During my Junior and Senior year of high school I took IB Art, which is a 2 year program where students have to make a collection of pieces that fall under one theme. For my theme I did “Unexpressed emotions through art and poetry”. I would write a poem about whatever I was feeling or going through when I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone and then make a piece inspired by it. The process of making all of my pieces was therapeutic in a way because I got to express so many of the emotions that I never share with anyone in a visual way. A lot of my teenage years I struggled with properly expressing myself, especially if it was expressing my more negative emotions such as anger or sadness. However, making that collection of pieces allowed me to not only express those thoughts and emotions, but it also helped me actually sit with those emotions instead of pushing them away. I realized during that experience that all of my emotions were something to embrace even if they were “bad”. Allowing myself to actually feel and process anger and sadness helped me properly regulate my emotions. Making art in this way allowed me to feel ok with having varying emotions and caused me to not try and control what I feel as much. Art and writing truly became my outlet in a lot of ways because of that art collection. Being able to do something art related as a way to express myself made me feel a lot of relief because I wasn’t holding it all in.
Key Words:
- Relief
- Unexpressed emotions
- Poetry
- “Bad”
- Teenager
- 2 Years
- Feel
- Embrace
- Sadness
- Anger
- Express
- Therapeutic