Fiber Arts &
Shared Trauma
Tactile materials may support clinicians who are experiencing the shared trauma of COVID-19.
I recently completed my doctoral qualifying exam which means that I will be starting my dissertation research this fall. My research will explore how fiber arts may be used to reduce the signs of shared trauma for art therapy students, educators, and practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shared trauma occurs when a client and a clinician go through the same community disaster at the same time (Saakvitne, 2002). It differs from other types of trauma in that the clinician is impacted on multiple levels (Saakvitne, 2002, Tosone, 2012):
Primary (you) / Intrapsychic
Secondary (people you care about or are responsible for) / Interpersonal & Community
Vicarious (exposure to client material)
Trauma can lead to negative changes in thinking, emotion, physiology, and relationships (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
While much has been written about the phenomenon of shared trauma in the social work, counseling, and psychoanalytic literature, the art therapy perspective has yet to be articulated. Research suggests that fiber arts such as knitting, weaving, and crochet may provide a “meaningful escape” from stressful situations (Reynolds, 2000, Reynolds, 2002, Pöllänen, 2015), promote feeling grounded, reduce negative feelings, and increase positive feelings (Collier, 2012), increase self-esteem and self-efficiency (Fraser & Keating, 2014), and reduce compassion fatigue (Anderson & Gustavson, 2016). Tactile art materials may facilitate access to memories encoded in the body through touch and movement (Sholt & Gavron, 2006). As such, fiber arts may provide a meaningful outlet for clinicians who experience shared trauma.
Check back here often to learn more about the research process and the topics of fiber arts and trauma.