Self-awareness: The Transformative Power of Art in Mental Health and Why Words Are Not Enough

The healing power of art is not just for the artistic. As a life coach, healer, mental health advocate and social artist who’s been on the ground working with over 10,000 people individually and running campaigns nationally, one thing I can tell you is that while conversations and awareness around mental health have increased in the last 10 years, our ability to apply that awareness to our own mental health and examine the state of our lives has not quite experienced that same spike.?

What I’ve noticed is that people often struggle with having awareness and being able to identify the struggles they are going through despite the surge in awareness raised around the topic of mental health. This is not necessarily because of an inability to articulate themselves, but rather a function of the intangibility of our lived experiences.?

The way mental health is currently being incorporated into the education system and in the workplace is largely one-dimensional. This is limiting because our experiences, our mental health, even our physical and emotional health, are all multi-dimensional in nature.?

For instance, the way education about mental health is being rolled out commonly involves a literary or verbal rundown of common mental health conditions and the symptoms often exhibited. The way emotional and stress management is often taught involves a literary or verbal rundown of sadness, anger, happiness, and rather surface methods of ‘dealing’ with ‘unpleasant or difficult’ emotions.?

But what about the people with experiences that don’t exactly fall into the literary definition of a mental health condition? What about the subtle emotions such as guilt, contempt, disgust, envy, jealousy, and the deeper emotions such as rage and grief??

Raising awareness and educating the public about mental health, a multi-dimensional topic, using a one-dimensional method, is incredibly limiting and alienating – especially for those who are distant or unfamiliar with the field, those who are especially disconnected from themselves, who are lost in life, or even those in the minority communities.?

Where the power of art lies is in its ability to touch a person and connect with them where words cannot – in a way that is entirely unique and personal to them. A picture speaks a thousand words, and there are endless experiences we go through in life that cannot easily or simply be expressed through words. Why then, do we so often limit ourselves to the use of words?

This is especially important considering the spectrum of mental wellness that exists, as well as the countless number of backgrounds that people hail from, their psyche, and the baggage they bring. Aside from the regular working and student populations, we’ve also got disabled communities, cancer survivors, the special needs communities, people living with mental illnesses on the severe end of the spectrum, people living with disorders or impairments that affect their functionality such as dementia, children, foreigners having to express themselves in a language that is not native to them – the list is endless.?

Mental health is only part of the larger spectrum of mental wellness that exists, and mental wellness takes into consideration all aspects of our lives – our relationships, our careers, our overall health and vitality, effectiveness as a person, and our fulfillment. Issues that surface in these different areas may not often appear to be related or have any significant impact on our mental health and wellness, but that is precisely where the gap presents itself in our ability to self-examine, work on ourselves, and thrive.?

There is another population often alienated from the mental health conversation – the group of high-functioning people who, by society’s definition, have achieved the peak of success in life. These are often your CEOs, peak performers, and multi-millionaires who often appear to have all the answers to life. But even they have their own sets of issues that only being a CEO or multi-millionaire would bring. It is the illusion that money solves all problems that alienates this group.

As I mentioned previously, mental wellness is a spectrum on which everyone falls. Everyone has their own place on the spectrum unique to themselves – their psyche, background, circumstances, needs, goals, and the list goes on. A person living with severe bouts of depression can have good days, and this doesn’t negate the overall state of their lives and the struggles that they go through. Likewise, a high-functioning person who appears to be largely successful in life can absolutely have depressive periods or phases of difficulty.?

There is art that is designed and created to express. There is also art that is designed and created to spark a person’s conscious awareness about themselves. In my line of work, the latter is what I specialise in. I’ve been running yearly workshops exhibitions raising awareness for mental health and suicide prevention through experiential multi-media artworks that get a person to go deep within themselves and examine what really matters to them at their core.?

One of my works, No Mud No Lotus, exhibited at 2021’s show at Duxton Hill, invites guests to explore their relationship to adversity, courage, and resilience by connecting to mud and lotus flowers. By interacting and connecting with soil on the ground whichever way they wish–by walking barefoot, sitting, standing, or even lying down–they will enter into an introspective state in which they can gain self-awareness and an understanding of how they can work through their own personal adversities and stand on their own two feet.

No two guests walked away with the same realisations and insights. Each one took away something powerful that they could apply back into their own lives, to do something differently, and make a difference to themselves.

With art that is used to connect a person to themselves on a deeper level, there is no right or wrong interpretation. Through this form of art, subtle nuances and experiences can surface, be felt, and brought to our awareness – even without the words to intellectually understand them. In essence, art can be used to bypass what words cannot express, to bypass what lies beyond our intellectual understanding.?

We like to think that we know ourselves best, but we are often blind to the multiple personas we carry within us that surface in different circumstances for different purposes. We behave one way when relaxed, another way when under pressure, another way when it’s time to get serious, another way when we need to be someone to another person, another way when we need to connect deeply, and another way when it’s time to let go enjoy ourselves fully. Yet, we concern ourselves with adjectives like ‘kind’, ‘caring’, ‘hardworking’. We obsess over personality tests and bank our sense of understanding and belonging that we feel towards those test results – as if those words encompass the whole of our being.?

We all strive towards being our true selves and living a life that is true to us, yet in instances when other parts of us surface that don’t match the image we have of ourselves or parts that are socially frowned upon, we are quick to dismiss and deny those parts. Most of the time, we don’t have that curiosity to even examine what these parts of ourselves are about, what triggers them to surface, and why they surface.?

What is undeniable is that like driving, we all have blind spots. We know what we know. We know what we don’t know. We don’t know what we don’t know – and it is often this that causes the biggest issues in our lives, whether we are conscious and aware of them or not.?

That is the reason why our approach to mental health and wellness cannot be one-dimensional. Words are necessary, but not enough, if we were to reach out to as many people as possible, who are yearning for illumination.?