Untitled pastel drawing on paper by Bethany Altschwager, 2019
A few weeks ago I traveled to Maine to attend a family wedding and I was absolutely stunned by the vibrant colors of the foliage. Everywhere you looked was riot of orange, yellow, and red painted landscape. Peak season in the northeast has since come and gone, knocking the remnants into piles littering the sidewalks and crunching underneath my feet. The natural world has been a source of inspiration for me both as an artist and a therapist. This post will look at ways the metaphor of the tree can be used in art therapy to address themes of growth and concerns including anxiety, depression, and trauma.
“The tree shows us how, from a tiny, bare seed of potential, the self can come into existence, centered and contained, around which can occur incessant processes of metabolism, multiplying, perishing and self-renewal... The tree knows how to find nourishment even in the dead stuff, assimilates its own deciduous rot and the earth’s animal and vegetable decay.”
METAPHOR: The tree is an obvious symbol for growth and resilience. From a tiny, delicate seed eventually appears a sapling. Over time the sapling grows stronger, taller, and more stable as its branches reach towards the sky and its roots bury into the ground. Drawing trees, visualizing them in guided meditation practices, or working with natural materials can often feel very grounding which can help manage stress, anxiety, or trauma triggers.
RULE OF FIVE: If you notice yourself having anxious, negative, or depressive thoughts that feel automatic and are difficult to shake, try using the rule of five. Extend you hand out in front of you. Visualize your forearm as the trunk of a tree and your hand and fingers as the branches. Come up with at least one positive or more realistic thought for each of your fingers. The reason you should come up with at least five is because it can be pretty difficult to come up with this many. You will spend more time coming up with positive/helpful thoughts and less time dwelling on negative ones. Our brains are use dependent which means that the more we think the same thought and use the same neural pathways, the more likely these are to become shortcuts in our minds. We’ve already practiced the negative thought patterns so these are already shortcuts. The goal is to practice the new thoughts so many times that they become our new default way of thinking.
Here is an example of this process. You might have the automatic thought that everyone is staring at you when you leave the house. Some more realistic or helpful thoughts might be:
Most people are probably too focused on themselves to notice what I’m doing.
Other people don’t necessarily have the same thoughts about me as I do. If I’m feeling self-conscious that doesn’t mean that other people are going to be as critical of me as I am of myself.
If people are looking at me that doesn’t mean it is for a bad reason. I could be wearing a stylish outfit or might remind them of someone they know.
Some of the people I see today I probably won’t ever see again.
What strangers think about me is less important than what my friends/family think about me or what I think about myself.
Untitled acrylic painting on 11”x14” canvas by Bethany Altschwager, 2018
RULE OF THREE: The rule of three is a strategy for managing anxiety. First, draw or visualize a tree with three branches. Next, assign one worry to each branch. As you go about your day, remember that you only have room to worry about three things at a time. This means that if a new worry comes up you either need to let it go or let something else go to make room for it. This exercise can help put our worries and fears into perspective. Some are so small or outside of the scope of our control that they aren’t worth devoting our time and mental energy to worrying about them.