I'm thankful you are posting this blog. I'm a little bit alone here in my undertakings for providing healing arts to my community and I will probably be using this blog as fodder for my own articulations to people unaware of this amazing medium for healing.
You do so much for the community of art therapists.
Thank you for taking the time to do this as well.

Spirituality, Trauma, & Mental Illnesses
LeRoy Spaniol, Ph.D.
March 19, 2008

We all need something outside of ourselves to anchor our lives and give them meaning. Values, religious beliefs, commitment to family, community, or humankind, or a trust in God are all ways for us to put our individual lives into perspective and discover a purpose for living. The perspective we acquire for ourselves is spiritual because it is not limited to what we can see, hear, touch, or measure. It goes beyond these concrete experiences, connecting us to a broader life force.

Spirituality holds that all life is interconnected. There is a unity of body, mind, and spirit, and, indeed, of all life on this planet. Spirituality involves relationship—a relationship with someone or something beyond ourselves that sustains and comforts us, guides our decision making, forgives our imperfections, and celebrates our journey through life. This someone or something can be another person, a spiritual guide, a belief in the goodness of human nature, and/or a belief in God.

Our deepest spiritual encounters are experienced in and through our relationships—relationships that are intimate, mutual, and have the capacity to move us deeply. Spirituality has a redemptive quality. Because of our humanness we all make mistakes at times. For example, relationships are often strained or bruised. We need periodic redemption through the repairing of our relationships. Repairing is a way of being intimate.

We become vulnerable when we reach out to someone we have bruised or who has bruised us. The benefits are that our relationship can become stronger. The person we are close to will come to know that we care enough about them to keep the relationship healthy, loving, and committed.

Trauma, loss, and illness challenge what anchors us. These experiences can cause us to question what we believe. The onset of a psychiatric disability is one such traumatic experience. It is often experienced by family members and the family member with the illness as a profound disconnection from themselves, from others, from living, learning, and working communities, and from a larger sense of meaning and purpose.

The trauma of a mental illness can be further intensified by recurring traumas from the environment, e.g., it can be aggravated by the treatment system, by negative attitudes, by discrimination, and by professionals who pathologize the experience.
All family members may experience further disconnection due to their lack of knowledge, skills, and supports necessary to integrate the experience of a mental illness.

The uniqueness of this particular experience as a spiritual crisis requiring redemption (i.e., healing) lies in its ongoing impact on almost every aspect of a person’s life. For all family members recovery from a mental illness and recurring environmental traumas is a process of healing and building, or rebuilding, a life that is satisfying, connected to others, connected to their community, building an identity that is separate from the illness, and contributing to the greater good.

Recovery, as a spiritual journey, can be seen as a process of building or rebuilding our connectedness to ourselves, to others, to our living, learning, and working communities, and to larger meaning and purpose. To be connected is a natural way of being. It is how we begin our life and represents the underlying nature of how we are in this world. Disconnectedness is something that we learn—often as a way of surviving or coping with negative internal or external experiences.

Because connectedness is a natural way of being, it is one of our deepest yearnings and most satisfying experiences. Connectedness, therefore, is not simply a technique, or a way of manipulating others or ourselves. Connectedness is what is authentic for us—what is natural and spontaneous. To be connected is to be an integrated, mutual, contributing partner in this world we live in.

Recovery, as a spiritual path, is a journey, and this journey is also a means of personal empowerment—enabling all family members to confront the devastating effects of prejudice, discrimination, lack of resources, and low expectations.

It is never too late to begin the journey of recovery.

Thank you, Leroy, for your beautiful response to this blogger's first post. Your thoughtful words made me recognize an aspect of The Healing Arts that I would like to explore in future dialog: that the arts, like the spiritual journey you speak of and the process of recovery, are relational. Relationships to things or entities outside or beyond ourselves are part of the path to health, wellness, and one's sense of wholeness. My hope is that this continuing discussion may push the boundaries about how the arts provide that vital connection to the self, others, recovery, and empowerment.

Congrats Cathy!!! this is a great way to celebrate all aspects of the role of arts in healing , mental haelth and just plain life!!!!Thank you for promoting that which many of us hold dear..."In Karen Estrella's words,,,"just imagine",.....

Congrats Cathy!!! this is a great way to celebrate all aspects of the role of arts in healing , mental haelth and just plain life!!!!Thank you for promoting that which many of us hold dear..."In Karen Estrella's words,,,"just imagine",.....

So nice to see a blog on Psychology Today dedicated to the reality that the Arts are healing. Thank you for spreading the message beyond the Art Therapy community.

Dear Cathy,
Thanks so much for your wise words and commitment to the arts for healing. I also find creating, whether it be poems, collage, drawing, dancing, etc. to be engaging in truth-saying without the need for speech. Is it okay to send in excerpts from poems? There are so many ways to illustrate the way creativity heals using the words of Rumi, for example. Thanks again, Phyllis Klein, LCSW

Hi Cathy, I had a minute and looked up a poem by Brian Turner, a soldier who returned from Iraq in 2005, has now published quite a lot. I will post just a part of the poem. His book Here Bullet can be found on Amazon. Link: http://www.amazon.com/Here-Bullet-Brian-Turner/dp/1882295552

Sadiq

It is a condition of wisdom in the archer to be patient
because when the arrow leaves the bow, it returns no more.
-- Sa’di

It should break your heart to kill.
It should make you shake and sweat,
nightmare you,...
It should never be so easy as this.

*Sadiq is a transliteration of the Arabic word for Friend.