Art Journalling to help with Anger

So as some of you know I've recently started seeing a therapist and I'm working through a lot of what happened to me in my childhood. One of the messages I strongly received as a child was not to express or even have feelings. Consequently I developed a very poor internal awareness of my emotions and I also struggle with processing them. I often either ignore, repress or move away from emotions and 'stay up in my head' a lot. This week I've been particularly looking at anger and allowing myself to 'be with it' and 'feel it'. I realised that anger has always been more of an 'ugly' emotion to me and I often try to rationalise it and analyse why I'm feeling angry, breaking it down into clear statistics (using pi and other math equations ;)) and finding all the reasons why the anger is not needed to be there. But as much as I might be able to see why -on an intellectual level- the anger does not need to be felt, it HAS already occurred inside my body so denying its existence is 1. a repeat of what happened to me as a child (I'm now telling myself: don't feel the feelings) 2. still only repression which can result in both physical and mental unease and 3. will result in me using (unhealthy) distraction methods so as to not feel what I'm feeling - regardless of the fact that I've 'explained the anger away'. In other words: feeling the anger tends to be healthier/ better than not. But feeling anger is explosive and scary and big, but I was/ am willing to give this a go. 

And whaddayaknow: this week, the universe was being 'helpful' and said: so Tam is trying to feel her feelings of anger: I know!! She needs something to be angry about, aren't I helpful? I'll send her a paypal shitstorm so I can be super helpful. This'll really make her angry and she can REALLY practise feeling her anger. (LOL). So, yes, paypal came in with a bombshell shitstorm which left me shaking with distress and rage and worry and instead of repressing all that, I went with it, which was both cathartic and scary but hey: I survived! Yay! And part of me processing all this mad feeling soup inside of me meant that I first ranted and vented at Andy and Gracie all day and then did a load of art which is really what I wanted to share with you guys in this post today! :D Singing and creating art gives me quicker access to my emotions and lets me bypass the inner stream of thinkie thoughts that can really get in the way! On many of my courses I encourage people to do the same: process emotions through creating art or singing or knitting or whatever floats your boat :) and I myself try to 'practise as I preach' though I am often still struggling with getting in touch with the emotions. Having a therapist is super helpful with this as they act like a mirror and guide to help you uncover what you do and don't do. :) 

Anyhoo, I was sharing the progress shots of the journal page on instagram (follow me here) and Facebook (follow me here) yesterday and promised I'd show more macro shots of the final pages here on the blog. :)) Hope you like and thank you for reading and always being here. I appreciate you. <3 font="">


PS. I got these funky new trousers that are making me sooooo happy! :D     PPS. If you like the art created in this post and you want to learn about the techniques used you may want to consider signing up to Life Book 2014. I provide 10 in depth mixed media art lessons in addition to another 42 offerings by other amazing artists!  Over 450+ amazing people have already joined! See you there! :D