensible and I'm a loyal person, but writing the poem helped me understand my very conflicted feelings. The poem helped me understand that when the person you’re living with treats you like a lemon, you're not going to have warm fuzzy, happy feelings towards him. And when you're able to go to work with people who treat you humanely, you’re gonna feel a lot more affection towards those nice people.

By putting that on paper with the similes and the metaphors, with the comparisons to fruit in this case, I was able to process what was happening. I was able to understand what I needed to do to move forward, and that I absolutely needed to leave that marriage. 

Similarly, after I got out of the workplace where I was mobbed, I needed to process but didn’t choose poetry. When I was in the marriage, I had no choice but to absorb that toxic eco system because I was immersed in it. So the poetry helped. Getting out of a terrible working environment was different. I didn't want to re-immerse myself back into that hostile environment through writing poetry. I still needed to process, though. So I wrote a lot of letters. 

Letters are wonderful. You don't have to be a literary genius to write them. You don't have win a Pulitzer prize or have an advanced degree to write a letter. You just feel, and you write what you feel. In my case, words came out like this, “Dear co-worker, I thought you were my friend. I thought you had my back. I thought we could work together and now I feel betrayed. You stabbed me in the back. I thought you loved my children and I see now that you never could have, because you can't love someone’s children and then destroy their livelihood by destroying their mother’s ability to hold down a job. That's just not a thing.”  

You say what you need. It doesn't have to be rational. Cuss. Don’t hold back. Get it out and then rip it up. Or, if it's on a computer, you can save it, but don't send it. 

Sending it is always a mistake.

You don't even need to limit the number of letters you write. You can write a ton of letters. As many as you need until you are able to process those feelings that you have towards people. We talk a lot about forgiveness in our culture. 

I'm more about acceptance.

I think in order to get to a place where we are at peace with ourselves and at peace with others, we have to accept reality. These things take time. Get out the feelings. Get out the ruminations. Process what happened and don't rush. It takes the time it takes and it's all necessary stuff. So to review,  the three kinds of writing I just went over are stream-of-consciousness every morning for 15 minutes or so, poetry and/or fiction to help process events, and letter writing to help you get the emotions out and really say what you need to say when there is no closure. 

Music as self-expression

Moving on to music as self-expression: I know not everyone is a musician. It is a very big part of my life. Because while my parents are not wonderful people, they did give me one thing. 

They gave me music.

It’s the one thing I've always been able to go to when I don't know what else to do. Lost your job? Play a sad tune on your violin. Classes going awful and you might fail out of college? Pull out your viola and play some Bach. Stood up by a guy that was supposed to take you on a date? Sing a song, play some music, listen to some Ravel.

Music, for me, is like a drug. I can use it to alter my moods.

If I'm really feeling like I'm in despair, that's when I  will pull out my viola and start playing, because often I am so full of feeling I can't express it any other way. My viola is my voice.

If I find myself stagnant and unable to work, unable to move because of feeling overwhelmed, I pull out my phone and put some cheerful music on, something upbeat. I even sometimes listen to depressing songs as long as they have a constant beat that keeps me moving. This helps me to do laundry, to do dishes and cleaning. Without the music, I get bogged down in these tasks. I have a very hard time. I get stuck. 

Music helps me get unstuck. It allows me to emote when I'm really full of feeling and I can't express it in words. Another way music helps is by giving me something to focus on and to work on. There was a time when music was more frustrating for me than anything. 

Back when I was first learning to play the viola, I remember standing in my room trying to play a piece while getting more and more frustrated. It didn’t sound as I wanted it to. My tone quality wasn’t beautiful and I couldn't vibrate the way other people could. I remember being very frustrated because I wasn't at the level I wanted to be. 

The thing about music, or any art form, is when we first start out we aren’t very good at it. I'm sure even Mozart, when he first started playing the violin, wasn’t good at it. No artistic endeavor starts out easy,  but in times of recovery and in times of crisis, if you can give yourself a musical goal, something like, “I will play a C major scale in tune. I will practice 15 minutes a day until I can play a C major scale in tune." Or "I will sing I'm a Little Teapot. I will match all the pitches, and that will be my goal for the week.”

The trick is to have a goal you can work toward every day in incremental steps.

By working toward that goal in incremental steps little by little each day, you’re actually building skill. The small amount of ability you start out with you gradually add to, and that gradual increase ups your skill level over time, until you eventually get to a point where you're able to achieve mastery. You will gain the ability to express more complex ideas and to express more complex emotions by setting these musical goals. And where you go with your artistic expression depends on the level where you are. 

I've been playing the viola for decades, so I can take it one of two ways. I can find a challenging piece and then really start breaking it down: that’s healing because it makes me focus on the process, rather than other things like how I was treated or my high level of frustration. If I can focus on my incremental goals, it also helps with recovery by putting me in touch with my body, with my arms, with my fingers, and with my breathing. It grounds me in the now and it takes me away from the trauma. That’s what makes it healing. 

I can do that. Anybody can do that. 

I could pick up a new instrument that I know little about. I could pick up the guitar and learn just one chord. Master that chord. Or I  can learn the cup song by finding it on YouTube and and practicing it step-by-step.  

So let’s say I work on that for a week.

It’s going to have an effect on my body, because as I'm focusing on my breathing and focusing on the skills necessary to master that song, it’s going to focus me away from the trauma and into my body, into the present. So that's one track that can be taken for healing. The second track is using music to express yourself. This comes naturally to me because I've been playing the viola for decades. I will find a piece I already know well and then put my soul into it, I will emote. 

I have an artist friend who paints portraits. She has a big portrait on her wall of her son playing with trains that she painted when he was just a toddler. She likes to tell me that she loves art, she's good at painting, but it’s sometimes hard for her because she'll put up the canvas and she will start painting and she will start crying. The scene she is painting reminds her of feelings she’s not yet processed. So writing isn’t the only way to process trauma in a reflective way. Art can have a similar effect. It can help you process, help you see things from a higher perspective and really ground you in what happened.

If you look back on the trauma in a way that gives you a little more distance, you’re still going to feel. Feel and remember. But the distance makes this safer. Emoting can be healing. 

When I was at my job that was beating me down, making me feel like I was a terrible person and like I sucked, there was one thing I had in my life that helped me feel confident and like I was an accomplished person and that was my music. When I was treated like a lemon in my marriage, music gave me confidence. I would go to work with my violin and viola and be treated like a peach. I felt good while I was there. 

I found myself in a similar situation while working full-time as a special education teacher in this one school system, because while I was at work, it didn't matter what I did, I was again treated like a lemon. I was treated like the very excellent  work I was putting in wasn't good enough and was somehow substandard. This was irrational, but it felt very real. It was how I was being treated. How do you not believe terrible things about yourself when it’s the message being pounded into you every day? I tried not to let it get to me, but how do you not? 

So I would go to work in the school those five days. I would do my best, and at the end of those 5 days every week, I felt ugly, undesirable, and so incompetent. Then on Sunday, I would go into the music store, where people would smile at me. They would treat me like the professional I was, and I would be reminded that I was a skilled person who had worked hard to be where I am.

I deserved respect, just like everybody else.

When I didn't have students, I would practice a piece to the highest level I could until I felt good about it: proud of my work. The fact I could produce something beautiful was evidence I was competent. I would put my performance on YouTube, and anytime I doubted myself, I would go back to YouTube.

I've worked hard to get to where I am.

Recognizing that fact, giving myself credit where it was due helped me move forward. It was healing.

This is going to be a short podcast today. I think most people in this pandemic are just living from day to day, they are trying to survive as best they can. I want to remind everyone I am not a psychiatrist. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a professional mental health care person. I’ve just been through a lot of crap in my life and I'm telling you what has worked for me. This has worked for me. 

So if you find yourself in a position where you need to heal from being bullied or mobbed, or from being in a bad relationship, I would encourage you to find a creative outlet, to write about it, paint, play some music. Find something that makes you feel good about yourself, that gives you a way to express your feelings and also gives you a means to process events. It is so healing. It is essential for moving on with your life.