In this episode, G-Rex and Dirty Skittles are joined by Susan Day, an experienced art therapist, author, and artist, to explore how art therapy helps manage anxiety and improve mental health. Susan shares how creative expression can offer a sense of calm during life's challenges and provides practical insights into the healing power of art.
Episode Highlights:- Susan’s journey into art therapy and how it can be a powerful alternative to traditional talk therapy.
- Discover how creative outlets like drawing or painting can alleviate anxiety and stress.
- Practical advice on incorporating art therapy techniques into your daily routine for better mental well-being.
Susan Day is an art therapist, author, and artist passionate about using creativity for emotional healing. She also hosts a podcast and offers free art sessions, inspiring others to tap into the healing potential of mindful creativity. Susan has written over five books on mindful art therapy and how art and writing can transform lives. Learn more about her work at https://mindfulartstherapy.com.au.
✨ Freebie Alert: Susan is offering a free guide to art therapy! Download it here to begin your creative journey to wellness. 🎁
Connect with Susan:- Podcast: https://mindfulartstherapy.com.au/podcasts/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mindfulartstherapy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindfulartstherapy
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susandayartstherapist
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, remember, it's OK not to be OK. Reach out and talk to someone.
- United States: https://988lifeline.org/talk-to-someone-now/
- Canada: https://988.ca/
- Worldwide: https://findahelpline.com/
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Audio Editing by NJz Audio.
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#MentalHealth #ArtTherapy #AnxietyRelief #CreativeHealing #Wellness #MentalHealthPodcast #Mindfulness #STGOIOH #GREX #DIRTYSKITTLES
00:00:06
Hey there, listeners. Welcome to Shit That Goes Under Our Heads,
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the podcast where we normalize conversations around mental health.
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That's right. I'm Dirty Skittles, and alongside my amazing co-host,
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you, Rex, we are here to share stories and tips from our incredible guests.
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Each episode, we deep dive into struggles and triumphs of mental health,
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offering practical advice and heartfelt support. work. Because no one should
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feel alone in their journey.
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Join us as we break the stigma and build a community of understanding and compassion.
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Tune in and let's start talking about the shit that goes on in our heads.
00:00:43
Three, two, one. Welcome back to another episode of shit that goes on in our heads.
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I'm G-Rex with my amazing co-host, Dirty Skittles. And today we have an amazing Amazing guest.
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Welcome, Susan. I'm so excited to have you on.
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Welcome. Thank you very much for having me. It's very lovely to meet you both.
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Yeah, lovely to meet you too. So what time is it where you're at?
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Eight o'clock Sunday morning.
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Okay. And I saw you drinking a beverage. Is it tea or are you a coffee person? In the morning, coffee.
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Nice. Good God is my love language.
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Although to be fair, I do it in the morning, the noon, the night.
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I love my coffee. Yeah, we invested this year in an actual espresso machine.
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It looks like we have a Starbucks upstairs and we hooked it up to a water line.
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Best move ever. Yeah.
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I'm curious about my coffee. I do. It's either that or somebody has to die.
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It's either coffee in the morning or there'll be a death in the family some way. My fault.
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The cats are just scattered. They're like, we've seen this before.
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We gotta go. That's right.
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I love this conversation. So for our listeners, Susan is in Australia.
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So we are, she's actually a day ahead of us. So she's talking to us from the future.
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It's the closest we get to time travel.
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Yeah. Yeah, I think so. So what's it like in the future?
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It's pretty dreary. I'd say politically wise, it's bad. It's really bad. It's scary.
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The environment's still, you know, stuffed, but still.
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Who's going to go back to bed then? Yeah.
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Just don't get up tomorrow. You'll be fine. I know, right? I love your background, Susan.
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Yeah, Susan, the out-and-there therapist in me. you can't do anything subtly
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there's no beige in my life.
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It's just a wow I love it though it kind of looks like Skittles right?
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Taste the rainbow yeah you're right exactly right don't pick them up off the
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floor and eat them no yeah that's fair enough did you make that?
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Is that like an outlaw art? I might have done I can't remember there's a few
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I made with Canva and there was a few that I found And yeah,
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yes. I thought that was fast.
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It's marvelous. I put the logo on.
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Yeah, it's really nice though. I like it a lot. So I understand you do art.
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Yeah, I'm a mindful art therapist, which is a bit of a mouthful typically at
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this hour in the morning.
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But yeah, no, we use art as a form of therapy, I suppose, in short.
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And so rather it can bypass talk therapy.
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You can work with your psychologist or therapist in some way and do art therapy.
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It's also something people can use in the interim building up.
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So I assume it's the same all over the world where there are six to 12-month
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waits to see a psychologist.
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And during COVID, a lot of psychologists stopped taking on new patients or they
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just quit because it was too hard and it's also frightfully expensive.
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So art therapy is something you can use in the interim to help yourself and
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that's one of the reasons I've sort of got into writing books as well. So that's really cool.
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I remember kind of joking with G-Rex when I first went into therapy,
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one of the things my therapist had recommended,
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because I tend, and I think I'm completely guessing, but I tend to be pretty
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OCD, like controlling about certain things in my life that I have zero control over.
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And it stresses me out, right? And I remember her giving me,
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still to this day, it was one of the hardest things that I did besides working through trauma, right?
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Because she's, I want you to find 15 minutes.
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Eventually we worked up to 30 where you sit down and you do something artful,
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like creative, be creative.
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And so I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to probably paint then because I have
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a, at that time he was six years old and we had canvases and paint.
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And so I'm like, I'll just do that. I'll grab that and we'll just use that.
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And she's okay. But when you do it, I don't want you to prepare for it.
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Don't go out and find this image you want to recreate. create,
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and then I will control that, right?
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Like just play music, do whatever you got to do to get in that mood and just release, right?
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And it was so difficult and so hard because I thought, oh my gosh,
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what if it looks horrible? Like I need to prepare for this.
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Didn't, obviously I did not do that, but
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I remember laughing hysterically because I
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decided at some point I was going to to paint my dog and it
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was the I was just laughing like a kid like
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I just I felt free but also I
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was laughing at how horrendous the painting looked and I
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just had the most fun and then that became like
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a thing that I liked doing like giraffes we
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even did it on a live we were like oh we're just gonna paint and just
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talk and no pressure just release and
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just have fun and it was hard to do but it
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was so rewarding yeah she threw a canvas at
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me and she's like okay do i
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get alcohol with this because you know that's how my mind
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kind of frees up but for me like
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my creativity is i color i love
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the color it there's just something about it that just calms me down and makes
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my heart smile and you know i don't i usually do color by number or paint by
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number because i like to see the pretty colors because sometimes i have a hard
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time like if the colors don't match up.
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I have a little bit of you know adult
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onset ocd never this way but like
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nowadays i'm like okay those two colors don't match and i want to control this
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and so with the you know if you did on your ipad you can just erase it but i
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find it to be super relaxing for me and i also crochet I haven't crocheted for
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a while because I have pretty bad arthritis in my hands.
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But when my arthritis doesn't bother me, I get out my crochet hooks and people
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just laugh. They're like, you crochet?
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And I'm like, it's really damn relaxing.
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Yeah. It is. It's amazing, isn't it? It's not, you know, like you said...
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Obviously, with crochet, you're making something. But with that sort of process
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of creation, one of the rules with art therapy is you're not making something
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to hang on the wall, you know? And it's just a process that matters.
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Yeah, so it's such an important process. And it's quite interesting because
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at the user level, if you like, it's very simple.
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But what's actually going on is really complex. And the science behind it I
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find really fascinating as well.
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And yeah you can just making marks on
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paper for some people can be very difficult because the fear
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that you're going to get it wrong or you know you're never going to produce
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a fabulous painting so that like not one day that's a good thing but with the
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process of art therapy it's just basically using art materials of any kind including
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writing and sculpture and music and releasing and finding that joy,
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which you did. Yay. It's exciting. Well done.
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Yeah, we did. I had for one Mother's Day, I had my mom and my mother-in-law,
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my sister-in-law, and I did the same thing to them that I did to you,
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G-Rex, but we did flower pots.
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So we just had pots and paint and music and food and drinks and no pressure,
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just paint something fun.
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And we all laughed about how horrible it looked, but that's exactly what it was.
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It was just freeing. It was nice. and surprisingly this horrible photo of my
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dog this painting I've kept because of what it symbolized in that moment of
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just truly being able to just let go and.
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I don't know. I'll tell you. Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting,
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isn't it? Yeah. How did you get into this?
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I have quite a high degree in English. I suppose that's English literature.
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And a lady asked me to edit her thesis.
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And I went, oh, yeah, okay. And that was fun. And it was on art therapy.
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And I'm like, oh, my God, this is a thing?
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You can actually do this? I was really excited. And I think obviously I've been
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using art as therapy all my life. I've always considered myself to be arty.
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But once you get into the science of it too, that's where I,
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again, find it really fascinating.
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Yeah, and that was about seven or eight years ago, I think, and I went off to study.
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I was studying mindfulness and always been a meditator, always been interested
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in meditating and changing your whole physical and your emotional well-being
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with breathing, which I think is just like the most miraculous thing since sliced bread.
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And that, you know, and you can, I can sit with someone and they can start making marks on a paper.
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We can be talking about something and the colours they use, the mediums they
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choose, all those sorts of things indicate,
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or can lead to a discovery of something that's going on that they,
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you know, emotionally they just need to release So have a look at it.
00:10:05
Yeah, that's cool. That's very interesting. Before doing that editing,
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where you discovered kind of this, said that you always considered yourself artsy.
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So were you naturally drawn to kind of create stuff if you were stressed or
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whatever you were going through?
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Yeah, absolutely. I remember having an argument with somebody once and my partner at the time.
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And I drew these two horses fighting. I was rearing up and I'd kill each other. I'd get you. Yes.
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Do you title your pieces? Like May 17th. That's right.
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Miscellanea. Yes. Wrap it up, give it to them. That's right.
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Do you remember this day? Yeah, I remember fondly. here you go it's right every
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christmas yeah the last gift ever no i'm just kidding,
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no it's funny because i and i also i also do caricatures of people who upset
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me and again something that i it's my way of dealing like you might get abused
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at the car park at the supermarket because you know you're not quite with it
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or something happens and you may everyone Everyone makes a mistake.
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If somebody honks the horn, of course you're an effing idiot or something.
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And I went home, I draw them. Yeah, take that.
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Easy, effing idiot now, mate. Look at that. And then I put it away.
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Oh, I thought you were going to say you fold it up, put it on the windshield
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and then just keep going. No, I'm not that brave.
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It's a lot of fun. See, sometimes I just laugh. Yeah. Yeah, but do you feel
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a release after? You're like, ah, got that feeling out of the way. and move on to another.
00:11:50
Exactly. And it helps me put the whole thing in perspective too,
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you know, because, you know, I suffer from anxiety and all sorts of things. And, yeah, it helps me.
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You kind of also can see the lighter side of the situation and I think that's
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really quite important because, yeah, when you're suffering like that and somebody
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upsets you and you think, oh, what am I going to do?
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And, yeah, it's nice to be able to...
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I don't know, feel that, draw it in a sense of power too, that you can get back,
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you can get it back, even though they've gone on their way and have no idea what you're up to.
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Do you keep the pieces that you make? Some of them I do, yeah.
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I have a journal. I have two or three journals.
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Yeah, so it's part of the art therapy, I suppose, mantra is keeping a journal.
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And a journal can be like a scrapbook. It can just be lots of scribbles.
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I might use it to you know work through do
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some sketches for a painting but a lot of the times if
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I'm upset if I've if things haven't worked out well
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I'll choose something and just do something in it you know and I think it's
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really I sat down with a young preteen a few weeks ago and we just met and I
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was talking to her and I said she loved art and I said to her oh do you have
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have a journal she was like do i it's just gorgeous she was like i have loads.
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Australian vernacular,
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we usually say shit loads i have shit like but she was i used i was one of those
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i would write really bad poetry well let me give myself credit i thought they
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were great in the moment but i had tons of journals of just poems of whatever
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i was feeling in the moment and i think my mom Probably still has some of them.
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But yeah, it just was a way to say what was happening inside my brain that it
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didn't have to be well thought out or put together. It was just emotions.
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And I thought that was really cool. I need to get back to it.
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What about you, J-Rex? Yeah.
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So I just write. I journal, you know, just a way to get the shit that's in your
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head on a paper because, you know, eventually, you know, you just don't want it in there anymore.
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But I, you know, I've been cursing pretty much my entire life,
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play piano, you know, reteaching myself how to do that. Coloring.
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You know, just like whatever I feel like doing at the time. You know, also like writing.
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Writing is like my form of being creative.
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Yeah. You know, sharing my story, sharing my journey and things like that.
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And, you know, somebody, it was kind of funny. Somebody asked me if I'd write
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a PC version of my book. I don't think that's going to happen.
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Because, you know, I want it to be authentic, right? Right. Like when I'm writing
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or if I'm doing something, I want it to be the authentic me.
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I don't want it to be something that's sugarcoated or something that would water
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down that would appease to somebody else.
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Yeah. If you know me, you know, I use the F word a lot.
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Yep. Yep. Sentence enhancers, I believe.
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They are sentence enhancers. Yeah. I love that. Yes, exactly.
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Yeah. Yeah. Why not, man? Just go for it.
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That's hilarious. hilarious that's also the part of that honesty isn't
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it and that integrity that you bring to your writing these to
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use or swear words or curse words yeah yeah yeah
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i think it's super helpful like me learning like to kind of let go through that
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painting exercise was one the other one that i remember really being fond of
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and i call it my happy album was taking pictures of things that made me happy
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throughout the day and it was a way to kind of connect back with who you are like like,
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you know, everybody kind of goes through their own thing.
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And I remember kind of losing sight of who I was, right. Cause as.
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As the time was, I was so invested in the partner I had. And when that didn't
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work out, I just remember kind of being lost. Who am I, right?
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And going into therapy, the therapist advised, maybe throughout your day,
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whenever you feel a happy emotion, take a picture of whatever it is you're looking at.
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And I did that. And I don't know why it worked, but it was this very artful
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kind of way to sort of just capture that moment and remind myself, oh, I do these things.
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Or my morning cup of coffee was one of the photos. or there was a truck where
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all these paint cans fell off the back of it and there was all these bright
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splattered colors on the highway.
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And I was like, oh my gosh, probably shouldn't have been taking a picture on
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the highway driving, but nonetheless, snapping photos and finding pretty moments,
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you know, to kind of... And that's what keeps us grounded.
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And I think that's what keeps us real and gets the shit out of your head.
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Yeah. It's that reminder of what's really important.
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It builds a sense of gratitude, which I think is horrendously important.
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I think there was a scientific research done and the three things that make
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you happy, gratitude, empathy and kindness.
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So all of those things are about what's, they're external really,
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aren't they? You know, you've got to be kind to yourself, but to others.
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You show empathy to others who are in pain, suffering.
00:17:02
And we are grateful for what we have. And if it's just being able to make a
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cup of coffee in the morning. Right.
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Yeah, it's so important. and the celebration of those little things,
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like whether it's a caterpillar going up a leaf or, yeah, or paint tins.
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Paint tins sounds exciting. I'd have been out of the car.
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It was really cool, yeah. Yeah. It'd have been really interesting.
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But, yeah, I think they're those wonderful little things that we can all do.
00:17:32
So every day for a month you can take three photos of things that bring you joy.
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Yeah, and it's one of those, it's lovely. It's lovely to hear those sorts of
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stories. I think it's really important.
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Yeah. And it works, which is, you know, I don't know why it does, but it does.
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It just, it made me feel better. It worked. Same thing with the painting.
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So yeah. I wonder if more people would do it if they knew more about it. You know what I mean?
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Like it took you editing something to kind of just sort of fell into your lap
00:18:00
and you're like, oh shit, this is like a real thing.
00:18:03
Yeah. And that therapy is about a hundred years old, 80 to 100 years old.
00:18:07
So it's been around for quite some time i obviously
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discovered it by accident but part of my you
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know mission is to is to spread the word and to be a
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guest podcast like this and to ride and yeah talk and just try to get people
00:18:22
to embrace that they have this beautiful inner creativity that's so important
00:18:27
yeah do you set aside time every day to do this for yourself of course.
00:18:34
Yeah i try to even if it's only just a few minutes
00:18:37
yeah exactly yeah and i
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think it's important that we don't put away our art materials whether you
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know i do like to be tidy it's one of my things but you
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can have it sitting somewhere where you can grab a packet of markers and a pen
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paper anything like yeah that's cool yeah like i have my coloring books on my
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desk right so sometimes like when i'm in a meeting if i don't have to if it's
00:19:02
not something i have to pay attention to.
00:19:04
I like to doodle. So having my coloring book there with my gel pens,
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it's just calming, right?
00:19:11
Or if I've had a bad interaction with somebody and I'm like,
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I just got off the phone, I'll doodle for a few minutes just to kind of recenter
00:19:18
myself because it's a whole lot better than going and yelling at somebody and
00:19:23
calling them a dickhead.
00:19:25
But just finding ways to make
00:19:28
me happy and so I find like when I'm using my hands or if
00:19:31
I'm being creative I feel better and I
00:19:33
use Dirty Skittles trick with the the photos
00:19:36
so like this past week has
00:19:39
just been like pretty hard and I went back to it's
00:19:42
a folder on my phone that's things that make me happy and I went back
00:19:45
and just looked at it and I you know I got to see the mama deer with her fawn
00:19:50
and I got to see the wood and I got to see you know the flowers that I've taken
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and you know beautiful places that I've been that always made me happy and it
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just brought me back to center and then I could just move on with my day.
00:20:06
But I think art therapy is the coolest thing. When I was growing up,
00:20:11
number one, we didn't talk about mental health when I was growing up.
00:20:16
And we didn't talk about art therapy or things like that.
00:20:19
So bringing this to light now is such a great way to,
00:20:25
Kind of deal with those emotions that are going on in your head.
00:20:28
You know, just get to a better place, like a calming place. That's fine.
00:20:33
Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you don't need expensive materials.
00:20:38
You can go with a pen and the back of a little bit of junk mail or something.
00:20:42
Yeah, it's really important. And, you know, I might encourage a client to use a particular medium.
00:20:49
So if somebody's if their if their
00:20:52
anxiety is you know quite heightened and
00:20:55
if they're feeling a little bit too stressed things like
00:20:58
gel paints because you have to use them very slowly kind of
00:21:01
force you or kind of bring your brain a little down
00:21:04
a little bit and help you be more centered and
00:21:07
calm but for people perhaps who are depressed or
00:21:10
feeling very low painting because that
00:21:13
beauty it's quick and it's fluid and you know and
00:21:16
it's also that process of being mindful of how it feels and
00:21:20
smells yeah it's really cool yeah
00:21:23
and i think what's cool about this specific subject is like therapy doesn't
00:21:31
have to be like sitting in a room like on the couch talking to somebody you
00:21:35
know what i mean like it can be something that doesn't sound messed up but i
00:21:40
was like i was gonna say it It could be something you actually enjoy,
00:21:43
you know, like any, I'm a creative person.
00:21:47
So anytime I can actually make something, I love it. That's my happy place.
00:21:51
So even if it's a bad painting, you know.
00:21:54
I want to start getting into pottery. I want to, you know, form shit with my hand. Yeah, exactly.
00:21:59
Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, it's good fun. Yeah. And we do use, I use Play-Doh.
00:22:03
And sometimes, you know, you can use it just as a de-stress,
00:22:07
just that process of squeezing it or shaping it.
00:22:11
Sometimes I might get, particularly because I've worked a bit with preteens,
00:22:14
is I'll encourage them to create a little being that represents perhaps their
00:22:20
anxiety, you know, or something that they're going through.
00:22:23
And then it's that is what you
00:22:26
know they can mold it and shape it as well so they again
00:22:29
it's a process of empowering with your hands and
00:22:33
like you say you know some people dread going to see a
00:22:35
you know the traditional talk therapy they don't
00:22:38
feel like that oh it's such hard work being able
00:22:41
to intellectualize and vocalize this these
00:22:45
really strange feelings that are
00:22:47
happening you know that can be so nuanced and so
00:22:50
quite specific to them you know
00:22:54
i might say oh it's feeling angry today and that
00:22:58
means that will mean so many different things different people just
00:23:01
something as simple or as ordinary as anger or even joy but
00:23:04
you can do it with art you can do these beautiful fluid materials or colors
00:23:11
or shades yeah yeah how long have you been doing this for oh well if you take
00:23:19
off the seven eight years i've come i'm very good about five six years.
00:23:23
Nice you take the study out i suppose yeah yeah
00:23:26
exactly it's really cool though i'm curious how many things you've created i
00:23:31
immediately go into man if i had a journal for every day like if i could actually
00:23:35
dedicate the time to paint something or build something every day well there's
00:23:39
that little 15 minute block that i give myself i'm curious if i could reflect back on that are you
00:23:45
able to reflect back on pieces you made and still find,
00:23:48
I don't know, some release in it?
00:23:50
I do, I do. I don't tend to focus too much on them because I think that was
00:23:54
the process and that's what I was going through.
00:23:56
I tend to, sometimes I share my art journal with my students or my clients and
00:24:00
say, well, this is what I did.
00:24:02
And because I think I, there's a lot of YouTubers and influencers and people
00:24:07
who are using art therapy and they come up with these amazing pieces and they're
00:24:12
beautiful, which is great.
00:24:15
It looks great, but it's not the real thing.
00:24:18
Do you know what I mean? It should be messy. it should be
00:24:21
it is in a way art therapy shouldn't
00:24:24
look great it because so you
00:24:27
use my journal and go oh look there's a mess i made look at that mess yeah sometimes
00:24:33
you just need to get the crayons yeah i was just thinking about that i'm like
00:24:39
in life things are messy so if it was like a perfectly tidy art i would be like
00:24:43
is this really therapy or is this like a job you know Yeah,
00:24:46
it's like a work of art, some people's journal.
00:24:48
When I was studying, I remember thinking, that's a beautiful journal.
00:24:52
Do you like it? Are you still stressed out?
00:24:58
I think you're still stressed out. You need to go back and just do something
00:25:02
without even thinking about it.
00:25:04
And I don't care how ugly it is. It's you, right? Exactly.
00:25:08
Like a lot of stuff that I create, I'm never ever going to show anybody.
00:25:12
Some of it ends up in the trash. but I just use it to one, keep my hands busy
00:25:18
so if I'm on a call my hands have to be busy so I do have silly putty I play with it all day long.
00:25:26
And I also use it to figure out what kind of mood I'm in because sometimes I'm
00:25:31
in this in-between mood I don't know if I'm like pissed off or if I'm sad I'm like kind of in that.
00:25:38
Facade moment and i just
00:25:41
try to figure out what it is by drawing and whatever
00:25:44
i draw kind of makes me figure out where i'm at so if
00:25:47
it's all in red then i know that i'm really in a pissy mood but if it's in like
00:25:52
a yellow or my sad colors usually are like yellows and blues and so if i it
00:26:00
and i don't even really think about what pen i'm picking up right i don't even
00:26:03
look at it i just pick it up and I'm like, oh, I must have been in this kind of mood.
00:26:08
Absolutely, yeah. And the less thought you put in, the better.
00:26:11
Because the more thought you put in, the more you try to control it and justify
00:26:14
it and make it logical and make it work.
00:26:17
Whereas that's not how art therapy is.
00:26:20
Yeah, it's about picking a colour. And, you know, green is the colour.
00:26:25
Well, as you all know, colours have a negative and a positive.
00:26:29
So green is the colour of growth and, you know, nature.
00:26:34
It's one of my favourite colours, but it's also the colour of envy and jealousy,
00:26:39
you know. So it's interesting.
00:26:41
And, yeah, do things like circles, just to sit and draw some circles.
00:26:46
Yeah, and that can be very calming. But, again, like you go from red,
00:26:51
yeah, that's the colour of love, passion and anger.
00:26:55
Yeah. Yucky stuff. Yeah.
00:26:59
I love green. Green is also my favorite color. Yeah, my absolutely favorite color is green.
00:27:06
Really? You're super? Yeah.
00:27:08
Yeah, I love green. We were literally just talking about it because I like two shades of green.
00:27:15
One is, I don't know how else to explain it other than ulti green.
00:27:19
I love ulti green, which is a company we both worked for, which is this bright, vibrant green.
00:27:25
Green and then the other one is more like a forest kind of dark green so my
00:27:31
jam that and purple purple's probably messed up but yeah i don't know what purple
00:27:35
represents but you're crazy,
00:27:39
that i'm crazy so how do you recommend if somebody's listening to this for the
00:27:45
first time and hearing this for the first time what sort of advice would you
00:27:49
give them or steps on how to start.
00:27:52
Sure. There's lots of stuff online. I have a website. I have books available, as do others.
00:27:57
So I would just start having a look around, finding something that resonates,
00:28:02
perhaps something you can do online. There's lots of stuff.
00:28:05
Don't worry about the end product. Just do it. Just have fun with it and explore it.
00:28:11
And, you know, in my books, I talk people through about creating a proper space,
00:28:16
whether that's a dedicated art space or just, you know, You know,
00:28:20
you said you had your 15 minutes to sit down and do something.
00:28:23
Maybe you might want to play some music, figure your own frequencies,
00:28:27
which are some of my favourite things at the moment.
00:28:29
And, yeah, just do it. Just have fun with that.
00:28:32
You know, take back the crayons. It's one of my favourite sayings at the moment.
00:28:35
You know, if you've got kids, take the crayons back off them for a little while. Give them back.
00:28:40
Keep them for yourself. Get them some more. And just find that power again that
00:28:45
art can give to you. Yeah, I think that's really important.
00:28:50
Give it a go. That's my advice. Yeah, try it out.
00:28:54
I like the idea of setting the space too because I think that was part of it
00:28:58
for me was the intention, right?
00:29:01
The space, the time, make it as pleasurable as possible and then just jump in.
00:29:08
Yeah, and put your phone away.
00:29:10
Yeah. Yes, put the phone away. Yes.
00:29:14
I've literally started to do that on Sundays. I am off the phone as much as possible.
00:29:20
And I do not go on social media.
00:29:22
I am free birding on social media.
00:29:26
And I'm going to have to get back into art. I haven't painted probably,
00:29:29
I think, two racks since last time you and I were together.
00:29:32
That's a long time. That was last November. I know, but to be fair,
00:29:38
there are other art forms.
00:29:39
So I think creating, well, I will eventually be self-employed.
00:29:45
But one of the things I like to do is if I hear a song, sometimes I will imagine
00:29:52
what the art of that song looks like, or there's an image that I will create.
00:29:57
I just don't draw it because I'm not an artist, but I can come up with a pretty
00:30:02
good idea for something.
00:30:04
And that's been my favorite thing is to find a way to create it online.
00:30:08
I don't know. It's fun. So I'm still creating. I guess I could.
00:30:12
I think we're both creating, you know, Steve, the podcast, you know, as creators, right?
00:30:18
Because we both get joy out of this and we never script anything on the show.
00:30:24
So it's kind of whatever comes from our heart and our head when we're talking.
00:30:28
And I get a ton of joy out of this.
00:30:32
Not only do I get a ton of joy, but I learn so much.
00:30:36
And it's stuff that I can apply back to my own life.
00:30:40
And that's what I love about it. Yeah, people can be creative in the garden.
00:30:45
You can, yeah, just by putting a garden bed in, there's a level of creativity involved.
00:30:51
And I think it's a celebration of what makes quite unique as human beings too.
00:30:57
Yeah. Okay. So I have some questions. Uh-oh. I'm going to have a drink.
00:31:08
These are two of my favorite questions to ask. And then one,
00:31:12
I just started literally today.
00:31:14
If you could relive any day of your life without changing a thing, what day would it be?
00:31:19
Oh, I always think back to a time when my children were quite little.
00:31:23
So now I have grandchildren, my children in their 30s, and just that time after
00:31:29
school where I would walk and pick them up from school, we'd come home and they'd
00:31:34
have afternoon tea and we'd watch.
00:31:36
There used to be some really good quality children's television shows that were
00:31:40
at that level where an adult could really enjoy them.
00:31:44
And I suppose I'd love to do that again. I'd love to walk back into that room.
00:31:48
Yeah i love that yeah
00:31:55
okay next one if you
00:31:58
could travel back in time to a younger version of
00:32:01
yourself and give yourself a bit of advice what would you say and how old are
00:32:06
you when you go oh i think probably that 11 maybe 12 year old just got into
00:32:13
high school or yeah we only have We have two, we have primary and secondary college here.
00:32:19
So what would I say to myself?
00:32:21
Oh, I'd say just to be true to myself.
00:32:25
I think that's, and trust your intuition. Yeah, I think that's an important
00:32:31
lesson for all of us, but particularly at that age where you suddenly hit teenagehood
00:32:36
and things could just go really bad.
00:32:41
Yes, they can. They can.
00:32:44
Oh yes i can oh
00:32:47
yeah yeah so i think maybe
00:32:50
something i don't know that's maybe not specific enough but yeah but yeah just
00:32:55
being honest and being true to yourself okay yeah enjoy who you are yeah i love
00:33:02
that i wonder man 13 year old dirty skittles i don't know.
00:33:09
So that was a moment.
00:33:10
That was a moment. Okay, next one. What is the hardest lesson you have had to learn today to date?
00:33:18
Oh, the hardest lesson. I think I would bet. I think...
00:33:22
That I'm okay the way I am and where I am, and that's okay.
00:33:28
And I remember somebody saying to me years ago, it's okay to not be okay.
00:33:34
And this was, oh, gosh, it was 15, maybe 20 years ago, so before we had a lot
00:33:42
of, we were talking a lot about mental health. We knew it existed.
00:33:45
We knew that something had to change, but we didn't have the tools or the understanding.
00:33:51
Andy, I think I'm talking as a society and to me that was probably the one most
00:33:59
important thing to accept that I'm okay the way I am,
00:34:03
that perhaps this is where the universe wants me or God, you know, whatever you sort of,
00:34:09
pray to or think about or I think it's cool whatever you use or not.
00:34:13
I don't think one's better than the other. I think we tend to use tools that
00:34:17
we need and I think, yeah, that's Just that sense that I'm okay,
00:34:23
that it's okay. Today's okay. And, you know, yeah.
00:34:28
Yeah. And stop trying to achieve everything.
00:34:34
Stop it. I sometimes wonder about that because I'm like, I think where I'm at
00:34:41
now is so much, well, obviously it's so much better than where I started, right?
00:34:46
But I sometimes wonder, damn, damn, why did it take me so long to hear that kind of a message?
00:34:52
And no, I don't, I think for a long time, I didn't, not that I ran away from
00:34:59
who I was, but I didn't think I could be that version of myself.
00:35:04
And I don't know where that comes from, right?
00:35:07
But it's, yeah, eventually you get to a place where at least I would hope everybody
00:35:11
does where you're able to acknowledge that is me.
00:35:15
And I not only can I embrace it, but I can completely just dive into it headfirst.
00:35:22
Oh, this is all my show. Admitting, oh, I like to stay at home or I like to
00:35:26
read books or I like spooky things.
00:35:28
And I don't know why I hid from that for so long.
00:35:31
And now I'm like, there's little parts of me that I'm loving.
00:35:34
And give yourself that permission.
00:35:36
Yeah. And give yourself permission to not be okay.
00:35:40
Right. Yeah. And somebody said to me, you know, I'd be careful because after
00:35:44
she had COVID, she got really depressed.
00:35:48
Really. And she said, I've never experienced anything like that before.
00:35:52
And it's okay. You don't have to say, well, it's okay.
00:35:55
Don't fight it. Just, you know, my advice is if you're feeling sad,
00:35:59
then you're feeling sad. That's okay.
00:36:02
Yeah, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. You don't need to fight it. You don't need to justify
00:36:06
it. You can just say, I don't feel okay today. And that's okay too.
00:36:11
Yeah. And I think that, yeah, we need to have that. It's a sense of empowerment.
00:36:16
Yeah yeah anyway that's exactly what it is it's so crazy because then when you
00:36:20
hear somebody else say it it just seems like so simple but it takes a lot to
00:36:25
get there you know for yourself yeah,
00:36:28
and that it's okay not to be okay the really tragic thing for me is that person
00:36:33
took their own life and it was it's still it's you know it's still something
00:36:40
that sits really badly within it really upsets me because at that time,
00:36:47
you know, we could acknowledge that was okay,
00:36:49
but nobody, I don't think any of us really completely understood what that means
00:36:55
and what it means to be not okay in a world where it's, you know,
00:37:00
where we were, like, you know, we didn't have the language.
00:37:03
And this is one of the powers of art therapy is you don't need the language
00:37:06
to express your trauma. You don't need to be able to have the words to perfectly
00:37:12
showcase or tell someone how you're feeling.
00:37:15
You can do it with pens. You can do it with pencils.
00:37:19
And you can understand it and a therapist might be able to talk you through
00:37:23
it. But it doesn't matter if no one else understands it. Really?
00:37:27
You know what I mean? Does that make sense? Yes. It does. Yeah.
00:37:31
And I think that's really, it's really to sort of take control control of your
00:37:37
mental well-being and your journey.
00:37:40
But also accept that maybe nobody's going to completely understand it as well.
00:37:44
Yeah. And like I've been to talk therapy, I don't enjoy it at all.
00:37:48
I kind of feel that I'm a bit of a bird.
00:37:51
You know, they're looking at their watch. Oh, she's still talking.
00:37:59
Can you imagine?
00:38:02
They're just nodding going, oh.
00:38:08
Sometimes it's the hardest job in the world to be engaged like
00:38:10
that was some day after day i don't
00:38:15
know why i just imagine a therapist with one of the sand what
00:38:19
are they called yeah yeah and just yeah hourglass and
00:38:22
just continuously just flipping it over flip it over again
00:38:25
like just yeah still talking yeah
00:38:29
yeah i mean and that's the
00:38:32
thing it's not for everyone and especially if
00:38:35
that's not what you enjoy just knowing that there are other ways to find help
00:38:40
for yourself that don't include sitting across from somebody and telling them
00:38:45
your whole life story and it can tell i i actually thought it can take you know
00:38:49
six months or so to get used to your therapist and build up a rapport,
00:38:53
apparently it's about two years.
00:38:56
That's a lot of time. That's a lot of time. That's a lot of money.
00:39:02
A lot of hourglass splits. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's poor art there.
00:39:08
The hourglass will be clogged up in the end. Yeah.
00:39:13
So, but art therapy, you can actually, you can bypass it.
00:39:17
You don't actually need to, because it's something you've online as well,
00:39:20
because it's about the person.
00:39:23
It's so, you know, it's so centred on what they want and what they want to achieve.
00:39:29
Yeah. And they may not understand what they're doing.
00:39:34
At a conscious level, but your subconscious. I always do this when I talk about
00:39:38
my subconscious. My subconscious must be in the back of my head somewhere. I don't want to say this.
00:39:43
Oh, my subconscious is up. I don't know where it is. It might be in my shoe,
00:39:48
but wherever it is. Yeah.
00:39:51
It's screaming. It's like, you've got to fix this, or you're going to develop
00:39:56
PTSD, or you're going to develop some horrid cancer.
00:39:59
You know, your subconscious and your mind will physically manifest things,
00:40:05
almost like an alarm bell to say to you, and you know, like people who get chronic hay fever.
00:40:11
Okay, so that's an alarm bell. And there could be 10 people in a room and they're
00:40:16
the only ones sneezing. Well, what's really going on there?
00:40:18
All right, so at a scientific level, there's their allergies, blah, blah, blah.
00:40:22
But at an emotional level, there's something else going on.
00:40:25
Yeah. And that's what I think, yeah, that your subconscious is screaming at
00:40:30
you, going, do something.
00:40:33
Yeah. Take your medicine.
00:40:39
I almost think like that's part of the scary stuff too, because for some of
00:40:45
us, like taking the time to invest in yourself and not necessarily know what
00:40:51
it is that you need to fix,
00:40:53
but just know that there's something that you need to address is almost scary.
00:40:58
Cause you're like, shit, what is it? Am I, if I don't know what it is,
00:41:01
how will I know to treat it, you know? Yeah, and you don't need to know without therapy.
00:41:05
That's the other beauty whereas talk therapy
00:41:08
i'm not i feel like i'm dissing down on talk therapy and it's
00:41:11
it is incredibly important and the role psychologists do
00:41:14
when they will come back and you know the advice they can
00:41:17
give it's priceless in lots of situations but in our therapy yeah you can just
00:41:22
work through something and we again you don't need to be stressed or anxious
00:41:28
that you don't have the words that you can't explain how you're feeling you
00:41:33
know and that's why you know You know, those who've raised teenagers,
00:41:37
you'll know that, you know, it's one grunt for this and two grunts for that.
00:41:42
I was still, I don't know. You were there all day. Yeah, I don't know how it
00:41:47
went. I was there. I don't know.
00:41:49
It's not that they don't know. It's that they don't know how to express it.
00:41:53
They're that complexities of language. And, you know, you go,
00:41:56
oh, yeah, it's okay. You know, we all say things, hey, you're fairly,
00:41:58
yeah, okay. How was your day? Oh, it was okay.
00:42:02
It's just, it's like the word nice. It doesn't mean anything.
00:42:05
Yeah. The word nice just means it's the opposite of not nice. Right.
00:42:09
Yeah. How was it? It was nice. Yeah.
00:42:15
But yeah, but again, without therapy, you can really get down.
00:42:19
You can bypass all that sort of language stuff.
00:42:22
Right. And just really be free.
00:42:25
Yeah. Exactly. I wish I would have had this knowledge 19 months ago, right?
00:42:30
When I was going through all my
00:42:31
shit, right? Because I didn't know how to express myself. I didn't know.
00:42:36
I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what to do.
00:42:40
On the outside, I looked perfectly fine. That was good. On the inside, not so much.
00:42:45
Negative self-talk. I just hated myself. And I was so depressed.
00:42:50
So, so depressed. And I think that if I had known about art therapy,
00:42:54
then I could have started writing or doing something creative to maybe get outside of my head.
00:43:01
And just get to a better space but you
00:43:05
know and i'll say it time and time again i thank
00:43:08
god 988 picked up the thought picked up the phone thank
00:43:11
god there was that glimmer of hope and thank god my wife is home because life
00:43:16
on this side of depression is a thousand times better but now i have all these
00:43:20
tools that i've learned from our guests and you know i can add art therapy to
00:43:26
that because I think I've been doing it my entire life.
00:43:29
It just never came to me because I was in such a depressed state that I couldn't even help myself.
00:43:35
I'm super glad to be here. And like, I'm laughing and I'm writing and I'm coloring and you know what?
00:43:41
I don't care if people give me crap about coloring. You know what? I like it.
00:43:45
Are my pictures pretty? Probably not. Do I care? No, because nobody else is going to see them but me.
00:43:52
And they've done the job. Yeah. They've done the job. Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:58
Absolutely. Yeah. And that's really lovely to feel that, to have that,
00:44:01
you know, to go through that sort of state.
00:44:03
And I know with me, I got to a point where I never went fully back into that
00:44:08
terrible, depressive state. It was like my back hit a wall.
00:44:12
And every time I moved forward, I'd go back a little bit, but they're as bad as I went the last time.
00:44:17
And I think that's part of our journey, part of our empowerment.
00:44:22
And if it takes a long time to get there, then you've done the job.
00:44:26
That's okay too. You don't have to be fixed straight away.
00:44:31
And I think one of the most important things too is knowing that it's,
00:44:37
well, maybe I shouldn't say like it's never, but you have to continue to work on yourself.
00:44:44
You have to continue to use those tools that work for you because life is never
00:44:50
just boom all everything's going to be great now because you figured out what
00:44:54
was bothering you no like it will still take work to know who you are and and
00:44:59
dedicate the time to to help yourself,
00:45:02
and you need to trust yourself need to trust that you have the ability to help
00:45:08
yourself and there are times where we do need professionals and there are also
00:45:13
times where you can trust yourself,
00:45:15
to take control and use those gel pens and, you know, crochet an avocado or something.
00:45:21
I love people if they make me crochet at things.
00:45:25
That's one of my favourites. I can't crochet because my hands are all crippled
00:45:28
up, kind of tendersitis and things like I used to be able to.
00:45:32
So I'm kind of jealous when people talk about crocheting.
00:45:37
That's really good. I almost got a loom because my hands are,
00:45:42
I have really bad arthritis in my hands.
00:45:44
So I have a ton of yarn upstairs. I thought, you know what, we'll just get a
00:45:49
loom and then I can make something really pretty.
00:45:52
But, you know, then I have to find the time to do that. But with coloring,
00:45:56
it's just something I can,
00:45:59
It's there. I have all my tools right on my desk.
00:46:03
And I can just pick up a pen and I can start drawing or coloring or,
00:46:08
you know, write some words down on a piece of paper.
00:46:10
That, to me, is like the perfect way to kind of just get out of that mindset.
00:46:16
Like I was telling Dury Skittles, I had a hard week last week and I actually
00:46:20
had to go back and talk to my therapist.
00:46:24
My little empathetic heart just had too much. and I had told her what I was
00:46:29
doing and, you know, I said, you know, I sat down and I wrote and I did some
00:46:32
journaling and I started to feel better.
00:46:34
And she said, that's exactly what you needed to do because you needed to take
00:46:37
what was going on in your heart and get it on the paper so that you could try
00:46:42
and refocus what you needed to focus on. And it really did help.
00:46:46
And so did the hour worth of crying. But, you know, that was cathartic.
00:46:51
Yeah. Yeah.
00:46:55
Thank you so much. I mean, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk about this.
00:46:59
And I hope for anybody who's listening that this is the first time you're hearing
00:47:03
about this or if you just like to be creative in general, just give it a shot, man.
00:47:07
Just take time. If you're done, do it anyway. Yeah. Take time. Yeah.
00:47:12
Just release. I love that. Susan, where can people find you?
00:47:16
Well, honestly, it's going to say in the South corner of Australia,
00:47:20
but I'm going to do it at the moment.
00:47:22
I'm just looking at the outside. so um so well
00:47:27
i'm called mindful arts therapy so it's mindful arts
00:47:30
therapy with an s.com.au there's that
00:47:33
little colored bird i guess you'll see that everywhere particularly
00:47:36
on instagram and facebook if you look for
00:47:39
at mindful arts therapy you'll find me there my
00:47:43
books are on amazon again if you just search mindful
00:47:46
arts therapy you'll find them i have five activity books
00:47:49
i have a book about empowering and building
00:47:52
emotional routines i'm also
00:47:55
working on some really exciting books about the power how
00:47:57
women have used art as as a power to to take their voice across to talk about
00:48:02
issues so i've got some really exciting books coming up as well but yeah if
00:48:07
anyone wants to connect i do love a chat and i'd be happy to talk about it thank
00:48:12
you so much Susan. This was such a great interview.
00:48:17
Oh my God. I'm so excited.
00:48:20
What a perfect way to end the end our recordings for today.
00:48:24
I'm literally going to go upstairs, pour a glass of wine and color with my son.
00:48:30
Yeah. I love that. Hi all. Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
00:48:35
I'm G Rex and I'm dirty Skittles.
00:48:38
Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. We'd love to listen
00:48:42
to your feedback. We can't do this without you guys.
00:48:46
It's okay to be not okay. Just make sure you.
00:48:49
Music.
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