[LAUIL601] Secondary Research: Podcast - Art Therapy Decoded Episode 1:1 with Dr Amy Backos

Instagram: @arttherapydecoded

Lindsay and Janet of Art Therapy Decoded. They both open and introduce the podcast by explaining that they are in the early stages of their art therapy practice  and wanted to create the podcast to strengthen connections with art therapy colleagues, build communities, share knowledge and bring art therapy into the digital age.

• First episode is with Dr Amy Backos (Instagram @DrAmyBackos) chair of the graduate art therapy psychology program at Notre Dame University. Professor, advisor and advocate for the field of art therapy. Writer, researcher, and 22 years of experience.
• What different roles have you had in relation to art therapy? Past and present. Chair of art and psychology department, creating a nurturing and inviting space for students. Part of that includes work with American Art Therapy Association (AATA). I sit on their research committee, guest editor of the journal, and those things inform my teaching as well. I teach the research classes here at Notre Dame and a variety of classes in the doctoral program as well. I also work at a substance abuse facility each Friday which nourishes my teaching. I\"m working on a book about art therapy and PTSD. I do a lot of things but still feel I wear the hat of Art Therapist. I do art therapy supervision who are recent grads and I started an Instagram page under my name (@dramybackos) to give information on art therapy and trauma in a simple, daily way.
• Deeply committed to not having a 9-5 role. Nourishing self in the morning, meditating, run, spend time with family to help start day that fuels and sets up for success. Things happen on my schedule.
• History of Becoming an Art Therapist: Went to summer school and doodled a lot. Tutor took notice and mentioned Art Therapy as a potential profession and a light went on in my head. Studied Studio Art and Psychology, Art Therapy program at Cleveland, moved to San Francisco for love, went back to school for Masters, waited for job opening at Notre Dame to teach Art Therapy which I knew was perfect for me.
• Intuitive process of believing this is what I want to do and then honing the right skills, learning the teaching skills, the psychology skills, the experience with working at trauma and crisis centres. 
• Both parents are teachers so it was probably natural to lean more towards a teaching role of some sort. 
• Dad taught chemistry and had a "bring your daughter to school day." Observed one of his students dropping lots of test tubes but instead of making the student pick it up and being angry - he offered to clean it instead. "You go on, that\"s my job." Questioned him later, dad stated that student had haemophilia and would cut himself and bleed (?) and it really stuck out to me how compassionate and graceful he was to that student. He was protective so he didn\"t embarrass student. That inspired me to teach. (Kim\"s note - this has stuck out to me and inspired me too that I had to make a note of it. That general care and empathy for someone else has a profound effect on all involved).
• Students inspire me and drive me in my work and my field. Inspired by new generation. "Not as a sage on the stage but as a guide on the side." Switch things up in the classroom based on who is in there. It\"s all a shared experience of learning and we are all responsible. Millennium generation profound shift in culture. Radical shift like with feminism, how women look at their work, get paid for their work, focusing on Mother Nature, protection. Cultural humility to the table. Great time to be an art therapist. Focusing on my own art keeps me motivated. 
• What do I look forward in your days as an art therapist? So much. Every night I do a gratitude session with my son about what I was grateful for in my day and in my sessions. Always on my list is "grateful for my job." Always thrive on constant change and shift and not repetition. I appreciate community of art therapists. Enjoy the exhibitions when students and faculty come together. Sharing what we do which is often private. Sharing homework giving an inside to students\" minds, which is so different to working with clients... seeing the art outcomes. So much about my job that I love. Important to be a voice for creating. "It\"s part of our biology and our need to express ourselves." Reminder of how important creativity really is.
• I have a mantra of "pay yourself first" (Kim\"s note - wow this is resonating very thoroughly with me regarding my own life and my own work!) Meditate. Don\"t let go of creative process or having outside time. Pay yourself first has really helped me to prioritise because we cannot give without nourishing ourselves. 
• The art is the side-dish of the art therapy and the psychology so it feels important to bring it in more. Fuelling of the creative first and tying those things together. That building block of why I find art therapy so amazing. 
• There are art therapists who have written about how we\"ve become externally motivated rather than internally motivated. Externally motivated by the license, the demands are of medical or the insurance company and that gets to be on the front burner instead of the creative process. If we are working with other clinicians, no one else is bringing in art and we have to sustain the creative space over and over again in the absence of anybody else and it\"s a hard job.
• I think doing this podcast is the perfect antidote to the feeling of being a solitary practitioner.
• Being on a clinical team as an art therapist can be a very lonely experience (Kim\"s note - something for me to consider in the future, I\"m used to copious amounts of loneliness in the first instance) 
• I\"m doing something for the greater good. There\"s something contagious about staying positive in my work that and be passed on to families or people in the grocery store. This is important stuff. Try to have an eagle-eye view of what I\"m doing. Conceptualise it to what I\"m learning and how it\"s consistent with my values it makes the challenging parts a lot better. What we\"re doing is impactful.
• It\"s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day but reframing it to look at the scope and the longer term. 
• I practice acceptance and commitment therapy so focusing on values and doing something every day in-line with my values but also looking back on my day and giving credit to " head vs heart" psychology.  Acts vs values. 
• How have you seen the potential of art therapy evolve over the years through clients? So many things have changed in 22 years. The journal was more case based when I started to see now some more studies and randomised controlled trials in art therapy out there now. So we\"re catching up to the field of psychology in being able to provide evidence hand evidence is what we need to get funding and get paid. Using language in western psychology we\"re on people\"s radars in a completely different way. Music therapy has done a very good job of that. My son was a participant of that and they played him prog music in an MRI. We have some powerhouse people doing this kind of work now. 
• I think another piece that\"s important to us is a shift towards cultural humility and social justice and bringing it to AATA (American Art Therapy Asdociation). Space and time for everyone politically. Pain and discomfort for everyone of what our history is and how wrote the history. Great things happening. 
• Chicago institute for Art Therapy, powerhouse voice that is lending space for discussion on issues that are new on the lips on everyone in this country. 
• So many pieces of our culture coming together to interact through the art therapy process. Lot of important work going on. Eagle eye view of intentions, actions and consequences. 
• Hopefully ultimately make art therapy more accessible to people. So important. Better for our clients. Whatever part of the conversation people want to jump in on, we all want to be better for our clients. 
• What are some of your hopes and dreams for your future in the field of art therapy? Delicious question! I\"m so excited for the direction of digital online art therapy and digital online spaces for people to engage in their creative process. The VA has done some work on virtual reality, digital be art therapy class, how to bring experience to clients. You can do so many things on a tablet. Traditional media vs digital media. We have to keep moving forward. Not necessarily "neglect" the traditional art media but we have to move forward with trends. Hopes are coming to a spot where cultural humility is truly valued, reading "art therapy and social justice" currently, also reading "mindful of race," we\"re really trying to bring it in at a systemic level and students are bringing it in at being present in the classroom so my hopes are really really around the cultural humility and digital experience and moving forward so that we are at the forefront of the creative process. And it\"s about time, too! 
• They\"re both such relevant topics and an ongoing conversation. We\"ve already been in the digital age for a while so it\"s amazing to see art therapy head there and the accessibility that comes with that. Offers so many more opportunities.
• Gretchen Miller\"s book "Social Media for Art Therapists" with done guidelines around ethics and so she\"s really leading the way with some beautiful online platforms. Powerhouse of the digital piece. 
• When I think of social media there is such a visual element to this generation right now that wasn\"t as present previously and presenting oneself as an artist is a lot more accessible. 
• I love Instagram so much! I have to be so cautious of not going into a loop of scrolling! So inspired by what people are scrolling. There are some really great pages from art therapists on that platform.
• What are some hopes and dreams for yourself? Projects do you have next? I\"m working on a few things and one of them is a PTSD and art therapy book. What happens to people when they have a trauma that disrupts everything. We all experience a kind of trauma but it\"s the ones that disrupt everything where I think art therapists can offer some amazing support an abstract feeling into bodily symbols and translate it into a trauma narrative (Kim\"s note: wow! I\"m incredibly interested in this as someone who has experienced various traumas over the past 3 years which has absolutely disrupted my life from all angles, including my higher education, even up until this present day and I am so interested in obtaining it somehow.) Help them to make sense of what happened to them and make meaning from it. I\"ve just started my Instagram page (@dramybackos) sharing tidbits from the book, ideas of what\"s helped my clients, and putting it out there in the space where people can get a little bit of inspiration. Perhaps they aren\"t comfortable or don\"t have access to a therapist so they can get some inspiration from the therapy pages on Instagram. 
• Do you have any advice you would give your younger self? I think there\"s no perfect time to do what you want to do. There\"s no optimal moment to go back to school or create a piece of art or write a book or integrate studio practice or live the life you want to live. Times going to roll on by anyway. There\"s never a right time. There\"s things we can do every single day to move us closer to the people that we want to be. Go ahead and do something today that your future self will thank you for. 
• Do you have anything that your students or new art therapists really need to know? Something that you maybe see them struggle with? I think embodying the role of healer comes often at great cost to ourselves. The archetype of the healer comes with the light and the dark side.  the healer is giving and selfless and takes care of others and does good in the world but the flip side is that the neglect of self or the exploitation of others. I don\"t think anyone intending to be an art therapist intends to exploit others but it may come attached to our role, to the expense of self care, that the ego becomes so gratified by the work that we pour everything into the work and don\"t stop to nourish and I see a lot of students do that. They stop exercising they stop doing their own art. Stop doing that is required for class, diet goes out the window. And just acknowledge the needs we have and what we get out of it. It\"s okay to have your wants and needs as a professional. We are really living in a culture that values work and completing tasks and just keep moving forward which can really contribute to that neglect of self. Over identifying with work is rewarded here. Perfectionism is rewarded but slowing down and making space for ourselves makes our work better. Integrate important information consolidate information. Neglecting good sleep and healthy eating is when our work really starts to suffer.
• Again take an eagle eye view. It is not a race. Sustain your own needs.

Reflection:

This podcast and episode was pretty hard to get through at first and I didn\"t know what it was going to entail but I wanted to stick with it for the beginnings of research. Despite being academics, the three American women sounded nervous and really similar in their suburban accents, which were actually rather grating, and I couldn\"t tell who was even talking. There wasn\"t too much of value to begin with in the small talk.

As it went on, I began to understand the intent behind the podcast - to speak with fellow Art Therapists and question them on their background and their jobs (initially going into this podcast I thought it was going to be about art therapy itself and the value of it as a practice, rather than speaking to art therapists - but this is an interesting perspective to consider in my research and has not been a waste of time.) I may listen to another episode but if it is more of the same, I will leave this podcast in search of another to explain art therapy in itself as a practice as that is what I\"m interested in uncovering at this stage in my research.

Having finished the episode, I now feel quite inspired by Dr Amy Backos as she mentioned trauma and art therapy as a being she was working on - a theme, a thread, which I feel is the backbone to my own practice. I am someone who has suffered greatly with trauma over the years from different circumstances and I have turned to art as a therapy. It\"s taken me a long time to find art again, on my own terms and without feeling pressure from university and deadlines to make work. It had to happen organically. Now that I have found it, it has become a strong interest of mine and I want to pursue this line of investigation. There\"s a number of resources linked in the podcast that I can take a look at too.