Self-care was a topic I wrote about last month, and its actually a constant theme in my thoughts, as I work in a stressful and emotionally demanding area, as a therapist with children and families. Increasingly lately, this has been impacting on my sleeping patterns, which are becoming unhelpfully unreliable.
Last night, whilst awake when I didn't want to be, I tried imagining an 'anxiety monster', as this would be something I might ask my clients to do. This is how it looked in my mind, sort of. Its more 3D than this, and I am planning to make a soft textile version...
I have tried to keep drawing, and posted some of my daily drawings on Instagram for a week.
I can see self-care creeping through in this drawing! Its been important to me to try to stay healthy and keep up my exercise regime and meditation practice, but the meditation has been slipping of late, which I suspect is impacting on my sleep. Everything is connected, somehow.
This collage was prompted by a dream of walking along the muddy banks of a river, probably the river Dart, which flowed through the town I lived in during most of my childhood, Totnes in Devon, South West England. It was completed in my peer supervision group, and it is also anticipating some exciting new work projects.
I attended a great training workshop with Liana Lowenstein, a Canadian social worker, and prolific author, who also works with children, in private practice. And this week I am going to another of her workshops, this time in Sydney. The drawing is of my family as Brassicas, which I completed in Liana's workshop.
My younger son has been overseas, and this has been inducing some anxiety, although its also given us an early taste of having the proverbial empty nest. And that has been fine...
A chapter I co-wrote with a colleague has been published in a new book on working cross-culturally in creative therapies. This is really exciting. There is another chapter on the way, in fact, just about to go to the publisher, which has some great research results for art therapy. That may take a while to be published, but its even more exciting, as its the result of collaborative work with two of my colleagues over almost a decade.And I believe its ground-breaking.
There is certainly a lot happening on the work front. And its mostly all good. I just hope I can keep a good perspective on things, not get overwhelmed too often, and get back into daily mindfulness meditation.
I'll keep you posted, excuse the pun.
Namaste.
more later
