“The Lost Art of Shrinky Dinks”
“So much of
being sane and happy begins with the doing of things that are sane and happy.”
Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way Every Day P. 166
There are times when I am struggling
with some problem or question and find myself turning it over and over in my
head and feel like I am spinning my wheels.
I, like many fellow addicts (and just fellow humans), tend to overthink. I can complicate to most simple of tasks or
concepts. I can get myself so twisted up
that I can’t find my way out of a paper bag!
This is when my daily conversations with
Joe are most critical. I go outside on
my deck and look upward speaking aloud the issues that plaque me. In the ritualistic querying I somehow unkink
the issue and untangle my thoughts. The
road ahead becomes clearer and it’s as though a map appears. If the path forward is not immediately
evident then I am reminded that I must seek the advice and counsel of
others. Which people I should reach out
to becomes obvious to me in the early morning supplication. More often than not I find myself laughing at
how obvious the answer is and how blind I have been. I sometimes will be so excited or relieved
that I will rush back inside with my plan only to rush back out with an apology
because I haven’t finished my prayer and ended my conversation.
I find this over-complication with
clients as well. When a client is having
an issue with a significant other and expressing frustration that their partner
didn’t do what they needed, my first prompt is, “well, did you tell them what
you need?” Invariably the answer is “no”. Our partners can’t read minds so if we don’t express
to them what our wants or needs are, they are going to fail these secret love
tests every time. The simple answer is
to communicate.
When I mention meditation to clients some
of them balk at the idea. Traditional
meditation is what most people imagine, sitting in a quiet place and focusing
your mind so it does not wander. You can
do so in silence or you can use guided meditation. But meditation is about developing intentional
focus and minimizing your random thoughts, focusing attention and having an
open attitude. I encourage clients to
think of how that might look for them.
Listening to music might be meditation for them, if you lose yourself in
the music and you are no longer thinking about yesterday, or tomorrow and are
fully present then isn’t that a form of meditation? What about doing a jigsaw puzzle and getting
lost in that task? Meditation takes many
forms and you just have to find what best works for you – we make it more
complicated than it needs to be.
Then there is the concept of self-care. I always encourage clients to think about
self-care, generally ending sessions with questions about what they will do for
themselves in terms os self-care over the next week. This tends to trip people up. Most people are terrible at self-care, believing
that it will take too much time, or money.
I hear clients mention spa days and massages. Both of which are great,
but those are not the only things we can do.
You can take yourself out on a date for example, whatever that might
look like for you. Self-care can be much
simpler. Self-care can be a series of
small changes and gestures that you do for yourself. You can light candles, brew your favorite tea
and read a new book. You can cook a nice
meal and sit down to eat it with intention.
You can go for a mindful walk on a beautiful day. You can simply say “uncle” at the end of a
long day and go to bed early. All of
this and more is self-care. Don’t
over-complicate it and see it for what it is.
Depressed clients think that they have
to have some major, overnight shift in perspective that will have them
magically wake up feeling better and happy overnight. It doesn’t work that way unfortunately, but you
can gradually emerge from depression over time.
One way to help this process along is to do things that make you happy
(or used to). If you do things that used
to make you happy then at some point the mind’s muscle memory will kick is and
you will start to enjoy them again. But
does this mean that you have to book a trip to Disney? I mean you can certainly… But think simple. I have two groups that I facilitate. One is a women’s support group and one is a
chronic pain group. The chronic pain
group, as you may imagine, has members who deal with pain daily and often
suffer depression because of their bodily situations. We often cover heavy topics in that group and
we decided as a group that we would like a “fun day”. I asked them what they might like to do so I
would have time to put it onto place as it isn’t easy to organize such things
over zoom. The answer was some sort of
arts and crafts day. Thus I sent out
packets to them each and we had a session where we all sat on zoom and made shrinky
dinks together. Shrinky dink art is a
throw-back to my childhood and it did the trick. I had never heard this group of people laugh
before. This simple arts and craft
project was a joyful example of self-care at its finest!
Rule #62 in AA is “Don’t take yourself
too seriously”. We could all be better
served by listening to that advice more often.
