my art block and a trauma sandwich

[ShyTurtle]

A little background: I was adopted as an infant by an undiagnosed bpd mother who neglected and abused me. From an early age, my refuge was withdrawing to my bedroom and drawing for hours on end, uninterrupted. Creating art was my escape from the daily physical and psychological abuse.

Adult life: still making art, got married to a ud narcissist and had 2 kids. Then husband was jealous of the relationship I had with my art and he constantly put me down about my abilities and meddled with my studio time. Got divorced. After that, making art always involved a painful emotional release...like the trauma was pouring out of me and it hurt. So I stopped drawing and painting and focused on more unsatisfying and mundane things.

Revelation:

I can remember when I would come home after school and my mother would have the house torn apart, chairs moved and stacked because she opted to wash the floor right before we arrived home. It was always this way, and she was always full of rage. Before long, the broom or wooden spoon would come out and hair would fly. Besides these moments, she would always use housework as punishment for other things, or a way to harp at me, belittle me, or relentlessly harass me for the wrinkle I left in her shirt as I folded it. There were very few positive interactions with her, and of those that existed, they existed purely out of her need to look good in front of the outsiders to our family. The result of this was that (before therapy) every time I did anything related to housework in my adult life, I would begin to ruminate and feel suicidal. Nobody got it. Not even me.

So as I am trying to pick apart why I can't make art without emotional pain anymore, I realized that maybe this is the same trauma pattern as I experienced with my abusive mother and housework. Maybe this is related to the trauma associated with my ex being so jealous and suspicious of my art time - something which was so self-sustaining and healing to me - and he did his best to disrupt it and take it away from me. After I left him he tried to hurt/kill me on a few occasions so that was probably tangled up in my thoughts about him too.  I realize now that I have to let go of this association of connecting my abusive ex to my art. Art started out as healing and it is unreasonable to allow him to continue to disrupt this healing practise I created for myself all those years ago.

I hope this helps someone else on their own healing journey. It seems to me that for those who were abused as children like me, the trauma seems to build up like a multi-layered sandwich where the mustard and mayo drips down and connects to the other (earlier) layers of trauma. Also, the same layers seem to repeat themselves like slices of bread which keep showing up in our lives until we heal that part of ourselves.

If anyone else has art blockage healing stories, I'd love to hear about them.

[1footouttadefog]

I sorry to hear thst your artistic endeavors are stifled by trauma.

I have things in my life that are haunted in a similar way.

Perhaps you can use your art as a way to vent and deal with the trauma.  You could do so for either public or private consumption.  MYbe even paint or draw or charcoal your darkest feelings and memories then burn them in the BBQ grill as therapy. 

Maybe that could get past the block. Fight the art block with art.

There is alot of pain in some of the best artists' work. 

[notrightinthehead]

For me too,  art was my refuge. Then I stopped for a while because my NPDh repeatedly yelled at me that what I made was crap. After I left, I started making collages.  I created a Pain Diary. It helped me to put the pain on paper. I have shown this to one person only.
And a friend of mine, after a brutal traumatic event, for two years drew in charcoal, self portraits and household items. Dark images. Not easy to look at. His pain, fear, rage and darkness was tangible in his images.
So if your pain comes out when you make art, that might be a good thing. You are not doing it for anybody else. You are doing it for yourself. I love the image of a trauma sandwich. I hope you have put that on paper or into clay.

[ShyTurtle]

 Thank you, @1footouttadefog and @notrightinthehead

@1footouttadefog I really like the idea of a barbeque for the things I'm trying to release!

@notrightinthehead the idea of creating a pain journal and actually creating a pain sandwich. The image of the sandwich just came to me as I was writing that post. It works as a sculpture though. I'm going to get some clay out today and play with that idea. Thank you!