Trauma & Art

‘And if you stand on tiptoe, you can see the whole way that you came…. and a little further’                      from Zoe’s Tower (1991, Paul and Emma Rogers & Robin Bell Cornfield, Walker Books London)

Influences….

Swedish author, Astrid Lindgren, created Pippi Longstocking in 1944 when her nine year old daughter asked for a story while staying home from school with pneumonia. I, too, during my many bouts of bronchitis and asthma …, was read extracts from Pippi Longstocking’s books and also told many other stories…

& Privacy….

‘All violations of essential privacy are brutalizing’ Katherine Fullerton Gerould

‘…They realized (as if by electric shock) that private and public are two essentially different worlds and that respect for that difference is the indispensable condition, the sine qua non, for a man to live free; that the curtain separating these two worlds is not to be tampered with, and that curtain-rippers are criminals” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Our associational brain, animal symbolism and colour combinations 

The Tyger by William Blake

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Reframing experience

‘However, humans – unlike other reptiles relying mainly on a brainstem reaction – have the ability to tend and befriend in times of stress, which elicits oxytocin release, resulting in activation of the social engagement system involving mammalian limbic and cortical areas. Cortical processes, too, can find meaning in responses to stimuli that allow the stress to be viewed as challenging, rather than threatening; this results in the experience of positive emotions rather than prolonged negative states of fear, anger, sadness or helplessness. Ultimately, believing you can master stress by viewing the experience as a challenge rather than a threat can alter the biological effects of stress by harnessing more flexible neural circuitry than reactive brainstem systems utilized to deal with threat’ (from Dan Siegel’s Mindsight Journal, March 2015)