“I got to know about Sandy’s arts therapy service in 2020 when my family was experiencing a tragedy – my father committed suicide and passed away. It was my best friend who told me that I need to find a way out for my overwhelming emotion as well as the long-suppressed struggling that I had with my parents and sibling.
At first, I was hesitating about approaching Sandy because I do not want to label myself as having emotional or kind of psychological problem. I thought sadness, pain and some other related emotions will gradually ease as these are normal when incident happens. However, in the following days after my father’s sudden departure, not only sadness, but my heart was also filled with anger, disappointment, the feeling of being abandoned and lonely. Even worse is that I am a mother of two plus my role as a senior in the team in office, I did not allow myself to become out of control or even releasing any, I treated as, “overreacted” emotions.
Eventually, it was the feeling of hoping to find a way out or simply looking for somebody to talk to that prompted me to send the first message to Sandy. I can still remember how unorganized I was in our first phone call when I messily poured all the complicated emotions and thinking out (I now understand that was my SOS to the external world and reflected how helpless I was at that specific time). I am impressed that instead of pet me to comfort me, Sandy told me the situation I was going through and suggested some immediate next few steps I could do to prevent my daily life from overly taken over by my emotions. Most importantly, the turbulence in my mind had become a bit more controllable after the conversation because I know that I am not alone.
In the following about two to three months, while I was arranging my father’s funeral, I attended a total of eight weekly arts therapy sessions. During the sessions, guided by Sandy, I completed some easy-to-do creative art works such as drawing and handcrafting, followed by some in-depth sharing about my origin family, myself and my current family.
There were lots of tear and fear at the first few weeks, if you look at the whats app message I sent to Sandy at that time, which says “I can’t say ready, a bit nervous to handle this weekend indeed”, you will understand that at the very beginning I was not fully ready to uncover my wound, but I would definitely recommend someone who are going to receive therapy to try to keep going despite fear and uncertain. It is because once I started to understand the impacts of my origin family on growth, and the relationship between these background as well as the anger I was encountering, I am no longer a helpless woman who are being trapped in nowhere in the emotion turbulence.
I must say healing is not something that could be done within a course of eight sessions, but I can truly tell you that the awareness and reflection that Sandy has helped me to develop are still strongly functioning until today i.e. over a year after the therapy.
Recently, I dug up the piece of sharing I have written during the therapy, I put tick in those areas which I have found some changes on myself in the past year. The changes I have found are:
- I care more about myself as I know my health and happiness have impacts on my family
- I rely on others/ask for help when needed as I am just an ordinary people
- Life is more enjoyable when I can be more open to try new things, to do this, I have been building up my courage.
I think it is not only the professional and systematic arts therapy approach that helped me got through the sorrow, but accompany and support provided by Sandy that has made a difference.” Angelina (化名)