Recognizing the PAIN in PAINT: Consciously Choosing Self-Expression When Doing Difficult Work

by Kate Maren Scowsmith, MA, MSW

     While preparing for the presentation of my thesis defense on trauma and trauma-informed practices, I came across a poignant statement on secondary trauma: “Secondary trauma is a likely experience when close to the emotions involved in retelling and reenacting traumatic events” (Elwood, Mott, Lohr, & Galovski, 2011). I pasted it on my Google slide and carefully reread it multiple times while seated at my dining room table, where I had moved my desktop computer from its usual “tucked away” location for a more centrally located position adequate for the occasion of writing a thesis. Within this central location, I had my cup of steamy lavender tea, my Facebook page minimized, and the Sandy Hook documentary on PBS in the periphery.

    Prior to discovering this meaningful statement, I had just finished a conversation on Facebook messenger with an old family friend who was reeling from the news of her son’s best friend’s suicide. This moment of trying to console an old friend in pain, while listening to grieving parents in Connecticut recall the worst day of their lives, and attempting to piece together a competent presentation on trauma forced me to take a time out. In this moment of reflection, I began to think about social workers, about our willingness to expose ourselves to situations many people would rather run away from, about how we take care of ourselves, and—ultimately—how I chose to take care of myself through my 2-year graduate program in social work.

Why Social Work?

    I say often, aloud and to myself, that choosing to become a social worker and surround myself with other social workers was and remains the best decision of my life. I will never forget the first social worker I met—a hospice social worker who gracefully sat on my grandparents’ couch with my family. How deftly she posed questions that would fortify and encourage us to move forward following my grandfather’s death. I will never forget her air of calm, her openness, and her courage as she entered a stranger’s home and offered support to a family she had never met. That was not the moment I knew her work was to eventually be my work. However, I do remember how struck I was by her bravery and ability to offer this unique gift to people—of finding hope, moving forward, and feeling encouraged to acknowledge the pain involved with loss. Not only was this not an easy task; it was a noble one that only certain people are able to carry out. Because this is not ordinary work, it requires extraordinary people.

    Those who choose social work have an innate curiosity about the human condition. Whether having experienced adversities themselves or being close to those who have, social workers have a unique ability to listen and understand adversities. According to Black, Jeffries, and Hartley (1993), social workers are statistically more likely to have experienced adversities in life, and it is also those experiences that lead them into this field.

    I know for myself that I’ve always leaned toward the stories and experiences that embrace the complexities of “real life” and how people move through hardship. As a child, I bypassed Disney and went straight for The Color Purple and The Shawshank Redemption. I bathed in the pain and hope of authors like Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and Alice Sebold. I marinated daily in the teachings aired on Oprah.

    One summer, I was engrossed in an episode of Oprah in which she visited a women’s prison and interviewed four women who had killed their children. One female prisoner told Oprah, “I can’t believe you don’t hate us.” Oprah thoughtfully responded, “I don’t hate you, because I see this is what you did with your pain, and I do something else with mine.” This idea sent shivers down my 11-year-old spine. As much as my young, inexperienced pre-teen brain could fathom, I began to understand that pain is the universal leveler, and it is opportunity and choice that ultimately carve out where we take this pain. Although people’s stories, fictional or real, can be full of pain, the lessons that always were the focus of these novels or films were resounding calls of hope, determination, and victory when the thread of choice was woven in.  

Leaning Too Far Into Discomfort

    Ultimately, the pain I choose to expose myself to in media and arts content is a choice. There is the real, obvious exposure to pain when one decides to pursue a career in social work. As a graduate student in my social work program, I completed 1,200 hours of field education. It is hard to know how many of those hours were spent empathizing, grieving, and feeling for the individuals and families I worked with, but I know they are there. In our social work education, we are encouraged to expose ourselves to potentially traumatizing and painful circumstances for the “experience.” We know that the more experience we have navigating these circumstances, the more prepared we are to be better social workers and better equipped to handle future interactions like these.

    Prior to applying to the social work program, I remember sitting in a dentist’s office where a poster was pinned on a beige wall. It featured a group of diverse silhouettes jumping off a cliff into the ocean, something reminiscent of a beautiful summer vacation, and off in the salmon colored sky were the words: “Do the work that scares you.” Aside from the troubling fact that this was in a dental office, and that most jobs luckily do not involve jumping off of a cliff, I still saw the value behind plunging into work that is unexpected and unknown.

    Throughout my time as a graduate student in the MSW program, I was encouraged to “lean into discomfort” and embrace these opportunities to learn from adversity. At one point in the program, however, I began to feel the ramifications of leaning too far into discomfort without swaying back to comfort, the consequences of doing work that felt more terrifying than scary, the symptoms of feeling required to generate more than my means and without the opportunity to replenish the source within me that generates.

When Trauma Knocks on Your Door

    Two days before I was to give a presentation at a local community college on trauma and trauma-informed practices, my best friend’s dog bit me while I held two cups of chai at her doorstep. Gory details aside, the experience was traumatic for my friend and me, and it involved a rigorous span of physical and emotional healing. The span involved the grief of choosing to euthanize the dog, of hearing each other’s hurts, several visits to the ER for me when my bites became infected, and the depletion one may face when navigating our healthcare system.

    The next day after the attack, still in a daze, I saw clients as usual. On this particular day, I saw a client who had been through a terrible sexual assault and expressed how she was no longer comfortable by herself or in public. Her pain was palpable, an interaction I had never experienced, as she described her distrust in the world, with people, and our justice system. When our session was over, my office door quietly clicked behind her and my eyes filled with tears as I stared out my office window. I quickly whisked the tears away, cleared my throat, and began to chart, knowing another client would be coming soon.

    I hobbled to the podium two days later and successfully delivered my presentation on trauma, a feat I was tremendously proud of afterwards. On my 2-hour drive home, however, the emotions of all the recent events hit me. This terrible weight was lying within me, so heavy and slippery that beginning to describe it to a loved one or friend would be too laborious. I recalled that scene in The Green Mile when John Coffey assumes the “bad energy” of an illness and needs to somehow expel it. My usual ways of coping with a difficult day were not working on this particular occasion. No nap, cup of coffee, or walk in the sunshine could mitigate this weight I was feeling.

The Metaphorical Powers of Creating Art

    Needing to try something different, I looked toward my dusty vintage suitcase filled with acrylic paint. I was no stranger to turning to the arts to work through a feeling, whether that was unrest or enthusiasm, but I had never felt this terrible weight, and I needed a new intervention. I recalled a moment, while teaching an art lesson to a group of non-compliant and easily distracted preschoolers, when I had engaged in an art activity that threw rules out the window. This seemed like a perfect time to throw structure and rules out the window.

    I pulled out colorful surfaces—various colors of paper, pieces of plastic, and vibrant dishware—and I “went for it.” Over the next two hours, my mission was to have no plan or strategy other than to play with paint, allowing it to glide over surfaces, mix with other agents, be manipulated with movement and pressure, and photographed. In this timespan, I explored color and texture and felt free from the constraints of expectations (from others and myself). The art was changing by the second, and I embraced how it changed each moment, knowing to capture the most beautiful or evocative moments or to keep moving and adding paint to get to the next moment.

    This repetitious action quickly became metaphorical. How quickly outcomes can be changed through time, patience, movement, vision, and resources; how pain needs an outlet and the product can be made into something beautiful or poignant; how outcomes or products are opportunities rife with interpretation and constant reinterpretation (and we can make what meanings we need to out of them).

    Ultimately, I felt the heavy and slippery and indescribable weight lift and fade, as I engaged in my artwork and looked at the hundreds of pictures it yielded.

    I have come to understand that the heavy toll that can come from doing emotionally difficult work requires a conscious application of creativity and energy to move it forward. I love the career I have chosen in social work and acknowledge I will always require a toolkit of methods to mitigate my exposure to secondary trauma. My toolkit comes in the form of a dusty vintage suitcase filled with acrylic paints.

References

Black, P. N., Jeffreys, D., & Hartley, E. K. (1993). Personal history of psychosocial trauma in the early life of social work and business students. Journal of Social Work Education, (2). 171.

Elwood, L., Mott, J., Lohr, J., & Galovski, T. (2011). Secondary trauma symptoms in clinicians: A critical review of the construct, specificity, and implications for trauma-focused treatment. Clinical Psychology Review, ¡i, 25-36.

Kate Scowsmith is a 2017 graduate of the Master of Social Work program at California State University Chico. She earned her M.A. in Women and Gender Studies at the University of York in Northern England and earned her B.A. at University of California, Davis in the same subject. She enjoys writing, photography, researching, catering, event planning, and exploring new approaches to expressing herself through art.