I recently had the impulse to use play as a way to invite more support for healing complex PTSD and attachment trauma that are getting stimulated as I take over my mother’s financial and personal life because she is losing self-agency due to dementia. Painting is a big resource for me that I rarely indulge in and I wondered if the “Art of Allowing” process, which I introduced in the last post, might be another way of facilitating healing.

I’ve been increasingly motivated by significant flares of fatigue and other patterns linked to freeze in my system over the past few years, including an intensification of familiar old feelings of low self-worth, that I am “failing” in my life, and the sense of being burdened and trapped to the point in which life and work are a slog. Recognizing that increased family-related stress is triggering these symptom flares is inspiring me to meet it by increasing my resources. Playing with paint is one of those resources that I’ve recently been drawn to.

The adventure has been awe-inspiring. It has initiated shifts in internal alignment and meaning. Here are some of the experiences I’ve had from following the impulse, listening, and allowing things to unfold. It has blown me away over the past 3 weeks and I couldn’t wait to be far enough along to share it with you.

Self Guided Journey Through a Doorway

In preparing to paint I started with a clear intention of asking for help in healing complex PTSD so I can be more equanimous and matter-of-fact with this situation that many of us experience of supporting a parent. I gathered my paints and brushes, sat down at my desk, and imagined myself going slowly down a set of steps until I reached a door. I waited until I was ready and then reached out to open it.

I was taken aback when, instead of the door opening into a space, water with the intensity of a tsunami poured through it and over me. It was startling and intriguing because I did not get knocked off my feet or thrown off balance. In addition, despite fear being a constant companion in recent years, I was not afraid and simply stayed put, standing on the step. This was a first message from the process, suggesting that there is a solid base of resilience and resource within my system, now, just as it is. That even though I’ve been overwhelmed by the current situation, I am facing it in a steady way. It was a lovely and unexpected beginning to this process. A sense of reassurance. An invitation to stay curious.

The water was clear. I waited. The water level stayed high although it became less forceful and after a while, I followed the urge to simply swim through the door. What I encountered on the other side was the quiet stillness one finds at the bottom of an ocean.

The part of me that was guiding this process decided that, since this was just play, I could breathe under water and so I stayed there, hanging out near the bottom. I watched kelp sway slowly in front of me. My system felt a settling. I saw bubbles slowly rising. A sandy ocean floor. And rays of light sparkling down from the upper right. My system settled further.

This sense of settling is consistent with a resource that is in the realm of the social nervous system instead of fight, flight and freeze. It’s indicative of states of the ventral vagus and of being connected to self and to the world around me. It was another suggestion of a foundation of deep resource, which we can encounter when we dive beneath the surface where turbulence lives.

I hung out with the kelp and the bubbles and the light for a little while and then I felt ready to paint. The experience gave me an intuitive place and the colors of light blue and sand to start with. I had originally planned to use the same paint colors I’d used in my previous painting so that they might “go together,” but the process had other things in mind. As processes so often do.

Paint from Impulse Rather than “Going for Pretty”

This first pass created a background that served as the starting point for my exploration. When I made it I was painting just for fun and doing what felt good. I made wavy movements like the kelp, had the idea to add a lot of bubbles, and then finished with a thick streak of light coming from the upper right. There is no right or wrong in this process, which is part of what I love about it. It carries support for following your impulse in the moment. That’s where the treasures lie.

I then observed the painting over the next few days, looking to see if a face or a figure would emerge. I saw a few small and partial faces and figures. On the 2nd or 3rd day I found the hint of a face that made me excited (#1). It’s the streak of light I’d added as a last component to my background that somehow brought her forth so I could see her.

What first caught my attention in #1 was her gaze. It was so direct and clear that my own vision, which has been intermittently fuzzy this year (a potential sign of freeze and relative dissociation or shut down), cleared almost immediately. While it didn’t stay clear in the following weeks, the shift in my system and the sensation of “Oh!” as I felt into what that gaze was like, were strong indicators that this was a path to follow.

I then experimented with bringing her forward in #2. It took me some additional tries to fit what I was seeing in the background and the unfolding itself was fascinating.

Part 1 of Healing Complex PTSD through Play

Is She a Soldier?

As she emerged I felt a quality of soldier / fighter energy. I felt it in the strength of her gaze. In what seemed like some kind of armor on her forehead that could have been a helmet. I saw it in the mouthpiece, and in the camouflage on her shoulder where the arrows point in the image above. Or maybe the camo was actually a turtle shell, which implied a form of self-protection. I brought her in to explore with my art therapist, who saw the camo as an epaulet. This also fit for me and added another layer of strength. Whatever it was, this part of the painting seemed to hold a layer of protection and strength.

An energizing part of the art of allowing is that the adventure is not simply in the act of painting. It’s also in the feelings that emerge or get stirred up. In dreams that might arise.

I had trouble sleeping that night as I wondered if I had a soldier on my canvas. I actually felt agitated and disturbed by that. Perhaps it was a sense of disappointment, “Is this what I’ve created? A soldier? As the answer to my question about developmental trauma? Am I supposed to carry the metaphorical energy of wearing or using a gun?” I kept in mind that fight energy is important to notice and honor when we are healing trauma, because it often represents something that got suppressed or that did not have time or the option to be used for successful escape or self protection. Feeling or even expressing fight energy is one way that can support states of freeze to thaw. I have experimented with fighting and using anger in my family system, as a regulated adult using my rage in a controlled and mindful way from a place of choice rather than reaction, and I have not found it to be particularly helpful most of the time. This also contributed to my sense of doubt about this potential direction.

I wrestled with this possibility throughout the night and the next day, I was drawn in a different direction in which she felt like a warrior rather than a soldier. This concept carried something larger within it. It wasn’t a gun she seemed to be carrying, it was the light. She was shining a light, allowing herself to see clearly. She also used the tool of communication, which was linked to the mouthpiece that was already in the background painting.

As she took shape, a few unexpected questions arose.

Can I be Strong and Female?

I next made a course correction for her to fit more closely with what I was seeing on the canvas. Her face lengthened. As a result, with no planning on my part, I watched her grow from a teen in #2 to a woman in #3. She maintained her clear, direct gaze through that transition.

A set of unexpected questions emerged with this step. The first was, “Can I be strong AND female?”

In the past year I’ve noticed a significant thinning of my hair. A session with someone who works in energy medicine suggested that hair, for me and for the feminine aspect, can be linked to having an internal sense of strength. I haven’t been feeling very strong in my sense of Self.

This internalized belief that I cannot be both strong and a woman felt linked to growing up in a culture of subtle yet pervasive misogyny. One in which you can be female OR strong, but not both. Looking at this woman emerging in my painting, I saw that her gaze stayed clear and direct, and that she looked strong even as she grew into womanhood. Seeing it did something to a part of me I hadn’t known was there. One who did not believe this to be true or possible. It was a subtle way in which healing complex PTSD through play was supporting the potential for internal shifts at a subtle level.

Can I be Strong and Beautiful?

As I continued to refine the face to fit an internal and intuitive sense that drew from the original background image, the partner to the first question came up, “Can I be strong and beautiful?”

The question seems to have the same origins as the first – misogyny as a form of systemic oppression in the culture I’ve grown up in. I felt this in medical culture too, now that I think about it. Can I be beautiful and intelligent? Compassionate and knowledgeable? Strong if I am also tender? Could my mother? Or her mother?

Here too, when I looked at the image forming on my canvas, I saw that she holds all of these qualities. A deeper beauty is emergent even as she also feels strong, intelligent, discerning and clear-eyed. Maybe a little sleepy-eyed in the rendition above as I learned how to paint her eyes, but someone who feels like she is on a mission and not a person to mess with, even as she didn’t feel threatening.

I also found that she was holding a light. It seemed to be a lotus because of the shape in the background painting.

I Can be Strong Even if I am Afraid

When I took the steps of adding shadow and contrast to her face, and of refining the details around her eyes, I somehow created a look of fear in her gaze. At first, I was disappointed to see that the strong, clear, direct gaze had changed.

I studied what I might have done with my paint brush to create that look in her pupils and irises, in her eyebrows or the folds above her eyes. Nothing I tested made a difference in that look of fear. I gave it some time.

I was intrigued because I know that internally, I feel fear a lot of the time and it typically has no real source I can identify. I have felt that at least part of my fear links to a childhood in a household where there was no emotional support or landing space to experience being comforted. There was no kelp swaying slowly in a gentle current as bubbles lazily rose and the light shimmered down. There was no place to be quiet, strong and me at the same time.

As I spent time with this phase of her I grew to simply like her as she was. Maybe she was holding the fear I held and providing potential insights about it. I decided to leave her as she was and see what might show up.

I gradually came to the realization that I can be afraid and still be strong. That’s how she looks to me. Sometimes I also see a hint of compassion in her eyes even though there is fear.

Can I be Strong Enough to See Clearly?

I brought my Warrior to two art therapy sessions and we explored some of the themes that were emerging. One theme about her gaze was a reminder that when you are a child, seeing the truth of a situation such as a lack of a supportive, nurturing, attuning capacity in one’s caregivers, can be terrifying. As a child it would not have been realistically possible for me to go anywhere else than my family, and thus seeing that there was insufficient support could have stimulated a sense of my life or survival being at stake.

Over time I noticed that the Warrior’s gaze felt clear even with what my therapist, in a spacious observation that I could take or leave, felt might be a vigilance rather than fear.

The act of seeing her gaze remain clear despite fear or vigilance supports me to keep seeing clearly. To keep seeing the patterns within me. Seeing the patterns in my family system. Seeing their impact on me. And to keep growing my capacity for seeing without reacting or judging. Because what I am seeing is simply what is.

Her eyes now seemed to be focused on something in front of her rather than something in the distance, which turned out to be an orb. Or a cell. It was something round with a good protective boundary around it.

I had a boost of intense excitement the night I felt the impulse to highlight the blue circle and to make it a clear and defined entity.

Beauty Comes from Within

I next gave her a ponytail of long, curly red hair. I saw curls on the far right of the background painting at the very beginning along with hair at her crown that looked like it was pulled back. Something felt empowering in this relative act of self-agency of having long hair left partly loose. It’s part of what differentiated her as a Warrior, who is in charge and in command, rather than a soldier who is following rules from above.

When the idea of red hair first popped into my mind, very early in this process of watching what wanted to emerge, it simultaneously gave me a jolt of excitement and a bolt of terror. It felt like such a bold move. One that would completely alter the feel of her, and of the painting.

When the time came to add her hair the painting was at a stage that I really liked and could be happy with as it was.

It therefore felt like a big risk to follow the impulse.

I took the step of committing to hair, and whited out the interesting bold details of the background painting where her hair would go. I also whited out the lotus that first held the shining light, because I found it ugly.

What followed was a process of learning how to paint hair, with lots of trial and error, and whiting over my first attempts. I find her hair beautiful and it adds a boldness. I was surprised, however, to discover that she looked more beautiful in the previous version of her with the white hair or “no” hair. It was another insight.

I saw that beauty comes from within. Hair can contribute, but it’s not the beauty itself. It was a helpful message for the part of me who is experiencing hair loss even as I explore how to grow my sense of inner strength.

The Warrior’s hair also evokes the kelp. It has the quality of gentle, wavy movement within it. A feeling of the quiet place at the bottom of the ocean where there is flow. Where things are calm. Where all is ok.

I Have an Ocean of Calm and Light Within Me

It felt like another big set of risks to paint things on top of her hair that took quite a bit of effort to create. The beam of light, however, was something I had a clear desire to bring back into the painting once the time was right. It had been such a big part of the initial imagery and a place in which my system felt calm and supported and connected. The bubbles went with that feeling too. Once it was done I loved it and had no desire to go back or undo it. Something so much bigger and more layered than I had imagined was unfolding before me.

My Task is to Stop Believing the Negative Messages

And then I started to see a protective quality within her. What looks like an epaulet also looks like a right hand. Her hand is easier to see in an earlier version of her that I highlight with a circle below.

Her right hand is holding something back. I see all kinds of ghoulish looking faces beneath her hand (see what’s in the circled area below). They represent my negative and limiting internal beliefs. Negative beliefs are at the heart of complex PTSD and attachment wounds that drive symptoms. The pain and trauma comes from a learned sense of not being enough, or good enough, or smart or strong enough, or agile or supportive or thin enough.

One of my tasks that she is highlighting is to work in an even more focused way to protect my Self from believing or being drawn into the false beliefs that have become so deeply embedded within. My task is to be diligent in noticing when they are speaking and to identify and name them, whittle them down, and not get blindsided by their arrivals, judgments and false insinuations.

The Warrior’s hand has taken on all kinds of qualities as I’ve watched it over the past few weeks. It is firm, and it’s intention is clear. It also feels gentle. It is not squashing what is beneath it, merely keeping it at bay. There is no judgment. It is matter of fact, a quality I want to grow more of in my current situation that has been a trigger with family.

It is also the hand of a mother, a question that my therapist asked (“Is she a mother?”) and that took me a few days to feel into the answer. As a mother, she, and her hand, feel even more focussed, protective and unperturbable.

Part 2 of Healing Complex PTSD through Play

Transforming Fight

3 weeks into painting with the Warrior I was starting to feel she was complete. And then, in the middle of a quiet Sunday morning, my left hip suddenly started to hurt so intensely that I could barely walk or climb the stairs. I hadn’t injured myself or fallen. I had no redness or swelling or fever.

The sudden arrival of this pain made me curious. I’ve done a few sessions in energy medicine around mild discomfort in this area over my left hip that has felt tender when I sleep on it. This has gone on for many years now along with a few months of deeper pain that eventually went away. The insight from the sessions was that pain in our hips can reflect being stuck or having trouble moving forward in some way.

This pain was different and it was intense. I had a restless night with poor sleep as I pondered this question. I thought through all of the things I’m actively engaged with and working through. I came up with nothing new that might be untended until a little nudge in the wee hours said, “Attachment.” Keep deepening your work with that. And a dream a little later suggested that I was inhibiting something that wanted to be born.

I was stumped for a while the next morning until I looked at my painting and realized that I had really wanted to add the light of a galaxy inside the orb. The idea had brought in a feeling that the orb is me, and that I, too, am a special light that is beautiful to look at.

I had watched videos on how to paint the special light I’d been enamored with that looks like a “galaxy” but I hadn’t felt clear on how to achieve the effect I’d wanted. Then I’d fallen into doubt, “Well, maybe trying to add one more thing is too much. The painting needs some negative space. Maybe I’m just having trouble stopping because I’ve been having so much fun.”

The moment I decided to give the galaxy a try, the hip pain improved by 50%. And the most beautiful inspiration arrived in my inbox as my Astronomy Picture of the Day, with a Nebula called “The Statue of Liberty” (see the picture at the top of this section).

By the end of the day the galaxy had turned into a nebula and then into a Jedi Knight in a white robe. She, too, is a warrior. She has an automatic weapon instead of a laser. It’s pointed towards the upper right of the painting, pointed to an area above the Warrior’s head. Or it could be a platypus, which we see when the light is just right and reflects off the gold paint that I applied to that spot a week earlier. The platypus represents something completely unconventional and unexpected. So does the Jedi.

The Jedi in #7 has the skills, the ammunition and the tools needed to defend and protect herself. She is looking and facing to the right. She can also be looking straight at you, the viewer of the painting, pointing one orange arm in your general direction while holding a baby in the other. She is wearing a Jedi’s robe. Or a ball gown.

I also now see that a fighter has been in the Jedi’s position since the original background painting in #6. He holds the same weapon. Or it could be a wing. It feels like he represents the masculine, based on the size and shape of his face and head, which is looking up towards us. His feet are firmly planted and he, too, is well stocked with gear and ammunition.

The Jedi wields her power and strength with choice and clarity, rather than from a position of reactivity. Her way of fighting includes intuition, compassion, and wisdom. I can ponder how she might dance her way through the family situation that is triggering so many flares and symptoms for me. Being “wiley,” for example, is turning out to be much more successful for me than the use of metaphorical “blunt force.” I’m also learning how to be direct, forceful and blunt in ways that provide needed support for my mother or protection and a boundary for myself.

Bringing in platypus energy might also give me unconventional ideas that support how I move with and through this and other challenges.

I’ve been transfixed by this latest emergence in the painting.

The Jedi is such a transformational figure. She even looks like Taylor Swift in her Enchanted ball gown on her Eras tour, which I’ve been watching (and rewatching) lately as a new resource. Taylor metabolizes the attacks and hurts slung her way into profound music that brings joy because of all that she has worked through in the process of creating it.

My hip pain lasted 48 hours. It was 90% better by bedtime on Jedi night, and resolved entirely the day after I brought her to life.

I’ve been blown away by all that has emerged in this painting experience. The beauty. The strength. Not one, not two, but three Warriors. The power behind the messages they convey. The ocean and it’s comforting space of calm support. Fight energy has permeated this process and been there all along, just in different forms than I could have ever imagined.

I Am Enough

The hand of the red-headed Warrior feels like it has been protecting a part of me that’s been in the process of healing. She’s been acting as Command Central, supporting my process of shifting towards a light that sees clearly, accesses intuitive knowing, and that connects and communicates. I’ve been growing in and accessing more of my social nervous system as my freeze and underlying fight responses gradually shift.

There’s a feeling that this more nuanced sense of “fight” can support my work with family needs and interactions, and with triggers so that it continues to evolve.

This is what the Warrior has been looking at with such focus and vigilance.

This is the transformative process the Warrior has been protecting.

I am The Warrior.

And I am the Jedi.

I am a Fighter.

I am a Nebula.

I am a Galaxy.

I forgot how big I am.

We are all Galaxies, enormous, incredible, spiritual beings walking about in our little sacks of water that allow us to roam the earth and have amazing adventures in a human form. These experiences can be excruciatingly difficult, challenging, mind blowing, exciting, joy-inducing and deeply connecting.

My task is to keep dancing with the light. To be okay with having to protect myself when necessary. To keep listening. Internalizing these healing messages by noticing how my body feels them in sensation. By experimenting with what it’s like to make the statements I’ve been receiving and notice what arises from that practice. To absorb what it’s like to know that I am Enough.

My Practice is to Internalize the Messages that Support Self Love

This experiment with the Art of Allowing responded to my needs and supported my intention. Resources like this really can help heal complex PTSD through play and impulse. In this way, play in all kinds of forms can also support the journey of healing chronic illness.

Some of the insights and positive messages I’ve come away with, and that I will be integrating and holding as intentions, include the following:

• I am a Strong, Beautiful Woman
• My beauty comes from within
• I can be Strong even if I am Afraid
• I can See Clearly and not Freeze or Judge
• I have within me an Ocean of calm and light
• I actively catch and stop believing negative internal messaging
• I am a Jedi who wields my strength with wisdom, intuition and care
• I am Enough

Painting is a resource that is a delight for me. For you, it might be sitting in Nature, watching what shapes emerge in the clouds, or collecting pine cones and seeing what they feel like when gathered together. It could be playing with coloring pencils, clay, or flowers. Or something else. What resource might be a fit for you to explore and play with?

Related Posts and Resources

• When a Resource Whispers During Challenging Times (first “Art of Allowing”)
• If you are interested in learning more about Flora Aube and her Art of Allowing you can learn more here, watch an example of how she works on youtube, and consider her self study online course I loved and that she still offers.
• Blog posts with tips for Working with Symptoms
• Blog post 1 about chronic illness and Attachment Wounds