Pyrography

When I was experiencing my worst times, PTSD, anxiety, anger and frustration, these emotions became a deep dive into an endless hole that kept me in perpetual darkness.  Days turned into weeks, weeks became months and breaking the chains that held me under was a futile effort, especially on my own.  So much so, that’s when I became habitual, mixing vodka with Zopiclone wasn’t a cry for help, because I had telephoned and spoken at length with life insurance.  Looking back at my thoughts as I write this, the person that I spoke with about my life insurance policy didn’t click onto me, no matter how quizzical, at least to the best of my belief, he was oblivious because he informed me that all I had to do was die.  So, reading back over this paragraph, was it a sense of denial on his part?  To be better attuned to today’s society, companies are pushing their call handlers to handle calls in as little time as possible and call it customer service.  You will know exactly what I mean if you have ever tried to talk to your electricity provider.  So, could it have been that he needed to get off this call as quickly as possible due to the imposed pressures of call handling expectations that are set by his management? Either way, I had the ammunition and the digital recording that empowered me to go ahead and plan.  I had recorded the whole conversation so that I could set my family up for life by ending mine. I got caught!  I was now in the hands of authority.

Family ties are now broken, everyone has moved out, and the perpetual spiral has become a void.  To write a sense of feeling as to how I have cut this short is to say, just google the meaning of FUBAR.  My General Practitioner (GP), Samantha, Sam is very attuned to mental health, especially art and mental health.  COMBAT STRESS knows a lot about art and mental health.  But the real kicker came in the form of an invite to go camping with a charity called OUTPOST.  To cut to brevity, I was introduced to pyrography and a few other art forms.  Pyrography stuck!

We are back at brevity again; my GP, Samantha, is now head of the table in everything.  COMBAT STRESS is working in unison with Sam, and you can see that the authorities have a firm grip on me.  I have a great deal of respect for Sam, she has been there for me in every aspect.  Inclusive of me being arrested for assault, inclusive of a diversion from prosecution because the system didn’t know how to deal with me – ‘they’ phoned Poppy Scotland and told a senior member that they have no experience of dealing with this!  Nina is the head of Poppy Scotland in Inverness, and she sorted that out!  Sam found out about it and took the reins; she took the total and overall authority.  Due to Sam’s background and her history, she knew the system, she was fair and honest but also hard-working.  That meant that I had to be equally hard-working.  Fast forward again, I completed everything, and, in the end, Sam enabled my medical retirement.  This wasn’t a quit and cash-out retirement, the record stated that I was bowing down so much that it was only a matter of time before I flashed. I never missed my homework, and completed all therapy but, because I am stuck in fight – I need to explain this:

The amygdala is a part of the human brain, it’s a key part of processing emotional control and emotional processes.  Fight, flight, and freeze are three different automatic responses that a human can experience, due to my experiences and other factors, PTSD has me physically and emotionally stuck in fight and there is absolutely nothing I can do about that.  It has had me curled up in an embryonic ball and in tears when the aftermath of my actions has emotionally destroyed me, further to this is rumination.  Rumination is the repetitive thinking and overthinking that consumes you with pure depression and horrible anxiety.  The worst part of rumination is when you don’t know you are ruminating, how long you have been ruminating and when you realize that you are ruminating you can experience extreme verbal outbursts at the exact precise time that you snap out of the rumination.  It is one of the worst, uncontrollable and unwanted repetitive experiences ever!  It is invasive in every aspect, inclusive of sleep, and as you can imagine, the importance of sleep versus sleep deprivation, it’s a nasty cocktail and a downward spiral.  Please allow me to state that, if it had not been for my GP, Samantha, I could have been in a far worse situation or, as this reads, six feet under.

I’ve got Paisley, I’ve got pyrography, I take the medication that I am to take, and I’ve been given a large volume of tools that are lessons learned through cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).  I have been removed from the workplace by medical retirement.  I stuck with Samantha and did as she instructed.  I have a great deal of respect for her.  The entire process and everything you have read here is five years’ worth of learning, failing, trying, and experiencing.  The best way I can think to explain this is that once you are engaged in mental health, it’s a roller coaster, it has its ups and downs, I didn’t have a choice to disengage, to be honest, I am glad that I didn’t have that option.  Not having that option available in any aspect did work, especially when the roller coaster downs were steep.  CBT is a lot of homework!  The roller coaster ups did plateau and once I had mentally accepted the downs, the only way left was up to a plateau.

Art and mental health, as with any thought provocation, is going to take time, I experienced some severe headaches and early nights too.  It can help you to cope with your thoughts while in a state of mental ill-health and from my own experience, it can help ease psychological distress.  For me, admitting to myself that I was unwell didn’t help me, it just made me worse.  Disappearing into doing art did help to distract me from myself.  Being able to express without words through the artwork is worth experiencing for yourself.  By the time I had done about fifteen attempts, I started getting into repetition.  Something about that repetition brought me to do more.

There is an internet quote here: How does art impact mental health?

‘Because of these feel-good effects, art is a powerful tool for self-care and mental health. Studies have shown that expression through art can help people with depression, anxiety, and stress. Art has also been linked to improved memory, reasoning, and resilience in ageing adults.’ 11 Apr 2022.

Pyrography is slow and is the free-handed art of decorating wood and other materials with burn marks. Writing with fire – from the Greek ‘pyr’ and ‘graphos’.   According to Google, pyrography is an ever-changing art form.   I will put a YouTube link to a great site and pyrographer Burn Savvy.

To date, I have done a lot of pyrography, it’s a wonderful way for me to disappear into art.  Paisley comes first, but after we have done our daily routine and had a good bit of fun and play, she will lay beside me, get her needed sleep and I can sit and do pyrography, which is far greater than the alternatives you have read above.  I can, with my hand on my heart state to you that if you have read down to this line here, and you can relate to me, try pyrography.  Try an art form, mental health and art does do something good for your gain.  It’s all about you at this point, you deserve a little bit of selfishness to focus on you and you can always pause and walk away and come back to it whenever you need to.  A lot of the mental health side of this is ‘you time’.  Stick with it though, as it won’t happen instantly, it took me approximately fifteen attempts to get started albeit I was easily distracted by rumination, once I got into doing art, my ruminations subsided while I was doing the artwork.  Try it, do it for yourself and email me after you have found your headspace and tell me how you felt before and after.

contact@bravehoundpaisley.co.uk

Some pyrography that I have done.