Art and the Traumatized Brain
Recently, I revisited old songs I'd written. It was a strange experience; I relived whole years of my life as I moved through each piece. Each verse and chorus unraveled memories, different dimensions of a complicated situation, and relationships I saw differently with distance.
As a significant anniversary approached, I pondered sharing the songs—but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It hurt too badly, even after all these years.
At first I was discouraged. How could this still be so painful to me? Why had this ever happened?
But then, I marveled. I marveled at the fact that my most prolific period of song-writing came from one of my severest pains.
Turning pain into beauty is more than a philosophy. It’s science.
Last year, I attended a workshop on art and trauma. Beth Argot, faculty at Dallas International University and Arts & Trauma Healing Liasons at the Center for Excellence in World Arts, taught me something important:
Art, uniquely, heals the traumatized brain.
Argot explained that certain parts of the brain shut down when trauma happens. One of the parts that shuts down is the left hemisphere of the brain: the center of memory, logic, and language. This is why we literally struggle to talk about what happened. It’s hard to find words, much less to make sense of it; our brains are not wired to do that.
Instead, trauma is stored in the right brain – in sensations, images, and smells. This is why it’s so easy to relive traumatic moments and feel them in a very immediate way. Our imaginations and hearts are almost branded, scarred. We can’t escape the experience, and we can’t quite explain it to anyone else.
Healing, then, is more than just “moving past” the feelings of a trauma. Instead, the goal in trauma healing is to reintegrate the left and right brain.
Art, as it happens, is one of the best ways to do this.
Most people associate artistic skill with the right brain, and to a certain extent, they might be right. But artistic expression actually connects BOTH the left and the right brain.
Essentially, art accesses our feelings and provides us with a different type of language. We are forced to lay out that language in front of ourselves, and gradually, we are able to make meaning.
When I realized that God gave us art to heal our brains and bodies, I was amazed. It’s no wonder, then, that the Bible is full of songs, dance, poetry, stories, ritual, and more. In a world of suffering, these are not just nice ideas; they are tools for healing.
So if you know you’re in pain, or you recognize that you might need to make room for something you can’t put words to, it’s probably time to be creative! Put on music and move. Write an unpolished poem. Take paper and color pencils and scribble how you feel.
Maybe you won’t feel ready to share it with anyone for a long time. But the act of doing it, and revisiting it, and re-working through it will inch you closer to healing, just like more obvious forms of physical therapy.
And when you can’t find a single bit of creativity in yourself, borrow the art God gave us in the Bible! These words have helped heal countless wounded souls across time and space.
