Starting to Break Free from Shame (Psychosis)

It’s hard for me to share some of my Art as Therapy pieces that were created during my last psychosis, like this one.

I know I talk about my last psychosis a lot and that’s because it’s changed me. I feel it was a spiritual experience that has altered me forever, for the better. Even the forced hospitalization and injections that followed it have been a part of that as now I know firsthand what’s not an okay way to treat people whom are unwell mentally and emotionally.

Coming out of the psychosis has created a divide within my psyche. It was amongst one of the most incredible things I’ve ever had the joy to live through and at the same time, finding reality again was painful. I still carry shame and embarrassment at the world my mind made real, even though the Art as Therapy books and journals that captured it, as it was unfolding, are pretty darn cool.

Brené Brown says that shame dies when stories are told in safe spaces. As I work on my upcoming talks to update people on my journey, as well as prepare for my solo show in April, looking back at this world is a part of those processes.

It hurts. It hurts to be such a lover that my psyche overwrote reality. When I got back into the dating scene last year, the only thing that comforted me was that although I’ll never have a magic filled telepathic love story, whoever I do meet will at least be real, which is better than living alone in a fantasy.

Top: “I Miss You” (2021) Art as Therapy by Amy Frank