Art Therapy on a Farm

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Art Therapy on a Farm; 

After 5 plus years of practicing as a counselor,  hearing an average of 30 peoples stories week to week searching for support, it really adds up how many people I have had the honor to witness. Sitting in “the chair” as the therapist witnessing, the themes you see that cause the most pain for people start to become clearer. 

And I started to become really frustrated.

I recognized in my role “sitting in the chair” in an office with them an hour a week- I am 70% of the time just treating the symptoms. 

In my own health physically, I am passionate about discovering the root causes and healing at the core. 

So how can I sit here and be a part of majority symptom management for mental health and not feel completely discouraged and broken up about my clients who need more than this. 

Mental health is only getting worse in America and I feel it is because we are studying the symptoms and symptom management more than the root causes. 

I can’t even explain the amount of laundry list self care and coping skills some are pushed to do to just be able to function throughout the day, it’s exhausting for them and it steals so much time from just living their lives. 

This can not be the only way, even though I’m a big believer in many modalities that support healing; somatic work, CBT, art therapy, acceptance & commitment therapy, DBT, focusing oriented therapy, trauma work, and etc- my question is why do we NEED so much constant healing and maintenance. 

This just does not sit right with me that such a  high percentage of us spend a good majority of our time and money trying to get better and manage so much emotional burden build up day to day. 

So… WHY DO WE NEED SO MUCH HEALING? 

My Three Part Theory

1. Our relationships are broken: 

As a society it has become so ingrained to be independent of everyone, most even see the simple social interaction of waiving to our neighbor as a bother. We are encouraged to isolate. We do not have a strong sense of community anymore and how to tolerate our differences and work together while still respecting and supporting each other. 

This even bleeds into our families, partners, friendships – we are so minimally exposed to community that we start to be disconnected from even those closest to us. As humans we were never made to exist as single persons, we were made to be people together.

 I feel this causes us to feel more insecure and self critical because we can not do it all. Though we were never made to do it all.

 We are searching for security and a sense of safety in ourselves alone and wondering why we still have so much anxiety and nervousness. It is because we were never made to be secure alone. Our deep instincts know we need others to be secure (even just physically). However, in today’s world we do not trust others because we are all living so isolated. 

This is where  the constant core conflict persists daily- making us sick. 

We were made to find fulfillment in our groups in the people we are together. But we lost that sense of togetherness and feel empty as individuals because we were never made to be this individual. 

The MEDICINE: COMMUNITY 

In reflecting and recognizing this problem I have become focused on how I can help this as a therapist? I can’t change our whole society, can I? No, maybe not. But what I can do is try to make my little neighborhood just a little bit better by creating containers for communities to form and be available. 

To get out of my chair, and get my hands dirty reaching out to places that can gather people in searching in their hearts to heal at the core with community. 

2. We have separated ourselves from nature:

All the richness and life of organic nature that we were made to soak in on the daily has been cut off. We are so under-nourished. The natural world was designed to nourish us. The way our society is functioning cuts us off from this nourishment and we can feel it is wrong but are so normalized in our indoor lives we have tricked ourselves into thinking we are more comfortable inside even if we have the free time to go outside. 

This neglect of nourishment triggers us to be in fight and flight most of the time making us more defensive, more low, and feeling less whole. 

In a very similar sense to the medicine of community with people to be truly whole – we were made to be in community with nature to be whole. 

When we cut ourself off from nature mentally we don’t see ourselves in the beauty of the natural world. We lose a big part of ourselves. 

The natural world teaches the balance between life and death, ecosystems, the necessity of seasons, the messiness of life but the beauty in that messiness, the fight to live, and the gift of life.  

We forget we are a part of the natural world made to have highs and lows made to exist as we are within the ecosystem. 

The MEDICINE: BE IN NATURE

Being another indoor place for my clients an hour a week after a long day of them sitting indoors (either at work or in school) just felt so broken to me. 

They are coming to me for help. I need to put myself somewhere that will really help routinely. Outside. 

I need to get out of this chair. That is why I am now committed to perform more outdoor walk & talk therapy, gardening , and more interactive farming opportunities in sessions.  This lets us incorporate nature as a mirror to work with as we learn to love and connect to the natural parts of ourselves.

3. We are drowning in convenience. 

Everything is easy, and it doesn’t take our participation to happen. We can get our groceries delivered with a few taps on a screen. We can look up any information we need to do something, without talking to others to learn. We have machines and technology that could literally do most anything we might want. We have found ourselves to be irrelevant and unneeded in our own society. 

How are we supposed to feed our reward center in a healthy way?

 We were made to use our hands. 

There is research I saw going around on the science behind what happens in the brain when we use our hands to work on something or create something. 

It is amazing how it is hardwired in us to work, struggle, persevere, participate, CREATE. 

We do not have a lot of opportunities today to do that, most school work and jobs require online work. This does not light up the brain the same way as hands-on learning and participation. 

Also most of the work we do is really abstract, we do not often have the opportunity to see hands on how it improves our communities.

 Even in very hands-on helping jobs like nursing have been shaped in a way that they do not get to see the fruits of their labor. They are structured like a machine, quickly moving patient to patient, task to task without getting many opportunities to connect deeply to their patients and be as hands on as they are capable of being because of pressures from management and protocols. 

The MEDICINE: HANDS ON WORK

Art Therapy at its core was the start of this solution in therapy. Art was found to transform the therapeutic approach further and be a favored treatment for trauma work because of its ability to reach parts of the brain talking just can not do. Now we are having an increase in somatic therapy, which I am so excited about. The research is catching up to the relationship our bodies have to emotional burden.  

These are all amazing but I have an inspiration to see how much farther it can go, what about gardening?! Or creating with nature?! This might be able to combine using our bodies in healthy natural movements in service with nature to PRODUCE something beautiful: food, flowers, herbs! Not only will we be given opportunities to let out some somatic therapy for our body, we will create with our hands and see the fruits blossom with our efforts. 

In Summary; 

This is why Farming felt so right for an answer to all three themes: it is hands-on, it is participating with nature, it requires a community to work together as an ecosystem. It is at our roots of being human and feels like a good place to start healing at the root. 

I hope you join in my journey here as I provide art therapy on a farm and see my dream come alive with all of our participation.