Why Creativity Is Critical For Trauma Recovery

Introduction to Dr. Ericha Scott 0:00

Well, today I have the absolute pleasure to be with Doctor Ericha Scott. We had the opportunity to meet, but a week and a half ago, and, I was so impressed by, you know, by her life journey, by the impact that she's had on people. So thank you so much, Doctor Scott, for being with me today. I'm delighted. It's good to see you again. Thank you. You. You've had so your passion and and how you've helped so many people. And you, you've accomplished so much in your life. But visionary art. And I felt that this was so important because I know how important art is for healing.

And and a lot of cancer patients, I mean, we they focus on, you know, the chemo, radiation, surgery, all these kind of things. And they forget this aspect. And, and yet this is, is probably one of the most important drivers for healing. Yeah I agree. I think the power of our to heal and heal on so many levels is way underplayed, minimized, dismissed. I think even I don't think that's too strong of a word. Devalued. And I, I don't fully understand why. Because of all the therapies I've studied and learned, it's the most comprehensive and powerful.

Now, it's not always practiced that way. Sometimes it's practiced more as entertainment or a distraction or to keep people busy. And that is a disservice to our clients and to our own work. And my opinion. So when I worked in the last rehab where I worked full time, everyone in my group had to do a full body map

Why Art Therapy Supports Healing 2:06

or a life sized tracing of their body, and they were asked to tell their story visually, however they wanted to tell it. So that is emotions. That includes trauma, surgery, illness, health, because it was addiction, whether it was behavioral or substance, where that impacted their body. They were asked to also portray where they feel comfortable about their body and where they felt joy and happiness and peace. Sometimes when they're coming to treatment, there's not a lot of that, but every inch of it you need because that's helpful.

The the polarity that I had everyone do a timeline of their whole life. And I was like a graph, the kind of graph you might prepare for a corporate lecture. And I had them do that for a lot of reasons. One is especially people with a trauma history have a hard time with sequential memory. They have the timeline right there and help them just like it does in corporate America. It help them be able to tell their story in a way that was, not perfectly sequential, but enough that people could follow their story.

And I also had people do Jenna Grahams, which is a family map, transgenerational family. And I even though this wasn't commonly asked, I asked people to include medical information, partly because in families where there's addiction and where there's mental illness, medical information is not passed on very well. I think it all somehow it swept under the rug along with family secrets, even though it shouldn't be. But it is. And even geographical moves, because we and modern society move a lot. Even if you're not in the military, you're going to if you don't work for a corporation that moves you around, people move more than they did in the past, and it's very hard on children.

And so I have people include that I have them. So their addiction, the progression, the recovery or not. It's quite powerful. And then so so back to like. So start from the beginning. The body map, the, timeline in general. And then often I would do art with them, including a Sam play. Sam play. You probably know a fair amount, having lived in Europe. It was, it evolved in Europe to women at the same time developed a similar technique and totally different countries. They didn't even know each other.

One was in Switzerland, one was in England. And they use miniature figurines with children and let them tell their story. And what they found is just telling their story was healing. That by itself, which seems really simple, but it's so powerful, right? So telling their story. And then I would have people tell their story as much as humanly possible within about 2 or 3 hours. And that was their graduation kind of ceremony, as it were. And at first it was a little bit of a but I have to admit, getting clients to do the work because it's a lot of work and most of it's outside of the group session.

So it'd be like a and sometimes I would have to tease them a little bit. Oh bother. Crampons are such a hard medicine. You know, I just, Oh. How stressful is that? I don't just because you would think I was asking them to drink like some horrible, bitter, like disgusting medicine. And so that within. I was surprised when I look back through some records within about five months of starting this, and my group. I didn't have to pressure anyone to do it anymore. The clients would say, you got to do this.

You got to do this because you haven't seen how powerful it is, but you have to do it. And they were helping each other do it. And that was amazing. And so acting out like cutting or like self-harm of any kind. Outside of group stopped. It just stopped. Partly because their hands were busy and they were being productive. And I think we talked about this a little bit,

Body Maps, Timelines, and Family History 7:00

a week and a half ago, but talk therapy works. There's plenty of research that talk therapy works. It works. And adding the visual component that the tactile component, I even think movement, even if it's not movement just for movement sake, but movement while painting large, because I have people paint large. It, it engages more of the brain. Why not? Why not have as much of the brain involved in recovery as possible? But not only that, the bilateral process engages the corpus callosum, which is damage in childhood if there's trauma and trauma.

All trauma means is wound. All right. Who has now had a trauma of some sort? Some wounds. Accidental or abuse? It doesn't matter. A wound affects our ability to use both sides of the brain in a holistic fashion. And you can tell when people don't have that ability. They tend to be very excessively linear. Excessively, narrow in their focus. They have a hard time moving from a max or global way of looking at a problem to the, the, minimum or the I'm trying what I mean, smaller the micro to the specific macro to micro.

Yes. Thank you. That's what I'm trying to say. They they have a very tough time switching from that. Seeing the problem from different perspectives. And so the good news is that by engaging the corpus callosum and treatment seals, the corpus callosum, and you see it, it's the best cognitive therapy there is. I think you see it in the way clients start to go. Who haven't thought about it that way or and being more willing and open to thinking about problems, whether it's cancer or relationships or all of the above addiction, then they're more open.

It's really a blast, and it's such a blast to. So a lot of people, of course, we use imagery in healing cancer. We spoke about Bernie Siegel like he's used imagery, I think, before anyone else. And I gave a lecture recently, a little different topic. It was out. It was actually about mind control. And I said, image is cognition and many mind controllers use image. Part of the suggestion and manipulation. And so you need to really consider the importance of image. Well, how more important is it when you're seeing what you've painted.

And it doesn't matter if it's good art? In fact, when I taught medical doctors, I used to teach for Andrew a while, for eight years. Right. I would say use your non-dominant hand because that'll help you bypass shame. The idea that you're supposed to be Michelangelo the first time you pick up a crayon. You know, we're not even talking a paintbrush X-ray on. And you want to be Michelangelo. And so they would laugh because they knew they were busted. And I would say, look, you knew you were going to be a famous surgeon the first surgery that you performed.

And so you're not going to be Michelangelo today. And that's not the point. It's not even of interest to me, your skill or even your interest in art. In fact, I've had people sit in my office after traveling across the country and scream, literally scream at me. I hate art therapy, screamed, scream, and all I could do is laugh is like, okay, well, let's just get busy. I know you just like I'm such a non-issue because it's something more about the motor skills, the hand eye coordination, the way our subconscious thinks it thinks, and image.

Especially our right brain and our right brain. Who has it? The woman that had the stroke. Stroke event. So is the bolt. What's her name? I don't remember her name, but the book The Stroke of Insight. Brilliant book. And she goes so far as to say that is true. She was a she's a nurse. She was a neurologist. She had a stroke. She was very conscious while she was having her stroke and couldn't stop it. Like, just like could see people and observe her brain dying on her basically. Can you imagine? And not being able to dial a phone to get out, knowing that was critical.

But in her recovery and she's fully recovered. She spoke about that the right brain is our gateway to higher consciousness and God and higher power, or, whatever your spiritual background like, supports. And I've seen that over and over and over, people who come in broken and thinking they're atheist because they're so disheartened and crushed by something in their life. And then to see the art begin to open a gateway, because color is vibration. Every color has a different vibration. I know I'm speaking to the choir.

You're so fun to talk to because you're like, yeah, and you're not just voicing me. You're like, yeah, I got it, I got it. I understand it's true. And so,

Bilateral Art Processes and Brain Integration 13:12

and I, I mean, at age 70, I would not still have this passion I do from my work if it wasn't for our. Because watching how it heals people, I just stand out of the way and it's like magic. It's not magic, but it's like magic. And it reminds me of why we're here and what we're supposed to do and how we're supposed to do it. And that is Grace. And you. What's interesting is that, I mean, you're talking about kind of that that people are linear, you know, dealt with trauma and you, it's kind of your, your spect from get get shorter.

I mean, it's you don't have the, the wide spectrum of expressing yourself, of enjoying life, experiencing life. And so and when we talk about cancer, you know, so cancer a lot of times what I, what I feel is that you have kind of frozen energy in certain areas of your body and, and that then puts those areas into canvas survival mechanism. So then if we can then open up, we can shed light. Or can I open the doors and kind of shake off the, the dust in those areas. Then we're, we're able then to bring life and, and remove that stagnated energy, in those areas of the body and then to be able to use, you know, art becomes such a powerful tool, because it is it is non-confrontational.

It is, you know, it I think it is a little bit, though. I think it can be confrontational, but it means I don't have to do it right. And and the client's actually confronting themselves when they look at the art, they're like, oh, like recently, someone said, wow, my anger is really focused and consolidated and my love is really scattered. And then, wow, that's powerful insight. Yes, it's powerful insight. And and the thing is that with art then you have it's both the physical and subconscious at the same time.

Yes. That expresses itself. Absolutely. That's 100% true. And. In some ways, I don't even have to talk about removing the blocks. What I say is paint your blocks. One time I I've had strep throat since I was a kid. Chronic strep throat and I had it when I was out of town giving a very big lecture to like 100 people, and I could barely speak. In fact, it was getting worse and it hurt like a son of a gun. And I didn't think I was giving you a lecture after the break. So I thought, well, I better practice what I preach, right?

So I drew like a little bitty bitty like small drawing of my throat, and then I just colored in the pain. Just a pain. I didn't even try to focus on wellness. And the result. How do you think that's possible? I mean, what do you think is at play when that happens? I think, I mean, I don't like the word psychosomatic because. We don't know enough to know the differential between what is the psychological piece and the physical piece, because they overlap on the Venn diagram. So who are we to say to someone else, that's psychosomatic.

I just find it very dismissive. I say even if it's psychosomatic, it hurts. So, know. Right. So, I think stress was contributing to it, lecturing to 100 people, traveling. I think there were some hostile people in the audience, which I never had to deal with for a long time. So that was surprising. I was sick as I went. So before I went and I lecture a lot. So it wasn't just the idea of lecturing that it was a problem. I do think I had a little bug of some kind, and, and so, I don't know, I don't think there's even research behind this.

Why it works. I don't even know how one of the one of the problems of why art doesn't have the following it should or the recognition it should is that there's so many variables. It's very hard to research in a quantitative way. And in fact, my research was qualitative for that reason. But. I, I. I don't know, it's almost like the body likes us to speak to it in its own language. And that's very woo woo I know, but it's, it's it's just like when you talk to a child and they're having a fit and you finally get down eye level to the child and you really listen and they really get that you're hearing them.

And often that's the best intervention is really listening. And so there's something about speaking to our body with color and line and shape. I mean, if you think about it, all religions, all of the major religions have symbols. There's a reason for that ancient reason for that. All of the major corporations have symbols.

Image, Symbolism, and the Body's Language 19:36

We call them logos. A lot of information is downloaded when you see a logo. Like I said before, people who use mind control use image kind of it. Symbols. So. And a mistake people make when they are working with someone who's been cult involved is they don't address the visual. And I've even found that acupressure points are used in some groups. So a tactile, visual, verbal, all of them. So so I wish I had an answer for you. I don't really, but there is something about communicating with the body in its own language.

I love that, I love that, and a lot of times I say, you know, that that cancer or whatever disease, whatever symptom you're you're having a lot of times is the body's ex, you know, trying to express a need. And, and by acknowledging that need and recognize that need, then the symptom does not need to be expressed anymore. I love it, and I think that matches very much what I was saying. It's not quite the same, but it's very much in tandem with what I was saying. I agree, I agree with that, and art has had such a time.

I mean, obviously this is your, this is what you teach, this is what you live. But it it had a very powerful, part of your journey of your upbringing, if you don't mind sharing so people can really understand, the impact that art can have and how it can transform an individual. Yeah. I'm going to go a little bit, a little bit around the boat, around about the first is. So I was hired in 1985 with no experience to work and rehab. And because the woman they hired or brought in to train me was drinking on the job, I didn't get trained because I said to my boss, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm not going to make fun of the clients and I'm not going to drink on the job. So.

So she went her way for I there I was and my, my boss, who was actually a pretty good boss, said when I said, well, what do I do with this group? As he shoved me in a room with a families, 3 or 4 families and a box of crayons. He said, you're an artist to have them make art. And so I used art that whole year. All kinds of are. And journal writing, that's also very important. A lot of research find journal writing. And at the end of the year, they were embarrassed to tell me that my clients have the lowest relapse rate of any therapist in the hospital because they couldn't figure out how that happened.

But I, because of my own experience in childhood with art, I never doubted the power of our. And I had, even though I was young, I think I was 30 when I was hired. I had already run a museum, developed educational programs, taught college art. So I've been around the art world quite a bit. I was a professional fine art photographer, but in childhood I wasn't doing well. I mean, I can't even tell you how poorly I was doing. And my mother was the, I call her the debutante alcoholic because it's true.

So she was a debutante and at one point was married to an extraordinarily wealthy family. And I have to laugh because my mother felt like she thought she was a queen. But literally her last name at one point was Windsor. I'm not kidding. And so, and she was very flamboyant, dramatic and southern and, proper and alcoholic. And so, she did not think she could become pregnant. She had had some trouble getting pregnant. I'm sure alcoholism had something to do with it. That wasn't discussed at the time, but I, I mean, I'm internationally certified advanced drug and alcohol counselor.

I've been reading this stuff for a long time, and, so she was surprised to find that she was pregnant. And to her credit, around the seventh or eighth week of my fetal development, she quit drinking. To her credit, I mean, she was well educated, so, that was probably her last period sobriety at the rest of her life. But that was still helpful. And I am grateful. But the first trimester is the most damaging for alcohol exposure. And so I got hit pretty hard, and my, I, now again, because she stopped drinking around the seventh or eighth week, I was normal birth weight, normal gestation period of time and all that.

So that's very helpful. But I was still born with a cleft palate hearing loss. I was underweight, like, grossly underweight until I was like 18. Like be off. I looked like boyfriend type underweight, developmentally delayed. I had it all. And in the hospital a lot with autoimmune challenges and, like, bronchitis, pneumonia, and then surgeries to repair for the cleft palate and, Oh, and terrible allergies. You know, the whole, you know, better than I do,

Childhood Trauma and Art as Recovery 26:00

although I've been researching it lately because I'm publishing about it soon, so I had to get my facts straight. But, and and then my mom, God bless her heart, alcoholic wasn't the best bonding person, right? So, I was also, then a failure to thrive. So she literally force fed me, which is all kinds of problems associated with that. So. And then we moved a lot, she could she was wealthy. She could. And people would start to figure out something about her and then hopes for having it. So, so first grade, by fourth grade, I had already lived in three states, I think like 8 or 9 schools.

I was shy anyway. By nature I would have been shy no matter what. And, I was I was pretty much toast. I was pretty much done in and I was failing fourth grade for the second time. And so I had this brilliant. The second, fourth grade teacher was brilliant. And I overheard this conversation. She turned to my mom. My mom was visiting the class and she said, and this dry kind of voice, you know, she really likes our. Why don't you get her an art teacher? So God bless. My mother did this. I mean, she could have had tutors for me my whole childhood, but that didn't happen.

But the art, thank God, because she hired, this beatnik free hippie beatnik. I'd never seen anyone like him in my life. So I was like, he had long hair. Yeah, an earring, anything. I mean, yes, flip flops had jeans on and a beret. I mean, none of that I had seen on anyone in my lifetime. So that was a big imprint and fascinating to me. And he taught me how to paint with oil paint and fourth grade. And, I had a class with him once a week. Sometimes he would take me with him to paint on murals that he did for doctor's offices for children, and let me color in some things.

And a year and a half later, I was reading college level. So so let me just get this straight. So a year prior, you failed fourth grade twice. Almost twice. Almost twice. And and what was your reading skill at that time? I don't really know the details of it. What I know is in the middle of fourth grade, I was put back in the third grade. Yeah. Which was horribly humiliating. And then I wasn't doing well in fourth grade. And and thankfully, about the middle of fourth grade, the painting classes started, which helped.

Now, I kind of thought I had a stepmother who, it's also kind of a mess, but she would have me read adult science fiction to her, which really helped my vocabulary. But that came later. I was kind of thinking, well, maybe that was part of this mix, not just the art, but that came later. I was older when that happened. So it it just shows and that this, this art, it just changed how your brain was able to process information and how you're able to experience the world. And, I mean, what an impact it change in heal.

It helped heal my brain. And then I used art other ways to in seventh grade, I had a biology class, and I loved bugs and like flora and fauna. And, we were scuba diving a little bit at the time. Snorkeling, actually, not scuba diving. And I love sea critters. And that was all fascinating. So I would draw my assignments and my my teacher loved it and my memory. It helped my memory. Right. Think about it. And that was seventh grade and I took my entrance exams for college. I clocked out of biology from a seventh grade class, a college level class, and I swear I drew those little bugs.

I knew I don't remember them all now, but the thoracic and the, you know, all the little parts that was all in my mind after what, eight, seven years later. Right. Okay. That's cool. Right? That's incredible. I mean, that's incredible. I mean, it really, really shows the how how art can shift, physiology and shift. And, you know, our, our brain, how they function, neuroplasticity and, and the beauty of that is that these signals and obviously controls inflammation, controls tissue regeneration, controls white blood cells.

They you troll all of these things. So if we can then, you know, bring in such a powerful tool, we will then be able to address all these areas that, you know, instead of, you know, doing all these other therapies. This becomes a really core component. It should be core. And every treatment center, whether it's for addiction or mental illness, and I think in every hospital and absolutely for cancer treatment. Yeah. Yeah. It's not not just a although although there's research out of New Zealand that one hour a week of art therapy and not provided in a prescriptive manner, which is they have a program and it's decided in advance.

This first session, you'll do the second session you'll do that. It's not like that. The art therapist will walk into their hospital room. These are people living in the hospital with cancer and say, what would you like to work on today? Very organic. Should be this is and, They had nine domains they were testing and it made a significant improvement. And eight of the domains. That's amazing. And they think that it also would have made an improvement in the ninth domain, but for something they call the floor effect.

So they were trying a new medication to help with nausea. And they think that medication or everybody thought it was a medication that helped with the nausea probably was. And so they're not sure if art contributed to that or not. So they said it didn't, but it might have. Yeah. That's awesome. I mean that that's really, really cool. And that's obviously art is doesn't come with bad side effects if it's, it's it's pretty inexpensive, very, very inexpensive. I'm laughing and thinking, oh, I have a blue hangover.

No, I mean, that's funny. No, no, it's it's funny, I like it. Yeah, yeah. So yeah. And tell me so you were mentioning and we, we chatted about this before as well, doctor Bernie Siegel. Yeah. His, how he was using art. Do you mind sharing a little bit about that? And also the, how he was using it and also the effect that, that people were having using it in such a way. Okay. So I was just thinking, when you brought this up is how many miracles can I share in this session without people thinking, oh, that's ridiculous, without hitting their level of what is credible, right.

So please, no, not every client does well and my care, sometimes it's just timing. They're not ready or who knows? But in this case, this was, again, when I was a neophyte therapist. That first year, I was reading Bernie Siegel. I like him, by the way.

Bernie Siegel, Illness, and a Powerful Art Exercise 35:00

And so my brother, my younger brother, who is sort of like a my child anyway, was four years younger now. He had always been the healthy one, the one who was fit and tall and handsome and robust and, well, he we didn't know at the time he had HIV or Aids and he was hospitalized with a brain mass and he was stuttering. He was dizzy. He had to hold on to furniture to move from the hospital bed to the bathroom and back. And he was, I think it's fair to say he was terrified, because he would have been in like 27 or 28 at the time.

And he wasn't used to not he wasn't used to physical problems. This was shock to him and me too, by the way. So we used to draw together some when we were kids. Not a lot that some. And so I thought, okay, I'll bring my art supplies and maybe it'll help him relax a little bit. And then I thought, I'll try this for me. Single exercise. What do I know? So I go with my art pad and my crayons and my charcoal. So I told him about Bernie Siegel and the book and the suggestion. So why don't we try it? His game.

And I said, so. According to Bernie Siegel, you draw your brain mass like it's a monster. And then I turn the page and you draw it again, but a little bit smaller, and then I turn the page, and we keep doing that until all that's left is a pen, pencil. So we did, and then it was kind of like, okay, I got to go now. There wasn't really much to process. I didn't know what to process. I don't even know if it was important. There are some people, therapists, art therapists who believe just doing the art is is the healing aspect.

And others with a more psychoanalytic background, believe is inside I. I personally think it's both, and it depends on the client and what they are able to do, want to do, called to do. But anyway. So I went home and I came back in the morning to find him standing in the lobby with my dad and the doctors, and they're all milling around and my dad's genuinely upset for good reason to hear that Tom has HIV or Aids. I think it was. I think they just thought it was Aids at the time. But he was other than that, he was fine.

He he and the rain, this had gone away overnight. And so no, as the disabled 1st May, a lot of times what I had to say was ignoring. Right sunlight. Hey, Tom. Think it might have had something to do with that. What we did last night and everything that they thought, okay, now, in reality, it might not have been about the art exercise we did. I it's not wasn't a scientific study. We didn't control all the variables we have. No, I have no idea what the other variables were. Even or contributing factors.

But really that's pretty dramatic for a brain mass. It was causing stuttering and balance problems. And and they identified as a brain mess. But I don't think they called it a tumor. So whatever it was or wasn't. That's dramatic form late at night because it was dark when I left to in the morning, he went from really impaired to as okay as he could be with Aids. So it didn't heal the Aids. But he also lived five and a half years with Aids at a time when nobody was living that long with Aids. So that's pretty impressive too, because this is around well, right when it came out like 85, 86.

Right. So, so that has always captured my heart and my mind and my curiosity. So what I tell people is I really don't know that the exercise healed. I personally think it did. I can't say I know, but what it did to is inspire me to go back to school for another by 5 or 6 year. Right to study psychology and art therapy. So art therapy was part of my doctoral studies because I was so fascinated by it, and it's so piqued my curiosity. Right? Yeah. And and I love it. I, I have to say, I love it. Well, I mean, I did kind of thinking of, you know, because there's no medical intervention, really, that's going to get rid of a of a tumor that size that quickly, just overnight.

And there was no other intervention that was taking place. Yeah. And so, likelihood of something just disappearing overnight by itself is very minimal. Yeah. And so, so it's kind of a fascinating possibility and, and, and it just does highlight, you know, the. Yeah, the power of art and also the power of as we allow our brain to engage, you know, with the imagery, you know, how that imagery, like you're saying, mind control, how that can shift then physiological activity. Yeah. Right. I mean. Should we let corporations be the only ones that use the power of image?

Maybe we should put it in our own hands more. Actually, a workshop I've always wanted to do is have people. And I think there's something like it out there. Develop their own logo instead of kids memorizing everybody else's logo, consciously or unconsciously, have them create their own logo. I love that I actually created mine. It's basically an ancient cave painting adapted, but it's the one that best suited me. So I love that, I love that, and and another thing that we were chatting a little bit about that that really fascinated me

Healing Mandalas and Parts Work 42:30

was, you know, creating know you create the body map that you were talking about and then creating a mandala around a healing mandala around it. And, and the, the impact that that will have on the, on the healing and, and you know, Ted talked a little bit about that because that, that was really fascinating to me. Okay. So one reason I like talking to is because of how you interpret some of the things I say. And that that is a great idea, what you just said. And that's not exactly what I'm doing, but I think I may add it in the future because I like it.

So as you know, the mandala represents the totality of man. It's the whole self, and it includes God and man, and it's a drawing inside of a circle which seems so trivial. Doesn't it seem really like really drawing in a circle? But it's absolutely powerful. I, did you ever read a book called The Power of No? Okay, so one of the stories in the book, just young boys being harassed at school and the the old shaman says, let me teach you a trick. So he teaches him to draw a circle in the sand and then take a chicken.

Now, this is brutal for you guys that are like, this might be hard for some of you to hear this, but I grew up around a farm, so it's not that hard for me. And you take a chicken and you kind of put their beak on the edge of the circle, and the chicken freezes. And he taught him this trick to take to school because he would look like he was a powerful magician, scare all the other kids. And it worked. But I share that because there is a little bit of a trance phenomenon, which is what's happening with the chicken.

That happens when you're painting in a circle. And I think that's part of the healing. And it's also you're painting in a circle. It kind of forces you to integrate polarities, whether you intend to or not. So it's not new to have people trace their outline of their body on a large sheet of, paper. They're using school part of it. They're used. The life size silhouette drawings or body maps are used a lot in eating disorder programs to help people look at their body image distortion, for example.

Everyone normal people have distortion 10 to 15% normal, right? But then with eating disorders, we know it can be quite extreme. People that are dying from starvation think they're fat. For example. So I began using it because I realized in working with trauma that so many of my clients, I was doing inner child work to find that my clients actually. Felt smaller, not just in a metaphorical way they actually didn't realize or full of the body height. And when I found that out and started addressing it, I was amazed at how people felt so empowered when they realized, oh my God, I'm really tall.

So I started with just drawing their height on the door jamb like you would with a kid. And they, I mean, across the board. Oh my God, I'm really tall. And I would watch them fill up their body. So I realized eventually I couldn't do that forever. And marking people's height on the door. And also doors are not all the same, like one door was like 20 30ft tall. That throws off light, that throws off right. The idea of helping people see their kids at the scale differential. So and I've also had clients see how tall they are.

And one in particular burst into tears and said, oh, I'm big. I could hurt people. And that's powerful to because I think some crimes or some abuses, are because a person doesn't get their own physicality. They don't realize I'm a grown up in a big body. They're feeling like they're a toddler or a kid, right? So that's when I started moving the body maps is and so people say, well, people have been doing body mass forever, but not to address height and height distortion or, and help people better with adulting.

So and I, I think this is true that I'm one of the first people to have people use body maps to paint in their parts, their parts of self, whether it's more the stereotypical generic roles of inner child, inner brat, inner troublemaker, inner compliant, beautiful one. Right? The princess, the hero, the jokester, or specific parts that are very individualized and, idiosyncratic to the self. And so now that work can really help physical healing as well. It's incredible how much that work can help physical healing.

And that has not been discussed. Maybe hardly, maybe almost never in the literature and the research literature. That's that's maybe something you and I can work on because that's really key. It's important because the parts tend to hold unacknowledged trauma, and then that's related to physicality and health and illness. So I'll, I have I'll invite you to just state about that because that's pretty fun right? I think that's incredible. And it's exactly that is the the recognition of the self and recognition of the components within yourself.

Yeah. That you, you've kind of consciously it's not aware of, but it's, it's, it's playing in the background all the time and it's impacting how you view yourself. And then also, how you interact with the rest of the world as so I yeah, I think this is so, so amazing, so powerful. It is it's really fun. So I worked it was working with a group, dissociative identity disorder, women. And it was probably still the late, late 1980s.

Detox, Somatic Relief, and Clinical Applications 50:00

It might have been 1990 at the very latest. It was 1991. And we were doing kind of a marathon group. And so they broke for dinner and went to a restaurant, and they came back and they were all frustrated and felt quite irritated. And they were like, that waitress has a single personality disorder. I loved it so on the one hand, we want to know about our parts and the other hand we don't want to be so reduced. That and right? So we want the parts. If we want to know our parts. So, so that that's powerful.

And so I use the body maps for healing and and I use them for everything, anything you can use talk therapy for, I use the body maps for recently I had a client that was detoxing and her detox symptoms were legitimate. And it was also a risk for her to relapse because she had to take legitimately pain medication, and it was her drug of choice. Right. So there is concern about getting her. And she actually was off everything with a few days off everything. When she came to my office. And so I had her paint like somatic experiencing the part of her body that felt good, that the whole that felt healthy, that felt, joy or peace.

And it, it wasn't that much of the body, but it was enough. And the colors associated with that. And then all of her detox symptoms were painted and and in somatic experiencing, there is a, kind of a it's not bilateral processing, but it's a processing from the parts of your body that feel good in the parts of your body that hold the pain, and that it's almost like it reminds the body to feel good, or how we can feel good. So and it's often there's color or sense of heaviness or weight or density or I mean, it can be very variable.

So I had her I just gesture back to the body that so okay, so feel your pain as much as you can feel it for as long as you can feel it. Not to suffer but to really know it. And then it's like, let's move. Move your consciousness to this part of the body and the colors on this body map your body that feel good. And she last with no detox symptoms. Now, it was a very long session. It was I'm not doing weekly hour sessions anymore. I'm doing four hour sessions maybe once a month or once or twice a year.

Depends on the client. But she left with no detox symptoms. That's incredible. I mean, yeah, and that's incredible. And that. Yeah, reflects with a lot of people, you know, whether they're maybe doing chemo and they're dealing with, you know, all the symptoms from that, you know, to be able to then express that through art. Yes. And then being able to calm down those symptoms, it's not that hard to do. Yeah. I've even have people in the midst of a really brutal in the midst of a brutal detox and paranoid, like, turn it around with the body now.

So yeah, that's incredible. And even even violence, I even use it to help people calm down their propensity for violence, using the volume that. Yeah, a lot of poison. Yeah, yeah. So so I'm hoping, I've just changed my business from, since I'm 70, from weekly therapy to having people fly in and work with me. Ideally, the minimum would be two days, but I will accept one. I like two days because people tend to dream after the first day, and that's so powerful. But and I've had people come in for five days, so I don't know, you can send people to me.

That'd be wonderful. How how do people, how do they access you and how, how are they? Yeah. Where did they go to sign up for a session with you? Yeah, for a two day. Right. So I prefer people to call me because I. I don't want you coming if you're too fragile or not ready or your doctor doesn't approve it.

How to Work with Dr. Scott 55:00

I know you would, but, some doctors might, so I'd want to be able to talk with them about what's going on. The timing. I rarely say not now. I mean, almost, almost never. But I do sometimes, so. And I have a sense of, the goals, what they're were seeking. If it's realistic with what I offer, and we negotiate the time, amount of time and we consider pocketbook in that as well. So call me 331088097613108809761. And then my website, which has a bunch of podcasts, this one will go on. And I guess eventually I hope, on it.

And that is Art speaks out loud, dawg. So it's just all lowercase. Art speaks out loud, dawg. Or my name Erica Scott Erica scott.com the call me I would love to talk to you even if you don't come in. I you know, I might be able to get you to a therapy that meets your needs even if it's not art therapy. But I hope I hope that you're willing to walk on the wild side and try art. And I also do Sam play. So I have thousands of figurines from around the world and the sandbox, and that's powerful. To.

So it's it's interesting. I mean, I growing up in Sweden, we had sandboxes all over the place. And that was just part of the school yard, you know, we're wherever we're at or sandboxes. And you always played with sand and creating things and, and I don't see it that much now. I don't either. And I would like to see it again and maybe they're worried about germs, but I just don't think it's that much of an issue. Really? So the sun bleaches a right. Exactly. It's an antiseptic and. Yeah, absolutely. So. Right.

Well, let's maybe encourage that. Well, Doctor Erica Scott, that this has been wonderful. It has been absolutely wonderful. And, yeah, to me, you know, yes, I do a lot of these other therapies. But for me, you know, bringing in art, bringing in music, bringing in those type of tools I feel really gets to the core of the issue. And then we can address it with other these other therapies, you know, like what I do and what oncologists do and so forth. You know, depending on the need. But we, you know, the core of the issue, I feel really gets hit by and utilizing these type of tools and, and, you know, our job that people are listening to, I mean to take advantage of this, I mean, this this would be really great.

Thank you. I, it would be my honor. Thank you. I agree with you. And it's it's not threatening. It's not. It's easier somehow. And less threatening than talk therapy. It's more gentle, not less powerful, more gentle. So I love it. Well, yeah. Thank thank you so much. I really appreciate this meeting very much. Thank you,