My Monster Has A Name

Trigger Scale: (1/5)

During a session on January 05, 2009 I created this drawing:

Unreality – can also be viewed in the In Session Gallery

This was a response to my therapist asking me to draw the “unreality” that I had been having trouble with at the time. I had explained to her that I sometimes did not feel alive, or real. I would say now that at these moments I feel like a marionette doll or like a Sim controlled by somebody else. This was especially happening while driving. All of a sudden I would get this feeling and then become very afraid that I was going to crash, so I would pull over to calm down, and the feeling would pass. Sometimes it would pass before I could pull over. But it happens others times to, such as when I am taking a shower.

For some reason, and especially when I am having trouble with memory flooding and flashbacks, it is triggered for me to take a shower (I know why, I just have not gotten to the abuse memories associated with it yet). It happens almost everyday now, for the last two weeks. I just feel like I am watching myself and there is a broken tape in my head repeating, “This is not happening, this did not/could not happen.” I eventually recover and ’snap back’ to reality and move on with my day.

It is a feeling of being disconnected from myself, from my mind and body. ‘I feel’ is not really the right term either, more accurate would be that I DON’T feel at these times. I sometimes think that ‘I’ am dead or that I have died.

So that is the background behind the unreality I was trying to represent in the picture above. I felt like there was a spotlight on my brain that is run by my memories. I also mixed into the picture how I try to solve problems, or maybe the problem of the unreality, which is represented by the A, B, C purple path and the grey/brown square symbols. I explained to my therapist that the grey/brown squares were like binary computer information.

On the back of the drawing my therapist wrote the following notes:

1. The path – I noted some was connected and some not, she insisted that it was connected. There would be loops, but she didn’t want it to look that way.
2. She drew her own circle, even though I offered!
3. List of words:

• Hypnotize
• Path
• Brain
• Sun
• Archaic

The first note frustrates me because I tried to explain that the path only looked like it was not connected, but that was only because it went into the “hypnotize” area.

However, I still am not sure what this drawing says, expect that I feel it is related to dissociation. It did help to calm me down to create it at the time.

1. Session Splash – May 12, 2009*****
2. Session Splash – May 5, 2009*****
3. The Anxiety Process
4. I Have Been Abused – Please Believe Me!***
5. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Timeline**

Trigger Scale: (0/5)

My Monster now has an art Gallery page to showcase my personal art therapy artwork, and anyone else’s who wants to submit there. It will help to document my therapy process further, supplementing my Session Splashes, since I often engage in art therapy. My therapist is an art therapist and she has many supplies in her office for that use.

Next week I will be gathering the rest of my art therapy pieces from her to upload and photographing the work I have done at home over the last month into the various galleries. I will post about each piece individually or in groups so that there is some explanation and background about them.

I would like the gallery to help build community on the blog, and welcome all appropriate submissions from readers. If you have artwork that you would like to share, please contact me. Same goes with the Art Therapy page.

The Art Therapy page represents a collection of all the art therapy ideas and projects that have been suggested to me in therapy or that I have come across while doing self healing work.

Feel free to check out the new pages often, as I will be adding to them regularly. I hope that you enjoy the new additions to My Monster!

Picture from CutItOut.

1. My Monster Is Alive*
2. The Anxiety Process
3. Therapy Script for Communication*
4. Safety First Checklist Part 2*