This is a newly published chapter that I have written with some esteemed colleagues who are also dear friends.
Caz, Kiran, Stephen and I are (and in my case, were) eating disorder psychiatrists; we know from long experience that the conventional symptom-focused mental health approach to treating eating disorders, and simply helping the people, needs something more. So we were really honoured and excited to have the opportunity to write this chapter in a book, The Oxford Handbook of Mental Health and Contemporary Western Aesthetics, just published by Oxford University Press (2023).
In the case of eating disorders but also for many emotional struggles, simply talking and describing our emotions are often really not adequate to describe or capture how our feelings are. Mere words are also not really a good way to begin to directly access the often complicated and tangled feelings we have. Furthermore, sometimes if we describe our experiences in words, we revert to ‘rehearsed narratives’ – almost like scripts that we have written for ourselves when we retell the experiences. And certainly for me, I find myself using the same words and even sentences, and then treading well-worn hurts and grievances as a result.
More creative mediums such as art, poetry, photography and movement can bypass those scripts to directly and more powerfully convey those feelings, and also be good ways to not just access but be able to open us up to change.
Caption: Sometimes, this is the way we feel..
This is very much the model that My Lighthouse: Explore© takes – that we are all creative beings (which is not the same as being artistically gifted, most of us aren’t!). Our creativity can unlock our inner emotional life, to enable us to discover things about ourselves that no amount of talking can do. Then having discovered new things about ourselves, our creative selves can find their own way to heal and recover, grow or simply find another new direction.
Caption: Growth and flourishing
Reference:
‘Creative Arts, Aesthetic Experience, and the Therapeutic Connection in Eating Disorders’ – by Jacinta Tan, Carolyn Nahman, Kiran Chitale, Stephen Anderson. In: The Oxford Handbook of Mental Health and Contemporary Western Aesthetics, edited by Martin Poltrum (ed.) et al. Published by Oxford University Press: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192866929.001.0001 Published: 2023 Online ISBN: 9780191957857 Print ISBN: 9780192866929
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