When whiteness and Chinese excellence collide, burnout follows

This is a potent and exhausting intersection. When the ontological posture of Whiteness (Mastery, Control, Individualism) meets the cultural mandate of Chinese Excellence (Filial Piety, Face, "Eating Bitterness"), they do not cancel each other out. They amplify each other.

They form a pincer movement on the nervous system. Here is how these two forces collaborate to create a specific, crushing form of burnout.

1. The Convergence of "Chi Ku" and "Grind Culture"

• Whiteness (The Protestant Work Ethic): Teaches that your value is determined by your output. Rest is "laziness." You must constantly "hack" your life to be more efficient.

• Chinese Excellence (Chi Ku / 吃苦): Literally "Eating Bitterness." This is the cultural virtue of enduring hardship without complaint. It teaches that suffering is the currency you pay for stability.

• The Burnout Trap: When you combine these, Pain becomes a metric of success. You stop listening to your body’s signals to stop (burnout) because your culture tells you that enduring that pain is noble ("Chi Ku") and your economic system tells you that pushing through it is required for success ("The Hustle"). You are gaslit by both sides into believing that your exhaustion is a sign you are doing it right.

2. The Architecture of "Face" vs. "Brand"

• Whiteness: Demands you curate a perfect Individual Self—a "Personal Brand." You must appear successful, happy, and in control (The sovereign individual). Vulnerability is a liability.

• Chinese Excellence: Demands you maintain "Mianzi" (Face). You represent the lineage. Your failure is not just your own; it shames the clan.

• The Burnout Trap: You are performing on two stages simultaneously. You have to be the "Cool, effortless professional" for the white gaze, and the "Dutiful, successful daughter" for the family gaze. This requires Constant High-Functioning Masking. You are never "off-duty." The energy cost of maintaining two different types of "perfection" depletes the soul rapidly.

3. The Weaponization of the "Model Minority"

• Whiteness: Loves the "Model Minority" because it is a "safe" version of otherness. It validates the system: "See? They worked hard and made it." Whiteness rewards Chinese Excellence only as long as it is compliant, quiet, and productive.

• Chinese Excellence: Often internalizes this safety as survival. "If I am the best, they cannot hurt me." "If I am essential, I won't be deported/fired/excluded."

• The Burnout Trap: You are working from a place of Existential Terror, not ambition. You are over-delivering not because you love the work, but because you feel your safety is conditional. Whiteness extracts your labor, and Chinese Excellence tells you to be grateful for the opportunity to be exploited.

4. Linear Time vs. Ancestral Debt

• Whiteness (Vecna's Clock): Operates on urgent, linear time. Q4 goals. Five-year plan. The biological clock. It demands speed and accumulation.

• Chinese Excellence (The Ancestor's Gaze): Operates on karmic/intergenerational debt. "We sacrificed everything so you could fly."

• The Burnout Trap: You feel you don't own your own life. You are running a race (Whiteness) carrying the weight of three generations on your back (Chinese Excellence). If you slow down to rest, you feel like you are failing capitalism and betraying your grandmother. The guilt makes rest impossible.

5. Emotional Suppression (The "Stoic" Double Bind)

• Whiteness: In professional spaces, "emotional intelligence" often just means "not making other people uncomfortable." It values the rational, "clean" presentation of self.

• Chinese Excellence: Often discourages "loud" emotions, viewing them as a loss of control or a burden to others.

• The Burnout Trap: You have no place to put the rage. You cannot scream at work (unprofessional), and you cannot scream at home (disrespectful). The rage and grief get trapped in the body (soma), leading to autoimmune issues, migraines, and severe fatigue. This is the body saying "No" when the mouth cannot.

Summary: The Diamond of Pressure

Imagine a piece of coal.

• From above: Whiteness pushes down with the pressure of "Ascension" (Be better, earn more, be separate).

• From below: Chinese Excellence pushes up with the pressure of "Foundation" (Be stable, support the family, don't rock the boat).

The result is that you become a diamond—hard, brilliant, sharp... and incredibly cold. Burnout is the moment the diamond shatters because a human being was never meant to be that hard.

Rewilding this Burnout: To heal this, you have to disobey both masters.

1. Disobey Whiteness: By choosing "good enough" instead of "perfect," and prioritizing community care over career climbing.

2. Disobey Chinese Excellence: By refusing to "eat bitterness" when it is killing you, and trusting that you can honor your ancestors by living well, not just by suffering well.

Exploring ‘become mycelium’ as a different kind of medicine

To "become mycelium" in a healing context is the ultimate act of Decentering the Self.

In the dominant culture (and traditional psychology), we are taught to be Trees: standing tall, individual, visible, competing for sunlight, and trying to grow as high as possible (Ascension).

To become Mycelium is to go underground. It is to accept that you are not a standalone unit, but a thread in a vast, invisible web of relations. Healing stops being about "fixing me" and starts being about "repairing the connections."

Here is what that shift looks like in practice.

1. You Stop Hoarding "Wellness" (Nutrient Exchange)

Biologically, mycelium is famous for the "Wood Wide Web"—it moves carbon and sugar from trees that have excess to trees that are struggling, even across different species.

• The Healing Shift: You stop viewing your energy, money, or stability as private property.

• What it looks like:

  • Mutual Aid as Therapy: You realize that your anxiety might not be a chemical imbalance, but a reaction to your neighbor's starvation. You engage in mutual aid not as "charity," but because you understand that if the network is sick, you cannot be well.

  • Asking for Help: You drop the "Hyper-Independence" trauma response. You allow nutrients (care, money, food, listening) to flow into you when you are depleted, without shame.

2. You Eat the Dead (Composting Grief)

Mycelium’s primary job is to break down dead matter. It turns the "endings" (fallen logs, leaves) into the soil for new life. It does not fear death; it feasts on it.

• The Healing Shift: You stop trying to "get over" grief or "move on" from loss. You move into it.

• What it looks like:

  • Metabolizing Trauma: Instead of packaging trauma away (repression), you sit with the "rot"—the sadness, the anger, the breakdown of old identities. You trust that by digesting this heavy emotion, you are creating fertile soil for whatever comes next.

  • Art Therapy Application: Making art with materials that rot (leaves, mud), or creating works specifically to destroy them, honoring the cycle of decay.

3. You Expand Horizontally, Not Vertically (Lateral Growth)

Trees grow up (hierarchy). Mycelium grows out (entanglement). It covers ground. It seeks new connections in the dark.

• The Healing Shift: You abandon the "Ladder of Success" or the "Ladder of Healing" (getting to a "higher" vibration).

• What it looks like:

  • Widening Safety: Instead of trying to reach a peak state of happiness, you try to widen your base of support. You connect with more people, more places, more non-human kin (rivers, pets).

  • Resilience: If one line is cut, the network survives because it has a million other pathways. You build a life where your well-being isn't tied to just one job, one partner, or one outcome.

4. You Embrace "The Dark" (Subterranean Wisdom)

Mycelium dies if exposed to too much direct light. It thrives in the dark, damp earth.

• The Healing Shift: You reject the "Love and Light" spiritual bypassing that demands constant positivity.

• What it looks like:

  • Shadow Work: You become comfortable in the "underground" of the psyche—the depression, the uncertainty, the quiet. You treat these states not as failures, but as incubation periods.

  • Invisibility: You stop needing to be "seen" or "validated" by the public eye (social media, applause) to feel real. You find power in being invisible, doing the quiet, unglamorous work of care that holds the forest together.

5. You Communicate Through Tremors (Somatic Listening)

Fungal networks signal danger or health through chemical pulses across miles. They feel the footfall of a bear or the toxin in the soil instantly.

• The Healing Shift: You reframe "Hypersensitivity" as "Network Intelligence."

• What it looks like:

  • Validating the Vibe: If you walk into a room and feel unsafe, you don't gaslight yourself with logic ("But everyone is smiling!"). You trust your mycelial gut. You acknowledge that your body is picking up on the invisible "toxins" (tension, aggression) in the web.

  • Empathic Boundaries: You learn that because you are connected, you feel the world's pain. The goal isn't to cut the connection (numbness), but to learn how to let it pass through you like an electric current, without burning you out.

Summary: The Mycelial Affirmation

"I am not a lone tree trying to touch the sun. I am the web underneath that holds the earth together. I feed what is hungry, I eat what is dead, and I grow in the dark."

Resisting Vecna from ‘Stranger Things’ as the tyranny of Whiteness with a different kind of medicine

If Vecna (Henry Creel) represents the Apotheosis of Whiteness—the obsession with purity, mastery, individual control, and the "preservation" of trauma—then you cannot defeat him with weapons that belong to Whiteness. You cannot "out-master" the master.

In the logic of the show, the characters usually try to fight back with guns, psychic blasts, and plans (Empire’s tools). But using Bayo Akomolafe’s philosophy, the "medicine" for resisting Vecna is not a stronger weapon, but a different posture entirely.

Here is Akomolafe’s medicine for the Mind Flayer and Vecna:

1. The Medicine of "Thick Time" (Resisting the Clock)

The Symptom: Vecna weaponizes linear time. He uses the Grandfather Clock. He counts down. He traps his victims in a loop of their past mistakes (trauma loops). This is the colonial imposition of Urgency. The Medicine: "Slowing Down."

• Akomolafe says: "The times are urgent, let us slow down."

• To resist Vecna, you do not rush to "fix" the trauma he is exploiting. You refuse the urgency of his countdown. You engage in "Thick Time"—a state of being where you are so present, so embodied, and so entangled with the "now" that the linear pull of the past (guilt) and the future (fear of death) loses its grip.

• In the show: Music (Running Up That Hill) broke Vecna’s spell. Why? Because music creates a "sanctuary of sensation." It forces the listener into the immediate present. It disrupts the linear narrative of "I am guilty" with the immediate sensory reality of "I am here."

2. The Medicine of the Trickster / Eshu (Resisting the Plan)

The Symptom: Henry Creel is an architect. He builds a "mind palace." He wants perfect order. He is a spider weaving a precise web. He hates chaos. The Medicine: Shape-Shifting and Play.

• Akomolafe invokes Eshu (the Yoruba trickster god) who dwells at the crossroads. Whiteness demands a clear path; the Trickster offers a maze.

• You resist Vecna not by being a "Stronger Hero" (which is just a mirror of him), but by being Unintelligible. You embrace the absurd, the playful, and the weird.

• In the show: Eddie Munson is the closest to this medicine. He is the "Freak," the Dungeon Master. He deals in fantasy and subversion. He doesn't try to be a "good citizen" of Hawkins. His final act was a concert—a performance—in the middle of a war zone. That is Trickster energy: answering the terror of Empire with the absurdity of Art.

3. The Medicine of Composting (Resisting the Archive)

The Symptom: Vecna "keeps" his victims. He displays their bodies in his mind. He is an Archivist. He refuses to let things die naturally; he mummifies them in pain. This is the Museum-ification of the world. The Medicine:Decomposition.

• Akomolafe teaches us to "Compost" our grief. Empire wants to build monuments; Rewilding wants to become soil.

• The resistance to Henry Creel is the acceptance of Death as Transformation, not Death as Failure. If Henry is obsessed with "immortality through domination," the medicine is "fertility through decay."

• The practice: Instead of holding onto the trauma (which gives Vecna a hook), the victim practices "metabolizing" it—letting the identity of "The Victim" rot so that a new, strange life can grow from it. It is telling Vecna: "You cannot keep me, because I am already changing into something else."

4. The Medicine of the Monster (Resisting Purity)

The Symptom: The Mind Flayer wants to melt everyone into one biomass (Assimilation). Henry wants to wipe out humanity to create a "pure" predator world. Both hate the "messy" complexity of human relationships. The Medicine:Becoming Monstrous.

• Akomolafe argues that we must become "monsters" to the status quo. We must allow ourselves to be contaminated by the world.

• The "Jocks" (Jason) try to stay pure and protect the town. They fail. The "Nerds" succeed because they are willing to crawl through the slime.

• The practice: To resist the "Purity" of Whiteness, you must embrace your own hybridity. You are not a "clean, independent self." You are a walking ecosystem of bacteria, trauma, joy, and ancestry. You resist the Mind Flayer not by building a wall, but by asserting that your internal ecosystem is too complex to be assimilated.

5. The Medicine of Fugitivity (Resisting the Gate)

The Symptom: The heroes are always trying to "Close the Gate." They want to seal the border between Hawkins (Civilization) and the Upside Down (The Wild/The Shadow). The Medicine: Sanctuary in the Cracks.

• Akomolafe suggests that "Sanctuary is not a place, it is a practice." It is not about building a fortress (Hawkins) that is safe from the monster. It is about learning how to live in the "fugitive spaces" where the Empire cannot see you.

• The solution isn't to "fix" Hawkins so it can go back to being a perfect 1950s suburb (which is what Henry hated). The solution is to let the illusion of the suburb fall apart.

• The Shift: The characters stop trying to "save the world" (Whiteness's burden) and start trying to "find each other in the dark."

Summary

If Vecna is the demand that we be Perfect, Eternal, and Controlled, Then The Medicine is the permission to be Broken, Temporary, and Entangled.

We defeat him not by climbing higher (Ascension), but by falling together into the mud (Descension), where his psychic powers cannot track us because we have ceased to be the "individuals" he is hunting.

Exploring the American science fiction horror ‘Stranger Things’ with Bayo Akomolafe’s ‘whiteness’

Using Bayo Akomolafe’s lens, we must first define "Whiteness" not as a racial identity, but as an ontological posture—a way of being in the world. For Akomolafe, Whiteness is the desire for Mastery, Capture, Purity, and Separation. It is the urge to straighten the crooked, pave over the wild, and create a "Universal" reality where everything is safe, categorized, and under control.

From this perspective, Stranger Things is not just a monster movie; it is a story about the collapse of "The Grid" (civilization/Whiteness) and the terrifying, messy entanglement that lies beneath.

Here is an exploration of Hawkins, Vecna, and the Mind Flayer through the philosophy of the Fugitive and the Post-Activist.

1. Henry Creel / Vecna: The Ultimate Agent of Whiteness

At first glance, Henry Creel seems to reject humanity. He hates the "hustle" of his parents, the fake smiles, the suburban routine. He seems to want to "rewild" the world.

However, through Bayo’s lens, Vecna is the apotheosis of Whiteness.

• Obsession with Mastery: Henry does not want to entangle with the world; he wants to dominate it. He views spiders not as companions, but as superior predators to be emulated for their order. His goal is to reshape the world in his image. This is the colonial impulse: to look at a complex ecosystem and say, "I can design this better."

• The Archive of Pain: Vecna does not let people die; he "consumes" them. He keeps their consciousness in his mind palace. This is the ultimate act of Museum-ification—a key trait of Empire. He captures souls, catalogues their trauma, and displays them. He refuses the grace of death (decomposition/compost); he insists on eternal preservation under his control.

• The Individual vs. The Web: While he uses a hive mind, Vecna places himself at the center as the "god." He represents the Hyper-Individual—the Solitary Self that Akomolafe warns against. He creates a world where only his will exists.

2. The Mind Flayer: The Shadow of Assimilation

If Vecna is the General, the Mind Flayer is the Atmosphere of Whiteness.

• Universalism: Akomolafe speaks of Whiteness as a force that wants to make everything the same (Universalism). The Mind Flayer consumes distinct bodies (rats, people) and melts them down into a single, amorphous biomass. It destroys difference.

• The Refusal of Sanctuary: There is no place to hide from the Mind Flayer. It invades the body, the mind, and the memory. It represents the "Empire that never sleeps," the surveillance state that demands total transparency and total access to the self.

• Terror of the "Other": To the citizens of Hawkins, the Mind Flayer is a "monster." But Akomolafe reminds us that "monsters are the face of the climatic." The Mind Flayer is the return of the repressed—it is the storm, the shadows, and the fungal intelligence that the manicured lawns of Hawkins tried to pave over.

3. Jocks vs. Nerds: The Police of "The Grid"

The high school social hierarchy in Stranger Things is a microcosm of the City vs. The Wild.

• Jason Carver (The Jock) as The Guardian of Purity: Jason is not just a bully; he is a deputy of Whiteness. He is obsessed with "safety," "order," and "protecting the town." When the murders start, he leads a mob. Why? Because he cannot tolerate ambiguity. He needs a clear enemy (Eddie/Hellfire Club). His violence is the violence of the State trying to maintain the "purity" of the suburbs against the "satanic" (the unknown).

• Eddie Munson (The Nerd) as The Fugitive: Eddie lives in the "borderlands" (the trailer park, the drug deals, the fantasy games). In Akomolafe’s terms, Eddie is practicing Fugitivity. He refuses the labels of the grid (Jock/Prep). He plays Dungeons & Dragons, a game of becoming other people, of shapeshifting.

• The Panic: The Jocks hate the Nerds because the Nerds embrace the "weird" (the queer, the magical, the non-linear). The Jocks represent the fear of contamination. They are trying to hold the walls of the Empire together, while the Nerds are pointing out that the walls are already leaking.

4. The Upside Down: The "Compost" of Hawkins

Hawkins, Indiana, is the dream of the 1980s: consumerism, malls, nuclear families. It is a "clean win."

The Upside Down is not a separate dimension; it is the Material Unconscious of Hawkins.

• It is sticky, wet, fungal, and dark.

• It is everything that modern sanitation tries to bleach away.

• The Entanglement: In the Upside Down, everything is connected by vines. If you step on a vine here, the hive mind feels it there. This is a twisted version of the ecological reality we deny. We are entangled, but because we have denied that connection for so long, when it returns, it returns as a nightmare (The Shadow) rather than a mother.

Summary: A Decolonial Reading of the Ending

The heroes usually try to "close the gate" (restore the boundary/re-establish the Grid).

However, a "Bayo-esque" reading might suggest that Hawkins cannot be saved by closing the gate. The cracks are necessary. The "Monster" is not just an invader; it is a symptom of a town that has tried to live outside of nature.

• Henry Creel is the danger of trying to control the wild.

• Eleven represents the possibility of staying with the trouble. She doesn't belong to the Lab (Science/Empire) or the Normal World (Suburbs). She is the bridge.

The tragedy of the show, through this lens, is that the characters are fighting to return to "Normalcy" (the 1950s/80s ideal), but Normalcy is the very structure that created Henry Creel. You cannot defeat Vecna by protecting the system that made him. How then? You ask. That is a whole new post which I will explore soon.

Problematising therapeutic culture with the theory of “whiteness”

When Bayo Akómoláfé speaks of “Whiteness,” he is rarely speaking about a phenotype or a group of people with pale skin. He is speaking about a geological force, a way of worlding, an epistemological posture.

He describes Whiteness as a desire for mastery, enclosure, categorical purity, linearity, and the total legibility of the world. It is the impulse to flatten the earth into a grid so it can be managed.

When we apply this lens to modern therapeutic culture, we see that much of what we call “mental healthcare” is actually Whiteness at work in the emotional realm. It often seeks to capture the wild, distressed soul and rehabilitate it back into a productive citizen of the Empire.

Here is how Bayo Akómoláfé’s theories problematise therapeutic culture:

𝟭) 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗽𝘆 𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 “𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝘂𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲”

The Theory: Akómoláfé speaks of the “fugitive”—that which escapes the plantation, that which refuses to be captured, named, or put to work. Whiteness is terrified of the fugitive; it wants to capture it and bring it back to the enclosure. The Problem in Therapy: Therapeutic culture often acts as a containment strategy. When a person falls apart (becomes fugitive), the system rushes in not to explore the falling, but to “stabilise” them. We diagnose (name/capture), we treat (manage), and we aim for “functioning” (return to the plantation).

• The Question: Is this therapy session a sanctuary for your wildness, or is it a place where we trim your claws so you can go back to your desk?

𝟮) 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗱𝗼𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝗼𝗳 “𝗦𝗮𝗳𝗲𝘁𝘆”

The Theory: Akómoláfé argues that safety is often a euphemism for control. In a world of entanglement, absolute safety is impossible. The demand for safety often requires the exclusion of the “other,” the chaotic, and the unknown. He suggests that “safety is not the absence of the monster, but the capacity to stay in the room with it.” The Problem in Therapy: Therapy is obsessed with “safe spaces.” While necessary for trauma recovery, this can morph into a demand for sterility. We try to create spaces void of conflict, void of risk, and void of the political storms outside. This creates a bubble that disconnects the client from the reality of the world.

• The Question: Are we creating safety, or are we creating a padded cell where reality is not allowed to enter?

𝟯) 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝘆𝘁𝗵 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 “𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗱𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳”

The Theory: Akómoláfé insists that “we are not nouns, we are verbs.” We are entangled. The idea of the discrete, separate individual is a colonial invention designed to make us assignable units of labor. The Problem in Therapy: Standard therapy is hyper-individualistic. It locates the problem inside the person (your anxiety, your depression, your chemical imbalance). It privatises suffering. It treats the fish while ignoring that the water is toxic. It suggests that if you just do enough CBT or breathwork, you can be well in a sick world.

• The Question: Why are we trying to heal a “self” that doesn't exist apart from the land, the ancestors, and the systems of power around it?

𝟰) 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗺 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗳𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗼 “𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗲”

The Theory: Akómoláfé says, “The times are urgent, let us slow down.” Whiteness is obsessed with progress, forward motion, and solutions. It cannot abide the aporia—the impasse, the place where there is no way forward. The Problem in Therapy: Therapeutic culture is solution-oriented. We want “outcomes.” We want to “process” trauma so it goes away. We want to “get over” grief. This is a linear, colonial march. It refuses the wisdom of the cycle, the descent, the composting. It refuses to let the wound speak its own intelligence.

• The Question: What if the depression is not a malfunction to be fixed, but a necessary refusal to participate in a violent system? What if we need to stay in the trouble longer?

𝟱) 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗟𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 (𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗴𝗻𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘀)

The Theory: The Empire demands that everything be named, measured, and categorized. If it cannot be named, it is dangerous. The Problem in Therapy: The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) is a book of colonial categorization.It takes the vast, mysterious, spiritual, ancestral, and political pain of a human being and shrinks it into a code like “Generalized Anxiety Disorder.” This makes the pain “legible” to insurance companies and institutions, but it often strips the pain of its dignity and its message.

• The Question: What happens to the parts of our suffering that do not fit into a diagnostic code? Do they get erased?

𝟲) 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝘂𝗺𝗮 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻

The Theory: Akómoláfé challenges the idea that we “have” trauma like we have a cold. He suggests we are in trauma, that trauma is a landscape, a terrain, a relational field. The Problem in Therapy: We often treat trauma as a foreign object to be excised from the body so the person can be “clean” again. This assumes that the “normal” state of a human is a vacuum-sealed, un-impacted purity.

• The Question: Instead of trying to “clear” the trauma, what if we asked how to navigate the terrain we are already in?

Meeting Sun Wukong at the crossroads of Heaven, a creative decolonial riff inspired by Bayo Akómoláfé

There is a move Bayo Akómoláfé makes with Èṣù that I keep returning to. He does not use the trickster to entertain us. He uses the trickster to loosen the bolts on reality, so the whole room can breathe again. Èṣù, in this telling, is the one who “breaks the binaries” and opens up a third way, a way that refuses the tidy comfort of completion. Bayo Akomolafe

Now let us do a careful, respectful experiment.

Not a swap, not a claim that Yoruba cosmology and Chinese cosmology are the same, and not a flattening of sacred lineages into one blended soup. Just a creative translation exercise, a way of asking, if we walked toward similar questions using Chinese mythic scripts, who might meet us there.

I think Sun Wukong would.

1) The celestial bureaucracy is a crossroads, just made of paperwork

In Journey to the West, Sun Wukong is born from stone, cultivates power through Daoist practice, masters transformation, rebels against Heaven’s order, and earns the title Great Sage Equal to Heaven.

In a modern decolonial lens, Heaven here is not “the divine” in a sweet, glowing sense. It is the celestial bureaucracy, the administrative machine that decides rank, worth, legitimacy, whose voice counts, whose body is manageable, whose hunger is inappropriate, whose anger is inconvenient.

Bayo’s crossroads is not only a place where roads meet. It is where our claims to being complete and correct get disciplined, gently, mischievously, sometimes painfully, into humility. Bayo Akomolafe

So here is a new thought, rooted in that spirit: Sun Wukong is a crossroads figure not because he stands at an intersection, but because he turns the entire idea of a fixed hierarchy into an unstable, laughing threshold. Heaven becomes a door that will not stay closed, because a monkey has learned how to pick locks with his own becoming.

2) “Awakened to emptiness” is a refusal practice of certainty

Sun Wukong’s name, given by his teacher, is often read as pointing toward “awakened to emptiness”, a cue that reality is not as solid as it pretends to be.

Bayo’s work returns again and again to indeterminacy, the sense that the world is not fully decided, and that agency is not a solo performance. He writes about a relational world where choices are not purely unilateral, but are shaped by other bodies and other agencies. Bayo Akomolafe+1

So if we read Sun Wukong through that lens, his famous transformations become more than a party trick. They become a practice of refusing one fixed identity long enough to discover what else is possible. Not an escape from responsibility, but a refusal of the colonial demand to be legible, stable, and easily governed.

3) Misnaming is not only harm, it can also be an opening

Bayo writes about “the gift of mispronunciation” as a risky opening, a way of meeting that allows identity to breathe, instead of freezing into correctness and control. Bayo Akomolafe

Now bring that to Sun Wukong, who names himself, renames himself, is renamed by others, and is constantly being interpreted through whatever the empire needs him to be that day. In English he is often collapsed into “Monkey King”, which is catchy, but it can also shrink him into a mascot, a stereotype, a neat export.

Here is the decolonial invitation: notice who benefits from the neat name. Notice what parts of the myth get trimmed off so it can fit into someone else’s story.

Then, very gently, ask the question Bayo keeps asking in different ways: what if being misread is not the end of you. What if it is also a crack where you slip into a different life.

4) The mountain and the golden circlet are a story about constraint and care

After rebelling, Sun Wukong is imprisoned under a mountain by the Buddha, later he is bound by a magical circlet that tightens when the monk chants.

It is tempting to read this as simple punishment. But in a feminist, trauma informed, decolonial frame, it can also be read as a difficult truth: power without restraint and consideration becomes harm, even when the power begins as liberation.

Bayo’s “third way” refuses heroic certainty, including the fantasy that we can fix the world by force of will. “We do not act upon the world, we are the world”, he says, pulling agency out of the lone hero narrative and back into entanglement. Emergence Network

So here is another new idea: the circlet is not just control, it is an argument for relational ethics. Not domination, but the messy work of learning how to travel with others without scorching them with your fire.

5) What Sun Wukong offers women’s healing work, without making him the centre

If you are using this myth creatively in art therapy, especially for women navigating patriarchy, racism, migration stress, and inherited trauma, Sun Wukong can function as a symbolic ally for three practices.

A) Refusing the script that made you “manageable”
Heaven offers Wukong a title that sounds fancy but is actually a low status role. Many women know this script in human form, the promotion that is actually more unpaid labour, the compliment that is a cage to work overtime.

B) Practising multiplicity instead of self betrayal
Transformation becomes permission to be more than one thing, tender and furious, grieving and hilarious, spiritual and sceptical, exhausted and still alive.

C) Meeting the crossroads without demanding closure
This is the heart of the trickster teaching. The goal is not a perfect identity. The goal is a living identity, one that can move. Bayo Akomolafe+1

Three creative prompts you can lift straight into practice

1. The Bureaucracy Scroll
   Paint or collage all the rules you have been given about being a “good woman”. Then tear the scroll and re assemble it into a new map.

2. Under the Mountain
   Make a small sculpture of the mountain that pinned you down. Then add a hidden doorway. Not a grand escape, just one true exit.

3. The Circlet and the Consent Spell
   Draw a circle that represents constraint. Around it, write the words that tighten you. Then write new words that loosen you, boundaries, consent, rest, chosen kin, truth telling.

How Art Therapy Untangles Perfectionism

Perfectionism can feel like carrying a tiny inspector in your pocket. It taps its clipboard on everything, emails, outfits, conversations, even the way you rest. The intention is safety and excellence but the impact is often stress, delay, and shrinking joy.

Here is how it gets in the way in everyday life, and what you can do about it.

Where it trips you up

• Decisions
  Endless researching and comparing. Dinner choices take twenty minutes. Phone plans take weeks. The cost is time and mental load.

• Time and deadlines
  You tweak until midnight, then miss the cut off. Lateness comes not from laziness, but from trying to send the spotless version.

• Work and study
  You avoid feedback because it feels like danger. You overprepare and still feel unready. Projects stall at ninety per cent.

• Relationships
  You apologise for not being your best self, then withdraw to avoid being seen in progress. Or you try to control the plan so nothing goes wrong.

• Home and life admin
  You wait for the perfect system before tidying or budgeting. Clutter and unopened mail build up because the first step feels too messy.

• Money
  You overbuy the ideal tool, course, or outfit, then avoid checking the account because you fear what you will find. Or you undercharge because the work is not perfect yet.

• Health and rest
  Exercise becomes all or nothing. Sleep gets cut to chase the final polish. Rest feels undeserved unless everything is finished.

• Creativity
  You never start because the first draft will not match the image in your head. Half made ideas pile up like abandoned canvases.

• Neurodivergent life
  Masking and high effort coping can hide struggle until burnout hits. Executive load increases when every task must be done the one right way.

• Using supports
  You delay booking therapy or using funding because the timing or plan is not perfect. Help arrives late, if at all.

  How to spot it in the moment

• Thinking signs, all or nothing, shoulds, mind reading, catastrophising, and overpersonalising mistakes.

• Body signs, tight jaw, shallow breath, a scanning gaze that hunts errors, an urge to fix or to flee.

• Behaviour signs, lots of preparing, little starting, or frantic finishing with no recovery time.

  If perfectionism is like a necklace that has knotted itself in the drawer, then art therapy gives you a calm table, gentle light, and steady hands to loosen the knot together rather than yanking at it.

  How art therapy does the untangling

  1) Trains process over product
  In the studio we practise marks that are not meant to impress anyone. Drips, smudges, first drafts. Your body learns that imperfect action is safe. This widens thinking and softens all or nothing rules.

  2) Lowers threat so choice returns
  Perfectionism often lives in a tense body. Slow rhythmic making, clay squeeze and release, breath marks, and colour washes invite your nervous system toward safety. When the body settles, planning and perspective switch back on.

  3) Externalises the inner critic
  We draw the Critic and the Caring Coach as two characters. On paper they can speak, set fair rules, and share the load. You leave with a one sentence cue the Coach can use during hard tasks, for example, small step now, refine later.

  4) Updates old lessons
  Many perfectionist rules were learned during tough moments. We recall one memory while grounded, then pair it with new meaning as you make an image. This can soften the old lesson, never try unless you can win, and replace it with, I can begin and improve.

  5) Builds interoception and self compassion
  Clay, textured paper, and charcoal increase awareness of body signals that warn of a spiral, tight jaw, shallow breath, scanning for errors. We pair that awareness with a kind response rather than a push. Over time you collect proof that kindness works better than pressure.

  6) Rehearses flexible behaviour
  We design tiny experiments, timed sketches, two colour limits, non dominant hand, quick share then step away. You practise beginning, stopping, and sending at good enough. Those behaviours transfer to email, study, business, and relationships.

  Five small practices to try this week

  1. One minute mess, two minute refine
     Make a fast messy layer, then add one useful detail. Start the next task immediately after.

  2. The three check rule
     Before you send or submit, look only for these three, clear subject, key point, kind close. When all three are ticked, send.

  3. Critic on a chair
     Draw the Critic on a small sticky note and place it on a chair behind you. Invite the Caring Coach to sit beside you as a second note with one sentence of support.

  4. Compassionate close
     Hand on chest, say, I showed up, I learned, I can refine next time. Then step away.

  Changes you can expect

  • Less procrastination, because beginning feels safer.

  • Fewer emotional crashes after feedback, because the Coach now speaks.

  • Better decisions, because a settled body gives you perspective.

  • More follow through, because you have practised good enough and done for now.

Unveiling the many myths in art therapy

Art therapy often wears a mysterious cloak. People whisper that it is only for children, or that you must be good at art, or that it is simply craft with candles. Let us lift the cloak together. Think of this as opening the studio door, sunlight on the workbench, brushes in a jar, a gentle invitation to look again.

Myth 1: “Art therapy is only for kids.”

Reality: Art therapy supports people across the lifespan. Children, teens, adults and elders all benefit. The language of image and gesture is human, not age bound.

Myth 2: “You must be good at art.”

Reality: You do not need to be good at art for art to be good for you. The process is the medicine. A smudge can hold a feeling. A simple line can steady the breath. Your artwork is a container, not a performance.

Myth 3: “It is just arts and crafts.”

Reality: Art therapy is a professional mental health practice and art psychotherapists are trained professionals. It blends psychological knowledge with creative process. Sessions are purposeful, ethical and responsive to your needs. In our region, creative arts therapists may be members of ANZACATA, which sets training and practice standards.

Myth 4: “The therapist will interpret my art and tell me what it means.”

Reality: You are the expert on your images. A competent art therapist will never impose meaning. Instead, we wonder with you. We notice colour, shapes, lines, forms and space. We ask, “What do feel as you look at the image .”

Myth 5: “It is not evidence based.”

Reality: There is a growing research base for art therapy in areas such as trauma, anxiety, depression, grief and medical settings. Art therapy works through multiple pathways, including regulation of the nervous system, symbolic expression and meaning making. We also evaluate progress with you, using outcomes that fit your life. Art therapy is practised in hospitals, schools, mental health and community settings. Art therapists work with other professionals such as social worker, counsellors, case managers, nurses, doctors in multidisciplinary teams that honour evidence based methods of working.

Myth 6: “It replaces talk therapy.”

Reality: It can, and it can also sit beside it. Many people weave both. Art helps you land in the body, then words name what is found. Others speak first, then make images to deepen the work. The order can change as you do.

Myth 7: “It will push me into painful material too fast.”

Reality: Materials can slow exposure and widen safety. When words feel scorching, the page can hold the heat. We pause, we ground, we let the art maker decides the rhythm and pace.

Myth 8: “It is messy and expensive.”

Reality: Art therapy can be simple, tidy and inexpensive. A pencil, a glue stick and recycled magazines are enough. Clay can stay in a tray. Messy paint play can be easily cleaned by setting the table or the floor with a big sheet. Found objects like flower petals, seeds, tree bark and sea shells are nature’s freebies waiting to be woven into an art piece.

Myth 9: “It is only for trauma.”

Reality: Trauma healing is one pathway. Art therapy also supports stress, perfectionism, identity work, grief, relationship patterns and life transitions. It can be practical, reflective or restorative, depending on what you need. Art is versatile, fluid, flexible.

Myth 10: “Online art therapy (telehealth) does not work.”

Reality: It can work seamlessly. The studio table can be set up so both the art therapist and the person making the art can share the creative process. With clear arrangements and thoughtful set up, online sessions can be focused, safe and effective.

Myth 11: “Art therapy is neutral about culture.”

Reality: Culture is central. Images carry language, memory, Country, land, family, community and more than human relationships. A respectful practice welcomes your ways of knowing. Art therapy can sit alongside story, song and ritual, creating a third space where your voice leads.

Myth 12: “The therapist keeps my art and analyses it later.”

Reality: You choose what happens to your artwork. Some people take it home, some leave it in safe storage, some ritualise letting go. There is no secret analysis. Consent and transparency are core.

Myth 13: “NDIS will not consider art therapy.”

Reality: Art therapy may be included when it clearly supports your plan goals, for example capacity building, communication, daily living or social participation. Speak with your planner or support coordinator to see how this fits your specific plan.

Myth 14: “It is all paint and pastels.”

Reality: Materials are varied. Clay, collage, textiles, natural objects, writing with image, flower arrangements, even mindful photography. We choose tools that match your goals and sensory needs.

Myth 15: “It gives instant breakthroughs.”

Reality: Sometimes a catharsis happens swiftly, like finding a key you thought was lost. More often, art therapy is a steady practice. Small, consistent moves that add up. The work respects your timing, energy and pace.

Where art therapy intersects with talk therapy and where it diverges

Art therapy and talk therapy are like two rivers flowing toward the same ocean. Both aim for relief, clarity and change. Both honour your story and your human dignity. Yet they travel by different currents. One speaks through conversation. The other lets colour, texture and image carry what words cannot. Understanding where they meet, and where they part, helps you choose the path that serves you best right now.

Where they intersect

Shared purpose. Both seek healing, growth and a steadier nervous system.
Safe relationship. Each depends on a trusting alliance where you are seen and respected.
Evidence informed practice. Both draw from research and reflective practice, and both use goals that can be reviewed together.
Ethics and professionalism. Qualified therapists work within clear ethical guidelines, professional supervision and ongoing learning. In Australia, creative arts therapists may be members of ANZACATA, which sets standards for Code of Ethics and Standard of Practice.

Where they diverge

The language of healing

• Talk therapy invites thoughts, memories and meanings through spoken conversation.

• Art therapy invites image making. Paint, clay, collage or found materials become a second language. You do not need art skills. The process holds the story, much like a bowl holds water.

Access to what sits under words

• Talking can map patterns and beliefs with precision.

• Artmaking can reach material that feels preverbal, tangled or unsafe to say aloud. A smear of charcoal may hold what a sentence cannot.

Regulation of the body

• Talking can soothe through steady presence and paced reflection.

• Artmaking adds tactile rhythm. The hand rolling clay, the breath that slows as the brush moves, these are direct invitations to the nervous system to settle.

Sense making

• In talk therapy, insight often arrives through dialogue and reframe.

• In art therapy, insight often arrives through witnessing the image. The picture speaks back. You notice distance, proportion, colour, and suddenly a new meaning emerges.

Power of metaphor

• Talk uses metaphor in language.

• Art invites metaphor to come alive. A handmade puppet allows you to reconnect with your inner child. The gold paint’s shimmer reignites your sense of awe and wonder of the beauty that is possible in this imperfect world.

Who leads the way

• In many talk approaches, the therapist may ask questions, offer reflections or specific strategies.

• In art therapy, the materials and the body often lead. The therapist safeguards the space, notices, and invites curiosity about what unfolds.

Pace and tolerance

• Talking can feel too fast or too confronting for some people at certain times.

• Artmaking can slow the tempo and widen your window of tolerance. When words spike anxiety, the paper can carry the heat.

When each might fit

Choose talk therapy when you want to

• test thoughts and stories

• practise skills for mood, sleep or relationships

• prepare for conversations or decisions

• work with clear cognitive goals

Choose art therapy when you want to

• engage with trauma material gently without going into too much details at the risk of retraumatization

• reconnect with body and imagination

• loosen perfectionism and self criticism

• explore identity, culture, grief and belonging in a felt way

You could choose an integrated path. You may begin with art to ground and regulate, then weave in conversation to name and plan. Or you could try talk therapy first, then use art therapy to deepen and consolidate. You can move between the two as your needs change.

Following the river’s meander with therapeutic art making

“We speak as if meandering were a deviation from a truer path. But the river knows no other way. To ‘correct’ its curves is to erase its identity.” - Bayo Akomolafe

The medical model of talk therapy often requires the therapist to work with their “clients” to achieve their goals, work towards a destination, get from A to B. I struggled with this imaginary straight and linear line we had to facilitate for the people we help. Until I sat with Bayo’s concept of “meandering”, he reminds us the river bends- not toward resolution, but toward the impossible labour of staying with the wound.

Our traumas and wounds are excess, curves that cannot be straightened. Our healing should also mirror that. I am a devotee of art therapy as a healing method as the creative process allows for meandering in the mess, and staying with the troubling.

Meandering is not delay, it is nature’s intelligence. Therapeutic art making is very much like a river that knows to bend, a tide that knows to pause, a root that knows to search sideways for water. Here is what that living intelligence can teach us.

River logic.
A river does not conquer a boulder. It curls around it and keeps flowing. Meandering asks us to meet difficulty by turning a little, softening pressure, and letting meaning arrive along the curve. Art making follows this river logic. What feels blocked becomes a shoreline that shapes new paths, not a wall that ends the journey.

Tidal time.
The ocean teaches that in and out are both holy. Meandering honours rise and rest. Art making follows this rhythm, it swells, then quietens. Insight comes in its own weather. We learn to trust the return rather than forcing a constant high tide. Health can look different in fast seasons, and slower ones.

Mangrove stance.
Mangroves hold soft ground with many roots. Meandering grows many points of contact, body, memory, Country, community, more than human kin. Strength comes from spreading relation, not from hardening. Art making belongs to this swamp of support, tender and resilient.

Mycelium knowing.
Underfoot, fungi move nutrients along hidden lines. Meandering trusts what works out of sight. Care travels through small connections, a colour remembered, a scent from a bottle of slime, a shape from a dream. Not everything that heals announces itself. The unseen network still feeds.

Eucalypt shedding.
Gums slip their old skin to keep breathing. Meandering gives permission to let labels, roles and perfect plans fall away. New bark gleams where the sun touches. Art making becomes a place where identities are composted into soil for what is becoming.

Fire and seed.
After fire, some seeds open. Meandering does not hurry regeneration, yet it honours the heat that cracked us. Art making lets ash and sprout sit side by side, not as a neat lesson but as a truthful landscape.

Migration sense.
Birds cross oceans by listening to stars and currents. Meandering invites that kind of navigation, less map, more attunement. We turn towards a direction by feeling and intuiting. We rest where there is food. We fly again when the wind rises. Therapy becomes a seasonal journey to begin again.

Rain on country.
Rain does not argue with dust. It arrives, lingers, and leaves its scent on earth. Meandering welcomes those moments of grace without trying to bottle them. We learn gratitude without possession.

In this way, therapeutic art making does not push toward a single answer. It travels like water, breathes like tide, roots like mangrove, networks like mycelium, and gleams like new gum bark in morning light. Meandering returns us to a pace where bodies can settle, relations can gather, and the next right bend can show itself without force.

*Disclaimer: This educational post is by no means a substitute for an art therapist. Please seek help from a professional and credentialed art therapist to explore feelings, develop healthy coping mechanisms, and work toward improving overall well-being.

why art making is an act of resistance

Our current global political climate is marked by “radical uncertainty,” where rule of law, press freedom and electoral integrity have eroded in many countries, even as a few places show democratic recovery. The Russia-Ukraine war, the Gaza genocide, climate stress, economic wobble, AI boom, mass migration and displacement have many of us bracing for the next crisis. Urgency is everywhere. In the art therapy studio we choose a different pace. We make a small sanctuary where bodies can settle, images can speak, and community care can grow.

During this urgent times, art making is a quiet act of refusal and a bold act of care. Here is why it matters, and how to do it well.

Why art making is resistance

• It protects your inner knowing. When the news cycle colonises attention, making returns you to the absence of noise. Attention is a resource. Guarding it is political.

• It slows what tries to rush you. Urgent systems demand immediate attention and quick fixes. Slow marks, colourful splashes, muddled paint, sticky glue: all are glorious and radical refusals. Slowness lets insights and truths catch up.

• It widens who gets to speak. Images carry the voices that did not get the microphone and the headlines; body, memory, culture, Country, ancestors, more than human kin. Letting them speak challenges dominant and narrow narratives.

• It rehumanises. Where policy turns people into numbers, making returns humanity with each stroke, texture, colour, story. Seeing and being seen is a counter to erasure. Making and reconstructing is a counter to passive consumption.

• It redistributes power. You choose the materials, the pace, the colour, when to start and finish, when to pause. Choice rehearsed in the studio becomes courage at the meeting table or the ballot box. You are a creator, bringing forth new ideas, new possibilities.

• It keeps joy alive. Joy is not a luxury, it is fuel for aliveness. Pleasure in colour and rhythm strengthens the nervous system so you can sustain care and take action.

• It builds solidarity. Collective making, crafternoons where neurodivergent folks gather together, zines, banners for marches and protests, stitched squares, turns isolation into shared ground. Community care becomes the antidote for alienation and loneliness.

How it works in the body

• Rhythm and repetition settle the nervous system, which opens room for reflection and connection.

• Hands that move with purpose transform stuck energy and helplessness into agency and power.

• Sensory input anchors. The weight of clay, scratch of charcoal, bring you out of the dopamine addiction from doom scrolling and back into the present. The buttery, textured and thick acrylic paint reminds you that it is okay to messy, fluid, imperfect and to take up space.

Language for yourself and your community

• “I am moving at a humane pace.”

• “My attention is worth protecting.”

• “Making is political.”

• “We make to remember we are many.”

Ethics and care

• Safety first. Protect identities if needed, initials only, blur faces, Choose venues with consent. Follow cultural protocols.

• Approach Country with respect. Gather natural materials lightly, return what you can.

• Rest on purpose. Action without rest burns the field you are trying to grow.

A tiny weekly ritual

Take twenty minutes. Three long exhales. Make art as a political refusal. Bring attention to what is, whether anger, grief, restlessness, fatigue, perhaps even joy. When you finish, write one line beginning with, “In this climate, I resist…”.

In short, art making resists by renewing your capacity to feel, to think, and to stand with others. It turns attention into a shelter, choice into practice, and practice into presence. From that presence, your voice carries further, and your care lasts longer.

*Disclaimer: A creative and therapeutic prompt is by no means a substitute for an art therapist. Please seek help from a professional and credentialed art therapist to explore feelings, develop healthy coping mechanisms, and work toward improving overall well-being.

Weaving Bayo Akomolafe’s ideas into a queer and posthumanist art therapy practise

1) The times are urgent, let us slow down

Sense: Urgency rushes us to find quick fixes. Fast can feel powerful yet it often fuels the same problems and keep them alive. Slowing down is a decolonial refusal, it lets other kinds of wisdom catch up. Creativity, spirit, memory, culture, and the more than human world arrive when there is space. Grief and compassion can re-enter the room when slowness becomes the pace.
Studio moves:

• Begin with a slow arrival. Feet on floor, three long exhales, eyes soften to the edges of the room.

• Use slow materials, air dry clay, tearing and weaving paper, crafting with thread, like hand-stitching and crochet.

• Invite time language, “What happens if we move at the speed of the bark, or at the pace of a snail.”

2) Make sanctuary, not solutions

Sense: Sanctuary is a small, real place where life can go on, even in trouble.
Studio moves:

• Create a “sanctuary corner”. A small cloth, a leaf from outside, a stone, a bowl of water, a handful of flower petals. Clients choose what belongs there today.

• Close sessions by resting the work in sanctuary. A breath, a line of thanks, an offering.

• Document “what was nourished”, not only “what was achieved”.

3) Stay with the crack

Sense: Cracks, rifts and ruins are not mistakes to seal and cover up. They are doorways where new worlds peep through.
Studio moves:

• Kintsugi inspired paper repairs. Tear, then mend with visible thread or gold pastel. Ask, “What does the repair change, not fix.”

• “Map the crack.” Draw the fracture lines in a life story and sit beside them, not over them. Title the map with a verb, “becoming”, “listening”, “refusing”.

4) Court bewilderment

Sense: Getting lost is a practice of humility. Queer, decolonial work thrives where certainty loosens its grip.
Studio moves:

• “Blind contour introductions.” Two minutes drawing without looking at the page. Share what surprised you.

• “Questions, not answers.” Place three questions around the work, “What if,” “Who else is here,” “What does this ask of me.” Return to the image next session.

5) Walk with tricksters and monsters

Sense: The figures we fear may be guides. Trickster energy reroutes power. Monster work befriends the estranged self.
Studio moves:

• Make a small trickster. Found objects, wire, bark, thread. Ask, “What rule do you bend for my freedom?”

• “Monster masks.” Paint the creature you avoid. Give it a task, guarding sleep, speaking boundaries, eating shame.

6) Practise withnessing, not just witnessing

Sense: We do not stand above, we stand with. Withnessing and witnessing through the senses is a kind duet. The body pays attention. The art material answers. We stand with what is here until it feels a little less alone, and from that companionship, the next steps potentially appear.
Studio moves:

• Two labels beside each artwork, “What the image knows,” “What the relationship knows.”

• Therapist places a tiny mark on the page with consent. Name how you are moved. This de-centers the old, tired narrative of the lone creator and honours co-making.

7) Become kin with the more than human

Sense: Posthumanist care expands the circle. Country, materials, weather and animals are companions and collaborators.
Studio moves:

• Invite a companion, stone for steadiness, water for cooling, bark for holding. State the role of the more than human aloud, “Clay will hold what words cannot carry.”

• Return companions with thanks, or to place, to keep reciprocity alive.

8) Compost identities and diagnoses

Sense: Categories are useful and partial. Compost turns what was once rigid into soil for new life.
Studio moves:

• Write the constraining label on scrap paper. Shred, soak, pulp, and remake a small sheet. Emboss a chosen word into the new page, “kin,” “becoming,” “sovereign”.

• “Name and unname.” Place clinical language beside lived language. Keep both visible without letting either rule.

How science and spirituality intertwine in art therapy?

Science and spirituality are not rivals in the studio, they are two hands on the same clay, both feet on the same soil. Here is how they meet in art therapy, and why that union serves you.

• Regulation meets reverence. Breath, rhythm and sensory choice help the nervous system settle, that is science. We pair this with quiet attention to what feels sacred to you, that is spirituality. Calm physiology gives the spirit room to speak, and a sense of meaning steadies the body in return.

• Evidence meets experience. Research shows that making images can soothe flight, fight, freeze and fawn responses, integrate memory and widen tolerance for feeling. We honour that with simple practices such as repetitive mark making, bilateral movement, gentle touch with natural materials. At the same time we welcome your lived rituals, a small prayer, a word in language, a pause to turn our gaze towards land and Country. Data and devotion share the table.

• Attachment meets belonging. Therapeutic rapport and clear boundaries grow safety, that is relational science. We extend that circle to kin, culture and more than human companions, a river stone, paperbark, a feather from Country, a squawk and squeal from the red-tailed black cockatoo, that is spiritual belonging. People feel less fragmented when connection can encompass both the clinical and the communal.

• Neuroplasticity meets ceremony. Each time you choose a colour, slow a gesture or rework a form, the brain rehearses new pathways. We might wrap a finished piece, speak a line of gratitude, or place it beneath a branch brought from home. New choices rewire the brain, special ceremonies expand it for new possibilities.

• Meaning making meets materials. Sensory and tactile detail gives the brain a safe anchor in the present, weight of clay, sound of charcoal, wet paint on fingers. From that sensory and tactile input, images bring forth questions and perhaps answers; or the ability to straddle the grey area of the in-between. The materials hold what words cannot, while your insights give those images direction.

• Ethics meets the unseen. We practice consent, we honour agency and culturally safe care. We also respect mystery, the moments when an image arrives as if it has been waiting. The ethics of our professional practice keep you safe. The ability of the art therapist’s comfort in sitting with the discomfort and the mystery of your image honour your spirit’s becoming.

What this looks like in session

• We begin with a short settling, feet on floor, three slow breaths, a hand on heart or belly.

• You choose one living material to accompany you, perhaps a bark, leaf, stone, or thread.

• We work with paced making, repeat marks, tear and weave, coil and smooth. I track breath and posture, inviting pauses when activation rises.

• We close with a brief reflection that honours both, what did your body learn, and what meaning or message was offered. We might place the work on a small cloth or leave a note to keep it company.

A gentle prompt to try at home

Sit by a window for ten minutes with paper and a soft pencil. Let your breathing find a slow count of four in and six out. Each exhale, draw one simple line. When the page feels full, ask, what does this page want me to know. Write one sentence. That is science guiding the body, and spirit guiding the words.

In short, science keeps the doorway sturdy, spirituality keeps it expansive. Together they let healing be both measurable and meaningful, grounded and luminous, practical and deeply human.

*Disclaimer: A creative and therapeutic prompt is by no means a substitute for an art therapist. Please seek help from a professional and credentialed art therapist to explore feelings, develop healthy coping mechanisms, and work toward improving overall well-being.

Inside the practice of a queer and posthumanist art therapist

• Queer, as I use it, is not just who we love. It is a way of standing slightly askew from the rules that try to straighten us. Queer refuses either/or boxes, and welcomes the messy, living space where identity is always becoming. It is the courage to invent new ways to speak, live and thrive when the old scripts do not fit.

• Posthumanist means more than human. It notices that our lives are braided with Country, ancestors, animals, materials, rivers and weather. It loosens the grip of human-centred, one size fits all models, and lets the studio become a meeting place for all these relations. This outlook helps us soften hard borders like human or nonhuman, man or woman, science or spirit, West or Indigenous.

• Together, queer and posthumanist lenses serve a social justice project. They help me challenge dominant stories in therapy that can sideline non-white bodies, women, gender diverse and neuro-nontypical folks. I draw on a transformative research and practice stance that centres voices at the margins and examines how power shapes what gets called “truth”.

• This is why I work in the “third space”. Think of it as a creative borderland where old binaries soften, and new possibilities appear. In this in between, we explore self and other, trauma and healing, Western and Indigenous, as fluid conversations rather than fixed walls. Artmaking is our passport there.

• In practice, what does that look like?

  • We adopt a gentle “not knowing” posture. Instead of forcing your story to fit a manual, we let images, gestures and materials lead. Power becomes shared, curiosity does the guiding.

  • We welcome the more than human. Paper bark, thread, clay, wind through the window, a childhood talisman, the gum outside the room, may all take part in meaning making. These are not decoration, but relationship entangled with the more than human.

  • We hold diagnostic language lightly. The manuals have their uses, yet they cannot capture our hauntings, our myths, or the sacred that moves through grief and awe. Art lets those speak, and be soothed, without being reduced or flattened.

  • We honour culture and Country. My own practice is a decolonial gesture, returning to my mother’s lineages and the more than human world we belong to, and inviting you to root into yours.

If you imagine therapy as a house, queer and posthumanist art therapy opens extra rooms, and a garden gate. We do not force you to sit beneath one bright light at a single desk. We wander together, sometimes barefoot on the grass, sometimes at the kitchen table, sometimes out under the stars. In those places, images arrive with their own wisdom, and healing can take a shape that truly fits you.

Why art making matters now, more than ever

In a world flooded with data, deadlines and constant upgrades, art remains a human way to breathe, connect and make meaning. Science, IT and tech bring remarkable tools. Capitalist and consumer cultures bring speed and choice. Yet many of us feel tired, isolated or unsure what truly matters anymore. Art is not a luxury, it is one of the ways we remember how to be human together.

Art making restores attention

Notifications scatter our minds. Artmaking invites presence. One colour, one stroke, one texture at a time. Practising attention through the hands helps us focus at work, listen at home, and feel less fried by the end of the day.

Art making regulates the body

Stress does not ease through thinking alone. Touch, rhythm and breath settle the nervous system. Clay grounds. Ink and water soften rigid thinking. Repetitive mark making steadies breath and heart rate. A regulated body can learn, connect and choose again.

Art making protects imagination from purely economic logic

Not everything worth doing can be billed or bought. When we create, we remember that value includes meaning, care and beauty. We stop grinding for a moment and ask, what matters to me.

Art making balances the digital with the embodied

Screens help us in many of our tasks today. We tend to sit long hours in front of our desks without paying much attention to our bodies. Our bodies need weight, texture and movement. Smudged charcoal on fingers, paper that bends, scissors that snip. Our hands remind our minds that we are alive when we are not online.

Art making grows empathy and social courage

Stories, images and songs move us beyond our own feed. Sharing a sketch, joining a choir, or working on a mural teaches collaboration, listening and repair. Communities that make together tend to care for each other.

Art making strengthens identity and voice

Algorithms show what is trending. Making art shows what is true and important for you. Choosing colours, materials and themes are practice for choosing boundaries in life. Your artwork says, this is who I am, this is what I will stand for.

Art making helps us think in complex ways

Most of our lives today are busy and messy. Creative practice builds tolerance for not knowing, and skill in testing ideas without fear. Prototyping with cardboard and tape today can make tomorrow’s decisions less rigid and more human.

Art making supports ethical reflection

Tech can do many things quickly. Creative work slows us down long enough to ask whether we should. Art rooms, studios and rehearsal spaces are places where values are named and practised, not only stated.

Art making holds grief and grows hope

News cycles are heavy and research has shown consuming negative news is linked to decreased wellbeing and psychological distress, such as anxiety and uncertainty. Creative rituals carry sorrow without drowning in it. A small altar at home, a memorial collage, a song shared with friends. Artmaking gives shape to feeling and creates space for hope to return.

Art making belongs to everyday people

You do not need expensive tools. Tape, paper, recycled cardboard, clay, used teabags, found leaves and pressed flowers. Art making is the note in your lunch break, the doodle in a meeting, the banner at a NAIDOC week rally march, the chalk message on the footpath after school.

What this means in therapy

In art therapy we use all of this on purpose. We start with safety and consent. We work at your pace. We let images hold what words cannot yet carry. Over time you can expect more calm, clearer boundaries and a stronger sense of self. For NDIS participants, art making can support goals like daily regulation, community participation and safer communication of needs.

Why I practise art therapy through a decolonial approach

I came to art therapy as a migrant and a person shaped by non Western ways of knowing. My family stories were carried through Buddhist and Taoist temple visits, songs, recipes and conversations passed down in different languages and dialects. Those stories guided how we healed, how we gathered, and how we made meaning. When I started clinical art therapy training, I felt the gap between what was familiar to my culture, identity and community compared to what was presented as universal. A decolonial approach is how I choose to bridge this gap. It is not only a philosophy but a daily practice of remembering where knowledge comes from, who holds power, and how care can be shared.

What decolonial practice means to me

• I begin with place and people. I am an art therapist practising my craft in Darwin, Larrakia. I acknowledge the sovereignty of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and seek local guidance. In my work with First Nations children, I prioritise building relationships with Elders and knowledge holders. I also accept direction about what is and is not mine to do.

• I share power. The First Nations children I worked with decide what to make, whether they wish to keep or leave it, and who can see it. We agree in plain language about consent, image use and the life of the artwork. Consent is ongoing and can be withdrawn.

• I honour cultural and intellectual property. Designs, stories, songs and images belong to people and Country. I do not copy sacred motifs or styles in my own work as this is cultural appropriation. I seek permission and credit properly if images were used.

• I respect language and pace. English is often the third or fourth language for Aboriginal Australians. The children often taught me words in their language and laughed because I struggled with pronunciation. I speak multiple languages myself as a Malaysian and appreciate how Indigenous Australian children navigate both the Western world and their cultural ways through speaking fluidly between languages. I also slow my rhythm to match what feels safe. Silence, parallel making and gentle endings are welcome.

• I centre collective wellbeing. Aboriginal Australians share complex kinship network structure. I rarely do one-on-one session with Indigenous children in remote community as collective wellbeing is integral to the wellbeing of the individual child. I explore community issues with a group of children in Indigenous community.

• I stay accountable. I seek cultural supervision, invite feedback from local women and stakeholders, and repair when I cause harm. Reflection and learning are part of every week.

How this shapes the room

• The studio is set up for choice. You can choose your materials, your level of privacy, and the amount of talking. We agree on pause and stop signals. We decide together how works are held, shared or returned.

• Materials and themes are selected with care. We source ethically, support Indigenous owned suppliers when possible, and avoid token imagery. Place based making, for example, ochre or charcoal, is used only with permission.

• Stories are held with dignity. You are the author of your story. I do not publish or exhibit without informed, specific and reversible consent. If you change your mind, we honour that.

• Outcomes are meaningful. Rather than measuring only symptom reduction, we look for change that matters to you, for example steadier nervous system regulation, pride in identity, stronger family connection, or safer expression of grief and joy.

Why this matters for my clients

Decolonial practice widens what counts as knowledge and healing. It reduces pressure to fit a narrow idea of normal. It invites ways of making that feel familiar to many cultures, and it makes space for sovereignty over your story. For clients who have experienced systemic racism, micro aggression, migration stress or intergenerational trauma, this approach can offer steadier ground, more agency, and a kinder pace for recovery.

An invitation

If this approach resonates with you, I welcome a conversation. We can begin with a short meet and greet to check the fit, talk about language and cultural needs, and design a first session that feels respectful. Your knowledge is welcome in this room. Your story remains yours.

How art therapy can be neurodivergent- affirming

Why this matters

If you are autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, dyslexic, or otherwise neurodivergent, you deserve care that honours your brain and body. A neurodivergent affirming approach sees neurotype as natural human variation. It centres your strengths, it adapts the environment, and it supports your goals without asking you to mask.

Here is what neurodivergent-affirming art therapy looks like in practice.

Core stance

• Person led and rights based. You choose the goals, pace and methods. Consent is ongoing, and you can change your mind at any time. This aligns with NDIS Practice Standards that emphasise person centred supports, dignity, and informed choice. NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission+1

• Therapy through making. Art therapy uses creative processes inside a safe therapeutic relationship. It can support emotional, cognitive, physical and spiritual wellbeing, and it sits comfortably with diverse cultural models of health. anzacata.org+1

• Collaboration, not compliance. The client is the expert on themselves. Art therapy adapts to your communication style and sensory needs, rather than expecting you to mask or conform. Australian Psychological Society

How sessions can be affirming

• Interests first. We build sessions around your passions, for example trains, insects, or game worlds, using them as themes or materials to boost engagement and joy.

• Choice of materials and set up. You select tools that feel good to your body, for example smooth markers, soft pastels, clay, or digital drawing. We provide options for seated, standing, floor, or movement based making.

• Sensory safety. We adjust light, sound, smells and textures. You can use noise reducing headphones, sunglasses, gloves, aprons, and take movement or quiet breaks whenever you wish.

• All communication is valid. Speak, sign, type, use AAC, draw, or point. We use visual schedules, first then plans, and clear endings. The NDIS requires accessible communication and informed choice, which we honour in every session. NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission+1

• Stimming is welcome. Repetitive mark making, rhythmic drumming, kneading clay and fidgets can regulate the nervous system and are built into activities rather than discouraged.

• Executive function support. We co create step by step visual guides, timers, predictable routines, and gentle scaffolds for task switching and transitions.

• Trauma aware, restraint free. We avoid compliance led goals. Safety plans focus on regulation and agency, not restriction. This aligns with human rights based approaches in disability support. NDIS Review

• Culture, identity and context matter. We invite your cultural practices, languages and spiritual worlds into the making process, so the therapy fits you, not the other way round.

• Transparent outcomes. Together we choose outcomes that feel meaningful to you, for example energy management, sensory strategies that work, self advocacy, or joy in creativity. These can feed into your NDIS goals and reviews. NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission

Examples of affirming & therapeutic art processes

• Sensory regulating making. Large paper with broad strokes, weighted tools, clay work, water based inks, or collage with varied textures.

• Story worlds. Build characters or zines from your special interests to explore identity and communication safely.

• Choice based projects. A personal studio project where you decide the brief, materials, and when to pause or stop.

• Low demand days. Quiet parallel making together with minimal verbal processing, then short debrief using visuals.

  Bookings and referrals

  You can self refer, or come via a GP, support coordinator, or school. Sessions can be funded through NDIS if applicable.

  A gentle closing

  Your way of sensing, thinking and moving is not a problem to fix. Art therapy offers a place to create on your own terms, to discover what helps your body and mind, and to be fully yourself.

How Art Therapy Boosts Feel Good Brain Chemicals

In TJ Power’s DOSE model, mood and motivation are lifted by four brain chemicals: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins. Art therapy is a gentle way to engage each one through choice, creativity and connection.

Dopamine, the motivation and reward spark

Art making lights up the brain’s reward network, even with simple doodling. That sense of “I did it” boosts drive to begin again. Try short, finishable tasks, two minute sketch, then pause to notice the win. Drexel University

Art therapy encourages the participant to take the lead and decide the direction of the art-making and creative process. This deepens one’s sense of pride and in turns, boosts dopamine! Choice, novelty and visible progress support drive and follow through.

Oxytocin, the bonding and safety chemical

Creating art together with a loved one, side by side drawing or a shared canvas, can lift oxytocin and increase closeness. Build small rituals, swap encouraging words, co-title the artwork, or create with a trusted person. Neuroscience News

Making art in the safe space an art therapist holds and maintains encourage bonding and boosts oxytocin. Shared attention, gentle attunement and feeling believed are foundations for feeling safe in an art therapy session.

Serotonin, the mood stabiliser

Serotonin tracks with daylight. Make art in morning or midday light, by a window, on a balcony, or outdoors. Use steady, predictable routines, same opening prompt, same closing title, to support calm mood over time. The Lancet

Art therapy in an outdoor space early in the morning light helps boosts serotonin and regulate body clock.

Endorphins, the natural pain and stress relievers

Rhythm and shared laughter help endorphins rise. Try slow bilateral marks to music, rolling and pressing clay in time, or a playful collaborative collage that invites smiles. University of Turku+1

In group art therapy or one-one-one session with an art therapist, group synchrony and shared laughter ease tension and release endorphins.

Lowering the brakes helps the boosters

Art-making often reduce cortisol within about forty five minutes, which can make it easier for the feel good chemicals to do their work. Keep sessions paced and pressure free. 

DOSE inspired mini plan you can use this weekend

• Dopamine, 5 minutes. Quick win postcard. One tiny drawing, then a photo for the progress album.

• Oxytocin, 10 minutes. Side by side art with a loved one. Take turns adding one line and saying one kind thing about the other person’s mark.

• Serotonin, 10 minutes. Sunlit sketch. Sit by a bright window and trace the shadow of a plant, breathe slowly as you draw.

• Endorphins, 5 minutes. Music marks. Choose a gentle song. Make slow, repetitive strokes across big paper, then write down one thing that felt good.