My Monster Has A Name

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*

Trigger Scale: (1/5)

It has been over a month since I have written! I have gone through many big changes, and am adjusting to them accordingly. Mainly I believe I have accepted that many bad things happened to me when I was younger (more often from a first person perspective now, instead of “out-of-body” or watching it happen to someone else), and I am starting to confront the bigger feelings involved with that realization and acceptance.

I have not kept notes or recordings (therapist keeps forgetting!) of my sessions, so there will be a gap in the session splashes. One of the biggest areas that I have worked on in therapy is anger. I have “issues” when it comes to anger and will stop short of expressing it almost every time without fail. I have been working with my therapist with ways to express my anger while still feeling safe at the same time. She has suggested that we try being angry with pillows in an empty room, and I agreed. However, I have great reservations.

I have also been exploring the reasons I have such a strong aversion to food and have had no natural appetite for the last half decade. My therapist has suggested that I try eating with her in session, and we are going to start with sharing a cup of tea together. This whole things makes me extremely nervous, but I know I need to open myself up to my emotions and try new things in that pursuit.

There is one good thing that has come of all this though. While I have rediscovered that, yes, I DO have emotions, and some of them really DO suck! I have also rediscovered some of the good emotions, such as enjoyment of hobbies, and most important to me, of doing art. I have started to do art projects again, and have many different projects to share.

To do that, I have added a Gallery to the My Monster blog. In my excitement I put everything up, but I will be posting about the different galleries, albums, and some of the individual projects separately over the next few weeks, as well as posting more (especially in the “In Session” gallery). If you have artwork that you would like to share, please contact me.

Feels good to be back on the path!

Kaleidoscope Reverie by =alexiuss on deviantART

1. Session Splash – May 5, 2009*****
2. Session Splash – May 26, 2009 Part 2*
3. Session Splash – May 12, 2009*****
4. Session Splash – May 21, 2009**
5. New Gallery & Art Therapy Pages