Usually people who struggle with drug and alcohol abuse or other forms of addictive behaviors come from a background of abuse or neglect or have experienced some kind of trauma when they were younger. Being in these situations, a child and/or a young person can experience various painful feelings such as fear, helplessness, shame, guilt, sadness and eventually hopelessness. Becoming overwhelmed by these emotions and not having anybody to help them and validate their feelings may lead to them learning to run away and avoid such feelings to protect against pain or become consumed by those feelings and act upon them impulsively. Later in life, they may use substances or engage in addictive and destructive activities to numb those painful feelings. Despite their effort in avoiding these emotions, they are stored implicitly in a deeper level of the brain and will be triggered more often than they may have expected.

These emotions that have been stored in a less conscious part of the brain may not be accessible verbally, but can be found symbolically in images that the person creates. Therefore, the goal of art therapy is to access these hidden and avoided emotions that once had the purpose of protecting the individual, but either have been denied or exaggerated and lost its purpose to rediscover their adaptive qualities.

Images in an art therapy session can simply be composed of a few lines, colors or pictures from a magazine to more elaborate drawings, clay sculptures and other forms of creativity. These images will give an expert art therapist the opportunity to help the recovering person uncover meanings behind the symbolic images, discover more information about oneself than just talking and open many deep thoughts and emotions. Participants in art therapy don’t need to have any skills in art.

Talking about feelings can be very frightening and painful for a person who has been avoiding them for a long time. This person may not even be able to verbally express him/herself, but may be able to express thoughts and feelings about past and present events and situations non=verbally through lines, shapes and pictures. Creating them can become a new form of communication which is less threatening and safer for the recovering person.

Individuals struggling with addiction are usually very judgmental of themselves and are flooded with shame and guilt. Creating art can give them a tangible, concrete perception of their feelings and thoughts and give them the opportunity to observe themselves from a distance which can help them gain a new, less judgmental and more compassionate understanding of self.

Recovering individuals may engage in a simple art project whenever they feel overwhelmed or have an urge to take drugs/alcohol or engage in an addictive activity to distract and sooth themselves. Creating can give them a sense of control over the situation and a tool to accept and manage overwhelming feelings. Using their hands while using art materials such as colored pencils, markers, crayons, clay, paper and scissors can help them release some of their avoided feelings such as anger and lower its intensity, and to sooth and calm themselves when they are anxious.

In general, in art therapy sessions, the recovering person will be given permission and opportunity to experience and express those feelings that he/she has been running away from and avoiding for a long time in a safe and supporting atmosphere, with the presence of an empathic professional psychotherapist /art therapist who will help him/her understand and make sense of those painful feelings, acknowledge and accept them with compassion, reduce their intensity and tolerate them, and finally use them effectively to fulfill their needs and goals.

My boyfriend has been in this really bad place for the past couple of weeks. He says that he doesn't feel like himself (or act like himself) & that he feels like 'nothing'. He's saying that he doesn't feel like a friend or a boyfriend. And that he feels nothing towards our relationship, even though he loves me like crazy. He just feels nothing towards everything right now.

Because of this he wants us to take a break from our relationship so he can focus on himself and getting better. He wants to do it alone.

I am really worried about him. I can't just leave him to battle this on his own when i'm the only one that knows he's in this bad place.

Even though we are on a break I really want to be there for him and help him. I just don't know how...

Ok, so I've been up for about a half an hour since this "nightmare" that I had. I don't remember the beginning but, it was short, extremely vivid and has me a little shooken up.
Ok, so I was at my ex boyfriends house. His mom had this extremely amazing camera which she let me use to take some quick pictures of. So I proceed to the back door, snap a picture of the sky from the back porch. Then I end up towards the end of the back yard by the fence while holding the camera on an angle. I take a picture of the backyard and the back of his house and review the picture. There, I see a little girl, in a purple dress with curly long brown hair bending over picking a dandelion. I look away from the camera in awe checking to make sure I'm not seeing anything, but low and behold I am, I just captured a ghost on camera. She was freakishly see through but yet so bold. I then run around to the front of the house avoiding her area. I run in the house and show the picture to my ex boyfriend telling him "do you see anything wrong in this picture!?" He then says, no. Then I zoom in on her, and he says "wow that's insane" and calls his mom over. I then show her, and it begins to get darker and darker in the house while she just has a blank stare on her face. She runs upstairs disappearing saying, "someone turn some lights on in this house" meanwhile, I literally cannot breathe, I am literally having a panic attack in my dream as my ex boyfriend picks me up and holds me. I then awaken from this physically terrifying "dream" with my mouth open, and I'm stuck. Literally stuck for twenty minutes in a daze and I cannot move. After I actually come to my senses I'm scared, terrified and in a lot of pain. As of right now, about an hour after my dream, my legs hurt really bad. Like they got ran over or something. A very dull pain shooting from my hip down to my big toe. I have never EVER experienced a "dream" like this before, and if anyone has any insight, or opinion as to why I woke up in pain from this, it would be appreciated. I'm honestly still in shock from how vivid this little girl was. I'm too afraid to go back to bed and rest peacefully.

i am 23 year old and doing a job as a designer.
now a days my feelings is very dirty and i start doing fantasy about dirty things.
i can't explain what should i do now ?

About me and how I need help psychologically...

So this page is all about me, myself and my book of wild thoughts. Obviously my name is not Bookof!! I’m intending to keep anonymity at least for now; that’s because I’m a bit ashamed of what I write! I did not even link it to my own personal Facebook profile, I preferred to create a different entity, and this is being applied onto all my self-owned social network profiles. Besides, it’s in my constitutional rights to do so and if anybody’s got a problem with that, well…. Door’s open, please go !!

So what is book of wild thoughts all about, I can hear you mumbling… As said above, this book is all about me and my personality and how I’m intending, with the help of all my readers, to achieve in linking them harmoniously. There are other areas I’m looking forward to improve as well: my own English writing style, some books and stories I wanted to publish. So this website is all about gathering enough courage in me to really do what I always wanted !!

I’ll probably add some more text in the future for that’s all I feel like writing at the moment; my wife’s nearly finished with cooking dinner and it’s about time to wrap the napkin around the closet, oops sorry! I meant around the neck;

Just to let you know how it took me days before I started to lay my hands on my own personal blog, I even threw up out of eating whatever came in, I think it’s the stress LOL ! I don’t know why such a reaction would occur to me, maybe I got too lazy to start working on it… So you can guess by now, or I can already hear you screaming, “How am I supposed to know that?? Ain’t you old enough to know it (oh, btw, how rude of me, I’m male, thirties, and married. Where were my manners!?) yourself why are you asking me??”

So here we go: my answer is exactly your question, I don’t know myself enough and this has caused me (and is still causing me) tremendous trouble in whatever I do, whoever I lived with, in all what you can think of! This lack of personality, of self-esteem has brought me to where I am at present, a lousy web developer after 10 years in the field and writing this blog! Of course, I managed to get a nice girl to fall in love with, a little plot of land I managed to get on a good opportunity, but ‘all’ this achievement (LOL) seems so small as compared to the $#%^ I brought to my family, my wife and luckily no kids so far! Imagine the disaster, for my wife: 2 stubborn kids in the house!

So many of my friends have excelled in the field, they took courage, had the balls still have, and grabbed life with firm hands to build their dreams and be happy with their life now. It would have sounded so selfish if I had ended this sentence with “except me”!! I have a great family, wonderful parents whom I never blame for where I’m standing now, a wonderful wife who has accepted to bear me for three years now and a nice work atmosphere, what more could I want? What more would a man need to start flying on his own ship and start his business ‘happily ever after’ ??

So all these lines of thought, these wild thoughts (I’ve got more, don’t worry!!) have led me to share my life and my own thoughts into a small book which I’ll update online of course, from time to time. I’ll be pretty close with it, since I’m intending to use it anywhere I’ll be, using my mobile phone; yes, even when I’m taking a $#%^ !

That’s because it’s better to be writing something than doing anything else #######5, how about that !?

Thanks for reading my article down to here and hope I can get to read your comments very soon!