Exploring the Emotional Impact of Work Using Doodling
In therapy and life coaching – even when I teach mindfulness! - I use art as means of recognizing and reflecting on my clients’ emotional lives. I do the same for myself. Art can clarify so much where words regularly fail us. I will find a piece of art that resonates with my emotional state of mind, and start there. Slowly shape it into something that can be, in the end, articulated with words. I don’t draw because I lack any talent whatsoever for actually making art.
Through an exchange with a particularly imaginative and talented client I recently learned about an interesting way to work with emotions using drawing and decided to give it a go. I found it so useful that I’m very happy to share it with you, and my client has kindly given me the permission to share some of her work.
Struggling with body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRB), she sought to find something we call a „competing response“, a technique that would help her replace her BFRB with something that doesn’t cause damage. BFRBs are often related to emotions and are commonly seen as a way of avoiding processing and experiencing difficult emotions triggered by conflicts, thoughts, memories, images, different situations, etc.
My client cleverly decided to combine these two things (the competing response and the emotional background of BFRBs) into one technique. When the urge to pull her hair arises, she would do a 5 minute drawing. This would allow her to channel her emotions into something creative and to start giving them some symbolic elements, and at the same time it can defuse those emotions, “unglue“ her from the experience, making it less likely to pull her hair. Keeping her hands busy with making the art is in itself already a competing response: you can’t pull if your hands are busy! As she shared some of her artwork with me, I was immediately captivated by the power of the technique that she had devised. With her permission, I am sharing some of her work here:
As I look at this works I can’t help but think about the possibilities for further psychological explanation:
What is the relationship between the colors?
What are some associations that my client has to background color, or the way certain colors interact? (The yellow/green element in the upper right corner of the last image jumps out so much that it practically begs you to talk about it, perhaps outshining the interesting structure and order that exists below.)
What was happening in her body as she was drawing these?
What are some common themes running through these?
Her drawings seem full of information just waiting to be translated! The way that she formulated her technique was like this:
Think about your day (so far if day is not finished). How would you represent it in lines, shapes, colors? Draw/color uninterrupted for x amount of time and don't put down your stylus of choice during that time. When finished, reflection what you did. How are you representing things? Why did you choose that shape/color/line? Are there any similarities to past works you did? How do you feel after you are finished?
I highly recommend that you try it. I did it for a week using watercolors and the results were very interesting and at the same time too intimate to share in public; given that I’m a therapist, there’s only so much that I can share about myself.
I did, however, want to experiment with it a little more and make an experiment that I can actually share. So, I decided to amend the technique slightly and do it every day after work. I made two changes:
Instead of 5 minutes, I decided to create a quick blurb in about 30 seconds, but certainly under 1 minute; the point was to eliminate the possibility of my intellect to intervene as much as possible.
I added another image to illustrate the exact opposite feeling. As a constructivist, I think in opposites. There is no happiness without sadness, there is no good without the bad. We structure our experience in these binaries that we call constructs, and as a therapist this is what I’m interested in exploring, because when we talk about change or improvement, we are changing or improving our constructs. Drawings are merely their elements. By drawing the exact opposite feeling, I was hoping to articulate constructs at work, not merely their one side.
Below, I am sharing my drawings for one work week. In total, I have done this for 3 weeks now, but I am sharing only the first week – I will be making more posts about this technique. I had colors at my disposal too, but as you will see below, I didn’t use them. I will discuss why and explain. That in itself was quite insightful for me.
My workload has recently increased and I was interested in learning a little bit more about my emotional state of mind after work, as I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to immediately bury myself into a book or a movie, instead of taking a walk, exercising, seeing my friends, and all the other things I would normally do. This was an indicator that there is something happening there that is worth investigating, and what made me more determined to do it is that I wasn’t able to articulate exactly how I feel or how tired I am – all signs that I’m avoiding being in touch with my emotions. The solution to avoidance is to stop avoiding. Profound, I know.
Every day after work, I would sit on the sofa, take a few deep breaths and really tune into my body, see what’s happening in there, and then quickly make a doodle and then another one of what I feel would be the exact opposite feeling. My entire first week is on the picture below:
I know this looks horrible aesthetically, but I did say it was done in about 30 seconds and I did warn you that I have no talent for making art. Putting that aside, let’s see what we can learn from this.
First, when I look at my „visual diary,” I see that there is no color. This is not because I didn’t have it. I had markers in different colors as well as black pens of different thickness. Absence of color already speaks a lot. My week has no color in it. The second week and third week (not shown here) I extended this type of journaling to weekends as well, and I realized that colors appear when I don’t work. Just this fact alone told me that I need to find a way to bring some color into my work, and as I was incorporating changes into my routine in week 2 or 3, I felt the need to use colors as well. When I say color I mean variety, dynamics, humor, etc. Color may mean something entirely different for you though.
Second thing is that the left side contains much more sharp angles and sharp lines than the right side. I associate the right side with more flow and more tender emotions than the left side. It’s worth noting that the exact opposite feeling on Monday is very similar to how I felt that Sunday evening, indicating that there is a rapid shift in my mindset once Monday starts. Perhaps what I need is to be eased into my work week instead of jumping in it so violently?
Now, let’s take a look at the evolution of these drawings. Monday is full of sharp angles. Tuesday is too, although they are farther apart and less integrated. Wednesday seems to have more order although it’s quite dense and ends with that suffocating narrow right upper corner. Thursday’s structure is slowly melting down, whereas Friday only contains a small island of something we could call structure, everything else are random lines. I can see that as generally being more fatigued as the week progresses, but as I had more material to work with, my view of this slightly changed.
This correlates with my schedule, and it’s something that I didn’t quite understand before I took a look at these drawings at the end of the week. Once I spotted this pattern, I started wondering about it. Monday and Tuesday turned out to be emotionally exhausting and when I went through my schedule, I had an insight: not only do I work more (much more) on those first two days of the week, but I also have more emotionally demanding clients and meetings, those that leave my body full of excitation and tension. On Monday, I seem to be able to keep it together better than on Tuesday, which perhaps we can see by the slow disintegration of the structure on Tuesday’s drawing whereas Monday seems edgy but tightly held together.
Wednesday is quite busy (dense) but well organized and has its own defined flow, so the structure of the day provides some emotional support and keeps me in check. I feel safe and my body is quiet for most of the day. The opposite drawing suggests that perhaps some breathing room would have been nice. The end of the day (the narrowing of the drawing on the right) suggests that it doesn’t get any easier. Next week, I moved my schedule around and opened some breathing room there. Drawings pointed in that direction and next Wednesday’s drawing shows that change.
Thursday is not even symbolic: by the end of the day, I start to dilute my structure because I feel like I need rest. Thursday’s “opposite feeling” drawing is perhaps more interesting. As I was drawing it, it felt meditative and it’s the doodle that took the longest to complete even though there’s nothing particularly elaborate about it. I was moving the pen slowly following its own pace: I’ve had too much of my own schedule and had felt the desire to go with the flow, to follow rather than to lead, to see where the line will take me instead of me taking the line anywhere. This little doodle produced a palpable relaxation effect as I was making it. Here, I think I could fully understand why this worked also as a competing response for my client; apparently, doodling if done right is also a relaxation technique!
And then Friday, oh. Today is Friday and once I submit this blog to be published, I wonder if it will resemble this, as this Friday started off very slowly, with meeting being canceled and people being late and internet being strangely unreliable for no apparent reason. The opposite of Friday took us right at the beginning: as the week is ending, I’m craving that settling feeling that weekends provide.
Overall, my past month with the “visual diary,” as I call it, has been incredibly helpful and insightful, and if you struggle to identify your emotions or find them confusing, this could be a good way to approach them. Doodles are made quickly and the goal is not to analyze, but to express. It’s not very threatening as this kind of approach doesn’t require you to put anything into words right away or to even look at what you’re doing. Just let your hand move and it will know when to stop. Then leave it and continue with your day. Review from time to time, look for patterns with a cooler head, with distance.
As I’m wrapping up this blog I feel like I haven’t said as much as I had intended, and I am not sure if anyone will find it useful, although I certainly hope so. I will continue to experiment with this technique and share my explorations with you. You are also welcome to hare more of yours if you feel comfortable, I would be happy to post your artwork here. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to doodle my day.
