Season 2 EP 10: How to De-stress with Art Journaling
Listen Now!
Perfectionist in Recovery
How to De-stress with Art Journaling
Hello and Welcome back to the Perfectionist in Recovery Podcast!
Hello and welcome back to the Perfectionist in Recovery Podcast! My name is Marcy Parks and I am a perfectionist in recovery and today I wanted to talk to you about how you can use art journaling as a way of de-stressing during this very stressful time. If you are a human on this planet, you know the past year and a half, going on two years now, has not been easy at all. Throughout this entire experience, so many emotions have been coming up like anxiety, fear, anger, and lots and lots of grief, so I wanted to share the practices that I have been leaning into in the past few months to help myself navigate through all the changes as well as all of those big emotions as they come up in hopes that they can do the same for you. Let’s go.
First things first, I wanted to take a second to say thank you!
Thank you for joining me here, for sharing your time while listening to this podcast, and for supporting my work! I am so grateful to those of you who have reached out to share your feedback with me - as I have said before and as those of you who have been long time listeners know, your feedback makes this podcast more enjoyable for you to listen to! So if you have thoughts you want to share, questions you want answered, or topics you want to hear discussed on the podcast, go to my website at www.marcyparksart.com/perfectionistinrecovery and submit your feedback there! If you love the podcast and want to continue to show your support of this work, like, follow, subscribe, share - all the things - and leave a review! Reviews are the best way to support the growth of this podcast.
Otherwise, for those of you who have already done all of those things, thank you!
Now, let’s get into it!
On this episode today, I wanted to talk a little bit about my art journaling practice, which I have been leaning fully into lately, what it looks like, and how a similar practice as part of a daily, or even weekly, routine can help you to de-stress and find some clarity in the madness that we are living through.
Content warning: I am going to be talking about the pandemic, so if you are done hearing about it, or need a mental break away from it, you may want to skip ahead.
So I have been chatting with some friends about, well, life, and a common theme that I am hearing everyone share is this level of exhaustion that we all seem to be experiencing. Everyone I know, including myself, is hitting a wall. If you’re like me, this probably isn’t even the first time you're hitting that wall in the past year. It might be more like the third or fourth wall you have hit and have worked around. Or maybe you've hit the wall and just stayed there this whole time. Either way, you’re not alone in your experience.
The pandemic is ramping up again and even for the most adaptable, optimistic people I know, this brings a level of stress and anxiety to their day. And I think that can be said about everyone.
But, lately, I have been thinking about and also talking with friends about what the long term effects of living through the pandemic will look like in our brains and bodies. One thing I can definitely say is that my brain just doesn’t work the same. I mean, don’t get me wrong, becoming a mother definitely impacted my memory, but going on two years now of pandemic life and the stress that comes with all of it has definitely changed some things. It seems like every other week I have serious brain fog that makes it hard for me to orient myself in my life.
If you have been watching or following the Olympics, you have heard about gymnast Simone Biles stepping back from competition for her mental health. She later shared on her instagram stories that she has been struggling with the “twisties” which is this sensation gymnasts, and I imagine divers also, experience where their body feels disconnected from their mind and they have a hard time orienting themselves to where they are when they are hurtling through the air.
This is problematic because, for gymnasts, not being able to sense where you are and landing the wrong way could mean paralysis, or worse.
The brain fog I have been feeling feels a lot like this. Although, for Simone, she feels like this when flying through the air at a higher rate of speed. For me, it feels more like I am floating in an ocean that is covered with fog and I don’t really know where I am or what I need to be doing. Actually, I know what I need to do, because my to-do list stays forever long, but I can’t actually get started doing anything. The brain fog I feel just makes me feel… adrift. Almost every other week I will feel this way.
Not to mention, in addition to this brain fog are these interruptions of grief that always surprise me. I didn’t realize how much grief would come with going back to work and navigating all the changes that came with that transition, in addition to grieving all that has been lost and changed in the past year.
I share all of this because I want to assure anyone else out there feeling this way that you are absolutely not alone. You are not crazy, or weird, or anything else. You are a human being living through a truly wild experience.
I also wanted to share this because I have found that my art journaling practice is what is really helping me to get my feet back on solid ground. I’ve had to let a few things shift to the back burner for a little while, like this podcast and keeping up on social media, in order to prioritize my art practice, so if you have missed me sharing here as regularly or on IG, that is why!
But I want to share the steps of my art journaling practice so that you can try this out at home for yourself to get reoriented to your space anytime you feel out of sorts. You can do this daily or weekly as needed.
To de-stress with an art journaling practice, set aside some time on a day to do the following for yourself:
Get into your body:
Brain fog leaves me feeling disconnected from myself. There were definitely days where I could not get it together and would just veg out watching netflix, or some other avoidant behavior, but that only delayed me finding a point of clarity. What started to turn things around for me was getting reconnected to my physical body. There are so many ways you can do this, but here are a few things I did:
Walk - get outside for daily walks!
Breathe - taking a few minutes to breathe deliberately or listen to one of the meditations on this podcast
Get a Massage - if you are vaccinated and have the available funds to book yourself a massage, I can’t encourage this enough.
Write it down:
Journaling. I don’t even have to say it, but I am. Y’all already know. Journaling, journaling, journaling. Take some time either on your computer or with your journal and just write things down. Make lists, write down your feelings, write whatever is on your mind even if there is not much there, just write it down!
Paint it out:
You don’t have to paint, you can also color. If markers and crayons are all you have handy, use those. Only have pens and pencils lying around? No problem, they are perfect, too. Use whatever is on hand and easy for you to set up (because if it is not easy to use, you won't do it!). Either in your journal on top of what you wrote (unless it is important lists you need to remember), or on another surface, get out your supplies and paint or color or scribble whatever it is you wrote about. If you made lists, maybe paint or draw the items on your list - don’t worry if you can’t draw. This is not a graded activity, it is not about making a masterpiece for people to see, this is about getting stress out of your body. If you wrote about your feelings, paint, color, or scribble what those feelings look like to you. Maybe it is just a big scribbly mess, or maybe it is just a solid black page, whatever it looks like is exactly what it is supposed to look like. Again, this is not about making something to be seen, it is about getting what is inside of you on the outside.
These are the steps I have been deliberately taking a few times a week to help keep myself grounded through all the changes and disruptions this year has brought. I hope that this practice helps you to get back into your body and find some relief as well.
And if you would like a journaling prompt to get you started journaling:
Journal Prompt:
How are you feeling?
Take some time to write about how you are feeling, maybe 15 minutes or so, then take a second to close your eyes and feel those feelings in your body, and then write about what those feelings feel like in your body.
Otherwise, that’s all I have for you today! Until next time, friends!
Ready to take the first step in your creative recovery?
If you enjoyed the episode, LEAVE A REVIEW!
My dream is to help more people connect with their creative identities and embrace themselves as a whole, messy human, and as it turns out, leaving a review on iTunes helps me to do just that!
So thank you in advance for leaving your review and helping me to connect more people with their inner artists!
Season 2 EP 7: 5 Steps to Overcome Fear and Get Started
Listen Now!
Perfectionist in Recovery
5 Steps to Overcome Fear and Get Started
Hello and Welcome back to the Perfectionist in Recovery Podcast!
My name is Marcy Parks and I am a Perfectionist in Recovery and today I wanted to talk about overcoming fear in order to get started, but first - I want to take a second to say thank you!
Thank you so much for being here and joining me for this episode today. Thank you for supporting my work and for supporting the work I do for this podcast! I got some new feedback on the podcast this week and I am so grateful always for those of you that send over your thoughts about the podcast. In case you didn’t know, your feedback makes this podcast even better for you to listen to, so, please, send me all of the feedback! If you have some thoughts that you want to share about the podcast, send me a message on instagram at @MarcyParksArt or go to my website at www.MarcyParksArt.com/PerfectionistinRecovery and submit your feedback through the feedback form at the bottom of the page. I am always looking to improve this podcast to meet your creative needs, so let me know what you think!
That being said, I want to hear from you! Do you have questions about things you have heard on the podcast? Do you want to hear a discussion about a specific topic? Let me know! Again, you can send me a message on instagram at @MarcyParksArt or you can go to my website at www.marcyparksart.com/perfectionistinrecovery and submit your questions through the feedback form there at the bottom of the page. Again, go to www.marcyparksart.com/perfectionistinrecovery and send me your thoughts! Let me know what you want to hear.
Now let’s get into it!
Today I want to talk about fear and 5 steps to take to move through it in order to get started.
So, once upon a time when I was in my late teens and early twenties in college, I went through a period where I did not make any art at all.
If you are a long time listener of the podcast, you've probably already heard this story, but for those of you that are new here, I will share it again. When I was in high school, I was very artistic, loved art, loved making art. The art I made back then, though, is much different from what I currently make. Back then, my work was much more focused on realism and capturing scenes and people and objects with detailed accuracy. Abstract art was foreign to me and made little-to-no sense.
Anyway, I wanted to pursue art in college, but couldn't afford to go, so instead I went to college where I had a swimming and academic scholarship.
For the time I was in college, I did not make art at all. There just wasn't time for it. My creative impulses were still being met because I was studying English and I love reading and writing, but as far as the art that I knew and loved making before, that was gone. People that knew me would ask me about my art all the time, but being a full time college athlete was a really good excuse for not having any time to paint.
Until one day. It was during the summer when I had no other obligations, other than work. For whatever reason, maybe because I was super into Romanticism and literature of the 19th century, I wanted to recreate this portrait of a princess by a French painter. If you want to know what painting I am talking about, look up the artist Ingres and his painting of the Princess de Broglie. What drew me to this painting was how luminescent the material of the princess's gown was and the satin on the chair. I became obsessed with the way he captured the material of her clothes, silk? Organza? I have no idea, but it is absolutely gorgeous.
And my intention with the painting was not to recreate the whole portrait. I really wanted to focus my painting on the section where her hand is sort of draped over the back of the chair and really zooming in on the the lace of here sleeves, the fabric of her dress and the fabric of the chair because I was so obsessed with how delicate her clothes looked and the way they seemed to glow and I wanted to be able to do that.
But the real reason I was only focusing on this area of the painting was because I was already so intimidated to even try recreating it. Fear was present the moment I saw the original portrait. I immediately started comparing myself and my abilities to the abilities of this WORLD RENOWNED ARTIST whose work has lasted CENTURIES. Could I replicate what he did? Would I be able to achieve my goal? Was I good enough? What if my painting sucks? What if my painting sucks and people SEE IT?
But at that point I wasn’t aware of what those thoughts were really indicating. I wasn’t conscious of the root of those thoughts, or what their impact on my creativity really was, or how they were impacting me in any other part of my life really.
Now, at that time in my life, those thoughts alone would have probably been enough to deter me from pressing forward, but it had been so long since I had painted and I truly was so ready to do it again, I persisted. I persisted, but still with a hesitation.
My priority was to recreate that luminescent quality the painting had, and I wanted to get it just right, right? So I watched some youtube videos, which is how I learned about the technique of underpainting, and learned about the concept of “value” in paintings. Then, I went out and bought supplies. I started the sketch of the outline on the canvas. I even went so far as starting the underpainting and mapping out the values (the light and dark areas) of the painting.
Then I realized that the values were a little too dark. I went back to correct them, and they were still too dark. It started to get hard, and I was getting frustrated.
And then I quit!
That painting sat unfinished, black and white and gray, for MONTHS. I left it out for a while thinking I would come back to it and finish it later, but it just kept going on, unfinished, and the longer I went without trying again the harder it got to try again. And then one day, a little over a year later, I just threw it away.
What I didn’t realize at the time, but have come to understand now, is that fear drives a lot of perfectionism and my fear of not being perfect at something was a big reason I never finished that painting - and also a big reason I would go on to not paint again for even longer.
And the fears can be many - fear of not being good enough, fear of rejection, fear of getting something wrong, etc. - but when it comes to perfectionism, there is an avoidance that can happen as we try to avoid confronting that fear. We avoid putting ourselves in the position of being new at something, we avoid approaching that person, we avoid finishing the painting.
It has taken me a long time to learn how to move through that fear and to allow myself to be new at something, to be bad at something, to get things wrong. Honestly, I wouldn’t even say I am good at moving through that fear now! Ha! I still struggle with it so much - in fact, I started a new painting this week. I haven’t painted in months, but this week I finally started one and before I got started I had all those same thoughts again. What if it sucks? What if I suck? What if someone sees that I suck?!
And not only did I start a new painting this week, I also have been Live Streaming the process on my instagram - another new thing that also makes me super uncomfortable because if the painting sucks, people will DEFINITELY see it sucks then! Lol
But at this point in my life, I am so familiar with those questions and those voices and that fear that I have steps that I take to help myself move beyond the fear and not only get started, but to actually finish what I start, also.
So today, I want to share those steps with you!
Acknowledge Your Fear
Fear is totally normal! It is completely normal to feel afraid when trying new things, OR even doing things that you are familiar with! Fear is not a bad emotion, it is just your body’s way of telling you that what you are doing is brave.
2. Give Yourself a Pep Talk
Reframe the experience in your mind and recognize that starting anything new is a learning opportunity filled with possibility! Remind yourself that failure is just feedback and does not define you. Give yourself permission to be a beginner, even when you are a seasoned pro.
3. Set Boundaries
This is a big one! Set boundaries around your action or activity. Leading up to starting my new painting this week, I was feeling a little overwhelmed by just how monumental the task seemed - getting to a finished painting, so I set some boundaries around my time that made it feel manageable. On these three days, for one hour each day, I will work on my painting. That’s it. Depending on what you are working on or wanting to start, this can all look very different, but it might mean setting boundaries around how many days a week you will work, how much time you are going to spend, who you are going to share information with.
4. Start Small
Starting small might look like telling someone you trust what you are thinking about doing or trying. It could also look like going out and buying new supplies, signing up for the class, or sending the email you have been putting off. This week before starting a new painting, my small steps were mixing up colors for fun. I found so much inspiration in just mixing colors that by the end I wasn’t even scared anymore and I was ready to get started painting! Depending on what it is that you are afraid of doing this step will vary, but just think about what is the smallest step forward you can take towards getting started and do that. It is easy to build up momentum once you take those baby steps.
5. Do it Scared
I feel like this is such a cliche at this point, but it is so true. Bravery isn’t about never being scared, it is about doing things even when you are scared. I have already said previously, but I will say it again, I still get scared with every painting. It never goes away! Maybe it will one day when I am 60 or 70 and I have reached peak DGAF mode, but right now, I am still full of fear, but I do it anyway.
And what I hope you find is that once you get started and find a rhythm to your work, the voice of fear gets so much quieter and harder to hear.
Journaling Prompt:
What is something you have always wanted to do, but have never done?
Why have you never started?
What are some boundaries you can set and small steps you can take to get started?
For anyone listening today, I hope you don’t stay stuck in fear! Take the leap, and do the thing. Done is better than perfect.
Until next time, friends!
Ready to take the first step in your creative recovery?
If you enjoyed the episode, LEAVE A REVIEW!
My dream is to help more people connect with their creative identities and embrace themselves as a whole, messy human, and as it turns out, leaving a review on iTunes helps me to do just that!
So thank you in advance for leaving your review and helping me to connect more people with their inner artists!
Season 2 EP 4: 3 Steps to Reconnect with Your Creative Voice
Listen Now!
Perfectionist in Recovery
3 Steps to Reconnect with Your Creative Voice
Hello and Welcome back to the Perfectionist in Recovery Podcast! My name is Marcy Parks and I am a Perfectionist in Recovery.
For Today’s episode, I want to share with you 3 steps you can take to reconnect with your creative voice, but first, I want to take some time to thank you for being here, thank you for listening, and thank you for supporting this podcast! I get so much joy from sharing this podcast and creating a platform to support people in connecting to their creativity. That being said, I want to hear from you! This podcast is here to serve you, so I want to hear your feedback on how I can make this podcast better for you. Send me questions you want answered or topics you would like to hear discussed on the podcast! I have added a new feedback form on my website at www.marcyparksart.com/perfectionistinrecovery where you can go to submit feedback on the show, ask questions, and let me know if you want to be a guest speaker on the podcast. Like I said, your feedback makes this show more enjoyable for you to listen to, so go to www.marcyoarksart.com/perfectionistinrecovery and send me your feedback. That is also where you can find transcripts for every episode including links to websites for guest speakers and more.
And for those of you that already love the show, but want to continue to show your support, like, follow, or subscribe on whatever streaming platform you are using and leave a review! Reviews are one of the best ways you can support the growth of this podcast. You can go to www.marcyparksart.com/perfectionistinrecovery where you will find all the transcripts for each episode and leave a raving review of the show!
But once more, I just want to take a moment to again thank you so much for being here and for sharing your time with me today.
Now let’s get into it.
On today’s episode I want to share with you the 3 steps you can take to reconnect with your creative voice.
The reason I wanted to share this episode is because as an artist and recovering perfectionist on social media, there is a constant pressure to keep up with the fast pace of social media that has created such short attention spans. If we want our art to be seen, we have to be posting regularly. If we want to be posting regularly, we have to constantly be making art to share. But it is really easy to lose touch with ourselves and our own creative impulses when we are constantly making art with the sole intention of sharing and getting engagement.
And this doesn’t only apply to artists, or artists on social media. Anyone who may not identify as an artist, but wants to have a creative practice, may feel this pressure, too. Especially if you are someone that is somewhat active or present on social media. It is really easy to fall into the comparison trap when in the early stages of developing a creative practice and find yourself comparing your progress to someone else’s. Really, this can happen to anyone at any point in their creative practice.
But this is a topic that has been on my mind lately and that I have been struggling with myself and so I wanted to share a little bit about my own experience and some of the steps I have taken in order to reconnect with my own creative voice so that, hopefully, anyone else feeling this way can learn to identify their creative voice among the background chatter of social media and their own inner critic.
Recently, l have been struggling with the pressure to create and to share new work that was not driven by my own impulse to create new work. If you have been a long time listener of the podcast, you have heard me speak about finding and honoring your creative rhythm. When I think of my creative rhythm, I always think of a tea kettle. There is the rest and recovery period of my creative cycle where the kettle is filling up with water, then there is the inspiration period of my creative cycle where the tea kettle is heating up, and then there is the production period of my creative cycle where the tea kettle is whistling hot and ready to be emptied out. There is no real rhyme or reason to how long each period takes. Sometimes, it takes longer than others depending on what other outside demands there are on my attention.
My kettle has been in the heating up stage for a little while now. I have been feeling really inspired, but not quite ready to jump into the demands of the production period of actively creating work.
However, I have still felt an intense pressure to produce work. Not because I have felt especially inspired, but because when I spend any amount of time on social media, I am inundated with images and stories of people doing, producing, achieving, and accomplishing so much!
And this is why I say this can apply to anyone, not just artists, because this happens to everyone. You see someone sharing beach photos and suddenly you start thinking you need to book your next beach trip even though you hate sand, you see your friend sharing photos of a loaf of bread that looks so good you can almost taste it through the photo and now all of a sudden you start thinking you should be baking more even though you prefer cooking over baking, or you see someone else share their 6-pack abs they somehow managed to grow during the pandemic and now you feel like you need to renew your gym membership that you let lapse because you prefer to exercise outside or in your home.
Comparison is not exclusive to artists, it happens to everyone, but the voice of comparison is not your voice. The voice pressuring you to create and share your process is not the same voice that inspires your creation.
So how do we decipher which impulses are truly our own and which impulses are driven by comparison, self-criticism, and our aspiration to do everything “right”? How do we come back to our voice?
Three Steps to Reconnect to Your Creative Voice
Step One: Slow it Down
Part of what makes the background chatter in your mind so overwhelming is because it is all happening so fast. Life happens fast and it barely slowed down even during the peak moments of the pandemic. Not to mention, we have all been living in a hyper-vigilant state trying to survive the pandemic. Now, the US is starting to reopen again and the pace of life is starting to pick back up.
Step one is to slow down where you can.
This may look like:
Being intentional about meal times - don’t work through your lunch hour, sit down for breakfast.
Leaving a weeknight or weekend day free on your calendar.
Plan a long evening bath before bedtime.
Practice pranayama or breathing exercises.
Schedule open-ended alone time - time, even if it is only 15 minutes, out of your week where you have literally nothing planned and anything can happen.
The point is to pack moments of pause into your day
Step Two: Get Quiet
When my head feels too full of chatter, I get deliberate about getting quiet. For me, this looks like media breaks and lots of media-free walks.
Media breaks are hard, but so fruitful. If you want to do a media break intensive, this is when you plan a week where the following is off limits:
No music
No news
No books
No podcasts
No social media
Basically, during a media break, you remove all the external voices from your headspace for any given amount of time, but a week will have you feeling like a new person. Now, this of course is for someone who wants to do a super strict media break intensive, but that's not always possible for everyone. I know that is not always possible for a lot of people, like teachers or students who have required reading as part of their homework or careers, so you can tailor it to fit your needs. Maybe shorten it to a weekend over the summer, maybe only cut out social media and podcasts - the point is to plan for it and try it out. Play around with the concept and how you think it might benefit you the most.
Media-free walks are like the point of entry into media breaks. Media-free walks just means going for a walk without listening to anything or engaging with any media. I will usually keep my phone with me for time, but to keep the temptation of looking at my phone at bay, I will set a timer to go off that lets me know when it is time to go home.
Step Three: Start Listening
Y’all know what I am going to say here and if you don’t, you haven’t been listening to the podcast long enough.
JOURNALING!
Journal, journal, journal.
Get some paper and start writing. Open a new document on your computer and start typing. Whatever your preferred method - although with a computer the potential for distraction increases significantly.
The point is to get to writing. Write down whatever is on your mind, even if you feel like it doesn’t matter. A friend of mine describes this process as a brain dump - just offloading whatever is on your mind for the sake of making room.
How to do it:
Make a commitment to yourself - establish a set number days of the week/which days of the week you will journal
Set a deadline - Your journaling will be done by fill-in-the-blank-time of day
Give yourself boundaries - 3 pages minimum, or 15 minutes total time.
What happens as we journal consistently is that we start paying attention. When we journal and journal daily, we start to notice the recurring thoughts, common themes among passages, the pace of our writing, the curve and shape of our letters - that’s where you find your voice.
And for anyone who wants to start a creative practice, but isn’t sure how or where to start, these three steps are the foundation. By following these three steps, you can connect with the other ways in which your creativity wants to be expressed. For established creatives with longstanding creative practices, this is the way to keep your practice authentic and true to you - no matter what starts trending.
Ready to take the first step in your creative recovery?
If you enjoyed the episode, LEAVE A REVIEW!
My dream is to help more people connect with their creative identities and embrace themselves as a whole, messy human, and as it turns out, leaving a review on iTunes helps me to do just that!
So thank you in advance for leaving your review and helping me to connect more people with their inner artists!