Michael Buchert: Share Your Home in this Village

Michael currently serves as Director of the Art Therapy & Creativity Development program at Pratt Institute. Prior to returning to Pratt in Summer 2022, Michael served on the faculty at Antioch University Seattle from 2011-2021, and has been fortunate to work with individual clients and offer art therapy supervision in private practice since 2014. With 19 years of clinical experience in a host of settings with diverse array of clients, including originating the role of boundary spanner in mental health court and serving as coordinator for a FACT (Forensic Assertive Community Treatment) Program in Seattle and King County, Michael holds a steadfast commitment to anti-oppression and liberation work, founded in the belief that all beings hold unique, creative potential and an innate capacity for compassion, connection, and change.

Michael utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to teaching, learning, and practicing, incorporating visual art, movement, film/video, poetry, music, drama, and play in his work with students and clients. As a queer artist, educator, and therapist, he remains perpetually curious about what is “on the other side” of all things, and hopes to continue to foster a confidence and courage in his clients and students as they dare to do the same.

Transcript

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Well, hello. I am welcoming Michael Buchert today to the Boundaries and Belonging podcast. Welcome, welcome. I am really happy that you're here. You're an old friend and you are also, you serve as a director of the Art Therapy and Creativity Development Program at Pratt Institute. And you've been an art therapist for almost 20 years, yes? Yes, I graduated in 05, so 18, yeah. yeah. Well, welcome. Thank you so much for making the time. Thank you, it's so good to be here. Wait, so wait, we know each other from the before times. Have you placed like what year it is that we met? The before times, it was right after you graduated from Pratt, actually. And I remember you walking into Our Name is Mud in Greenwich Village, a paint your own pottery shop that turned into Make and then no longer existed, as far as I know. But yeah, you came into the pottery shop, paint your own pottery shop right after you graduated. Yeah, that's right. I was, I was, um, I think my first job out of grad school was I went back to my first year internship. So I was at the Coalition for Hispanic Family Services in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and I was there like 30 hours a week or something. And so I think I remember wanting to kind of just diversify my experience. I didn't want it all to be super heavy, intense art therapy, therapy stuff. And so paint your own pottery studio, one might think that that's the place to go for that, but one might also be wrong, because I feel like there were times where like the block was hot. Oh my gosh. Oh, I do. I do. Yeah. And you know, when I was the assistant manager at the time and I had never heard about art, I didn't know what art therapy was. And I was in between, in between, betwixt and in between. I don't know if that's the right way, but seems maybe. I didn't know what I was doing next. and I had thought about occupational therapy. And then you came in and taught me about art therapy. And I think maybe six months to a year later, I moved out to Santa Fe for an art therapy program. Wait, so I didn't know I was literally the first person that told you about this thing? Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Do you know that like often, oh my gosh, that makes me so happy. Often I've been interviewing prospective students for a long time in academia and. Often in the world of art therapy, we'll say like, everybody kind of has an aha moment when it comes to art, the words art therapy coming together because we don't all unfortunately come from a long line of art therapists. If we did, we'd be in a different place globally. But. Typically people are like, yeah, I had like an idea and I did a Google search, but like to have it be like a human. And then here we are 18 years later or whatever. That's just wild. That's wild. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for replying to the invitation. And yeah, the magic is here. Definitely. Well, I was looking back at our email thread because I just became director this past June. And you emailed me pretty soon after that. And I immediately just saw your name because we haven't been in touch in, I don't know, 16 years or something. And it was the most unprofessional way to respond to a professional email. I think it was literally all emojis and like, OMFGs. Yes, yes it was. I just left it at that. I was like, sit send. Yeah, I squealed. I squealed. Absolutely. Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. Life's amazing. The art therapy field is small and also vast. And yeah, it's just really cool to circle back around after, you know, almost a couple of decades of a career for both of us. Yeah. So cool. So cool. Well, I am itching to hear about all the things. And I'd love to start with your thoughts about how boundaries and belonging informs your teaching. How does it show up? How do you consider it? Is it implicit? Is it explicit? What, how do these concepts show up in your teaching? Yeah, well, I think that, you know, so I've been teaching now probably for about 12 to 13 years. And I think that my answer to this question would probably be different every single year. And I think, and that's because the world around us has been changing and conversations around boundaries and belonging, I think are... just happening so much more often, which I think is a really good thing. I also think about when I previously taught at Antioch University Seattle, they asked me to teach a class called Multicultural, what was the class there? Multicultural Perspectives. We called it Multiculti and so I almost said Multiculti. Colloquially we called it that. And I remembered that, well, first of all, I remember, I had only heard, I had mostly heard from faculty who had taught that course, that it was just traumatizing. And that the stuff that was happening in that class for students and for faculty. regardless of the many cultural identities that they walked into the room with, inevitably just created tension and conflict, and it was hard. So when they asked me to teach this, I was just like, oh yeah, this white cis dude, he's really the one to do it, right? So I go in with a, that's a joke. So I go in with a tremendous amount of fear and... trepidation and you know, I don't even think that we, I kind of know we did not have a class like this at Pratt when I studied at Pratt. It's something that has happened in the time since then. And so, you know, there I am living in Seattle where like the language around power, privilege, oppression, activism is... different than it was on the East Coast in my experience and much more prevalent. And so I just remembered feeling so overwhelmed by stepping into that space. And once I got into that space, I very quickly was able to touch bases with all of my practice, all of my clinical experience, being in rooms and being in groups and knowing... that it's so important to name. All right, here we are. This is weird. This is day one. I'm in a position of one-up power, in some ways, whether I like it or not. And these are the expectations. I'm grading you. I don't know everything. You all know a lot. Like here, we're just gonna be in this mess together. Hmm. And so I think out of that came, and you know, like in preparing for today, the word ritual has come up so much. This kind of ritual of like naming, all right, who is in this room, first of all? What is it like for you to be in a class called Multicultural Perspectives, considering your own many perspectives and cultural identities? And what are you jazzed about? What are you worried about? What are you feeling apprehensive about? And how can we make it such that all beings in this room can try to stay in the room as much as possible and resist the urge to flee? And so I think out of that came these kind of group agreements that then I began to take back out into all of my other classes where I wasn't necessarily doing that. And so I think to this day, What do we need to, what kind of environment do we need to have? How do we need to talk to each other? Learning, I think, requires such an open heart and an open mind, I hope, that I think it's really important to name those things. And so yeah, these are just some of the things I was chewing on. Yeah, you know, to be able to enter into conversations that and art directives that are Deep, challenging. sometimes threatening depending on what's being explored. I heard you say, we're gonna try, do our best to not flee. And I appreciate that because the nervous system responses to conversations that maybe haven't happened before or haven't happened in an academic setting or haven't happened with this specific group dynamic. And... spectrum of representation in the class, the way our body responds, it can show up in so many different ways. So I appreciate that. And I'm curious about the types of agreements that... that feel important to start off with in any course. Mm-hmm. Yeah. that the agreements are boundaries. Yeah. in a way, and also potentially a way to encourage folks to move towards trust, move towards an experience of belonging. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think one of them may be, we'll often hear this, and I guess I often hear this in circles that I run in, which is like, you're only gonna get out of this experience what you put into it. And so there's a request to be here now, to take the risks, to show up time and time again, even if... you're feeling tired or you're feeling confused or you haven't done the readings or whatever the thing is to But also i'm thinking about this saying that I started to to make up several years ago, which is that you are the gatekeeper to your own self-disclosure and so I think that What that means is it's inviting people to say Be intentional about what you disclose. I know that this is this weird art therapy training thing where we're both kind of asking you to be in therapy in this class, but this is also not therapy. And there's that weird moment that so many students have, which is like, wait, I thought this wasn't therapy, but then they might get feedback from their peers or faculty to like push a little harder or go a little deeper. And so I think that kind of like finding that sweet spot. um is different for every person. It might even be different for each person inside of different groups depending on who's in the room. um I always like to say remember that you have a body. That feels really important. And I almost feel like I'm always saying it to myself because especially, you know, when you've got like two hours and 20 minutes to cover 27 things that accredited bodies say that you have to do, it's like, it can get really easy to just get up here. Yeah. And so I think it's always important to just remember that you have a body to honor, that you're gonna have sensations come up. To be an active listener, to be curious, to tolerate not knowing, to... to tolerate that, you know, I think about the multicultural perspectives course, that's a 10 week quarter long course. We're not gonna end systemic oppression in 10 weeks. It's just not gonna happen. And so, you know, I think that was a huge piece of that course and all of these courses. Like you may not figure out theory this time. So give yourself some perspective that maybe you're just gonna scratch the surface of this thing or that thing, but then trust that you'll come back to it. Or it will come back to you. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, you know, have often thought about the graduate programs that I've taught in as jump-offs, right? It's just the beginning, a way to start, but the learning around and the depth around so many of the concepts and experiences and directives and art materials that... folks are introduced to a certain extent, there's just so much more. I'm wondering if you could share with us about what you love about teaching, what your teaching experience has been, what you teach, that kind of, what else you teach. So, you know like the first class that I ever taught, grad school, so first of all, I come from an education family. My dad was a high school geometry teacher and football coach. My mom worked in education. I grew up in like the academic calendar. So summer's off was just like what I've always known. And in fact, those few years that I haven't either been in school or been teaching in a school, and I'm like working in the summer, I'm like, I don't get it. Like my body is just like, I don't get it. What are you, what are you doing? So after undergrad, which my major ended up being screenwriting in undergrad, and it was because I. you know, as a young queer kid, a young artist, someone who was in touch with their feelings in a pretty kind of, I don't wanna say a masculine home space, but certainly a space that was, had a lot more dudes in it than not, you know, with a football coach of a father and so. I was going to be pre-pharmacy. I ended up in screenwriting and I was writing these stories about like family secrets and family dramas. And I took one psychology course in undergrad and I was like, oh my God, this is like the shit. And so But I was performing. I auditioned for making the band. I was almost gonna be in a boy band and I was singing. And so I knew I was gonna go to New York City to perform, but there was a year in between where I took a break. I went back to my high school and I was a permanent sub. And so I was teaching high school students. So then I go to Pratt and... I don't make my way to teaching grad school until I moved to Seattle. And in Seattle's program, they have an art therapy and drama therapy program. So the first class I taught grad school was a kind of multimodal creative arts therapy course to drama therapy students. Um, I wasn't a drama therapist, but I, but I've always felt like an art therapist who is very comfortable and prefers. to move in and out of modalities. Like I don't like feeling contained to visual art, visual media, it's just not my vibe. And so that was the first class where we just went in and out of different modalities. Then I made my way into teaching supervision, which I think I've taught throughout my time teaching. I've taught a class called diverse settings, looking at working with an array of populations and in different sites. I began to teach a class at Antioch called creativity symbolism and metaphor. And that was a newer class that we constructed based on kind of feedback that we had gotten from the accreditation process, that we were kind of missing some of these symbolism and studio art specific hours in our teaching. And I loved that. It was so much fun to make a class from the ground up and to originate that there. Now that I'm program director at Pratt, I actually only teach one class a semester, and I'm teaching a course called Advanced Seminar in Art Therapy, which is just a wide open course. It's meant to be that way. As you are kind of finishing up your time, it's a two year program, and so you take advanced seminar the whole second year. It's kind of a place where you take all of the threads from the courses that are often kind of topic or like area specific and weave them together, including your internship experience. And so I think it's a place where we get to really chew on some big questions like, what do you believe about the nature of beings? Mm-hmm you know, how does your body fit into all of this stuff? What do you think about theory? You know, is there someone that you just read that you're super stoked to do a deep dive on? So I love that kind of, I love that space because it's so open. And, you know, I think that I'm going back to your initial question, like how would I... describe like how I view teaching, how I see teaching. Mm-hmm. Whenever I think of the first day of class where you're going in and you don't know anybody, I know a lot about art therapy, I know a lot about teaching, I know a lot about practicing, and every single time I'm about to go in that room, I'm like, I don't know nothing. This is gonna be a disaster. Oh. this is going to fall on its face. And this is both, it's not all I feel, but it's a part, it's a thread. And it kind of reminds me of performing where we're like, you're only gonna make this road by walking it. So, and they're doing the same experience, I would imagine. Each student has their own idea of like, oh, like what does it mean to be in a room with Michael? I don't know, I've never learned from him. I love... the kind of improvisational performance stage-like arena of this thing called teaching and learning. It's so much fun, it's so scary, I love to curse. Um, I love to name the thing which is like, fuck you guys, like this is a really expensive experience. and this affects our mental health and our bodies and how we're showing up and you're like doing an unpaid internship, like can we just bring in all of the things that we all know is real? I don't like it when they're like in the room but we haven't named them. I just, it makes me feel bad vibes. Mm-hmm. But then we all say, can we together approach this blank piece of paper, like we all have so many times, and take a risk to pick up a material and make a mark, and then look across the way and be like, what did you do? Okay, based on what you did, like, what should I do now? And then we all start kind of riffing and learning and playing and being curious. That's how I view teaching. Mm-hmm. Um I will say that I hate grades. We never had grades at Antioch. We had narrative evaluations and I always would get yelled at because I would write like two page essays to people that were very personal. And now I'm at Pratt and I had to like go through this intense 15 week long experience and then I'd be like, okay, A. I'm like, wait, what, that's it? That's it? Um, yeah. Yeah, I think grading is a whole subject that brings in power dynamic that brings in an intense hierarchy, brings in past educational trauma, both for the teacher and for the students, and is inaccurate. Yeah, I'm not a fan of of grading either. I do love reading students writing or watching videos they make or, you know, looking at what they've created. That part is so moving and important. It's the assessment part that fits everything into a box that is really challenging and ultimately it actually is subjective. It's supposed to be objective, but it's really not, you know. yeah. You can rubric something until you're blue in the face, but there's still a moment where you're saying, what's the difference between good and somewhat good? Like what? totally. And what's happening with me or another educator while I'm grading? Like, have I just eaten a lot and it's hard for me to focus? Have I just had a hard conversation? Am I like so very happy that everybody's doing great? You know, and so our way in the moment of grading, oh boy, it just can potentially impact. And maybe it's just by points, you know, not by, you know, full grades, but I digress. But we don't have to go so far down the grading rabbit hole, but I always think, what is a student, and what did I remember from my learning experience? When I get six months a year, anything after that down the road, I don't think that many people are sitting around being like, damn, I got that B. But you know what I think you will remember is the opportunity to take 10 weeks to create a miniature scale model of your formative childhood home where you inhabit it with little chairs and little objects and little people, and you go through a process of change. Yeah. and you get to the other side of that and you say, that was really powerful, I can't believe you made us do that, I never want to do it again, and that changed my life. That's the kind of stuff, you can't put a grade on that. And that's why I mean grading it's like, it's whatever. Current students don't listen to this, grades mean so much. I mean, you know, it's a both end, right? I definitely remember when I felt like grades were really important, where I was a hard grader and that was part of my reputation. And then I realized how colonial, how colonial of me to take myself so seriously in this way that actually can impact somebody in many ways, really. And the anxiety that that is coupled with grades can be debilitating. So both and like we gotta work through this shit and also what shifts can we make to actually really focus on the experience and the education and the transformation rather than the output. Yeah. And even something, you know, in this new role, last semester, we had like literally hours of conversations about what is our attendance policy. And to me, again, if you and I, as my student, if we can have a conversation about how you are trying to make a conscious, deliberate, thoughtful, and considerate decision about whether or not you attend a class because you are just not in a space for you to do that for whatever reason. I don't actually kind of care what the reason is because that's your thing. And I come to you and I say, like, all right, if you miss this, like you're a piece of shit and you will get a whatever grade. Like what? Like that doesn't make any sense to me. And so I think I have these moments where I'm like deep in these conversations about boundaries and just around attendance, where I kind of have to stop and like kind of like pull a student to the side and be like, girl. We are talking right now about the difference between an a and an a-minus in this class. How important is that to you versus how important it is for you to take a self-care day today? I hope that is the thing that we are cultivating in people is this kind of decision-making process. Yeah. And almost 10 out of 10 times students will be like, oh, like they didn't realize they were feeling so cooped up by the difference between an A and an A minus. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, what I hear in that is the gift of stepping back to witness the impact of the system and how the system's rules are actually not as important as individuals' well-being, the group's well-being. And I love that too, like how do we support people in attending to themselves to make a decision about their wellbeing in this moment, in relation to others? It's just so important. I mean, that really is a big part of what this, these creative arts fields are about, creative arts therapies fields, right? So it sounds like some of your maybe agenda as an educator. is to support students in being authentic and, you know, supporting them and taking care of themselves. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious what else would be as part of your agenda as an educator. Hmm. I think it is that big, that piece about taking that big step back. And I honestly, you know, there have been so many, not so many, but there have been several moments in my academic career and often this will take place in faculty meetings. or like faculty senate meetings, either with all creative arts therapists or all mental health professionals, or expanding out to all teachers at a university. And this thing that I think I learned at Pratt, which was to name that thing, to name that thing in the room that maybe people don't wanna say out loud, but that we all see is happening right there. And... folks would come up to me and be like, you're really good at doing that thing, but you do it in a way that's not mean or provocative for provocative sake, but there's a weight to it and a ground to it. And I don't know, I think that this is probably informed by my experience as a queer person in a heteronormative family and in a heteronormative society where like, Maybe sometimes I wish that somebody in my family of origin system would just be like, oh, hey, there are all of these rules that nobody's saying out loud that we're all kind of living by. What do you think of those rules? Even that question, you don't have to say like, hey, Michael, you can beep with a boy or something like whatever. You could just say like, how's your heart? Yeah... Yeah, yeah, so I think it's that taking that step back, inviting people to do that. I know you're so focused on your thesis right now and how is like the current unbelievable uptick in COVID cases in this country impacting you and the global crises that are happening all around us and climate change. Like all of these things are happening. Um... Can we take a moment to get outside of what are we doing and what's happening in this reading and what's the assignment that's due? That stuff's important. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, widening the lens, it sounds like. Yeah. I guess along with that, I'm curious how you would narrate your responsibilities as an educator and then also as a program director. What are your responsibilities in these roles? To the students, to the field. Mmm. as an educator. I think in the classroom my responsibility to them is to... to present them with information, to promote curiosity, to promote personal reflection and introspection and creativity, to... help students articulate what is happening inside and outside, either in the classroom setting or with their clinical work and at internship. And then to digest it, take it back in, and then stay curious about it. Don't get stuck. And if you feel like you're like, I don't know where to go next, then do the thing that I think maybe is the most fun for me, which is like, maybe you go and you turn to a podcast or you like, don't think about it at all, but you start watching Netflix. But like, while you're watching Netflix, you're like, oh, this character is like doing this thing that's reminding me of this client. And like, that makes me feel this thing, like keeping that kind of curiosity and that engagement. to be curious about bias and how bias is showing up in our bodies and in the work with our clients and in the systems in which we're working. And maybe even like to promote some like, am I allowed to curse? To like maybe promote a little bit of fuck shit up and like play and like not be afraid to, I don't know that I would say start trouble, but I think to like. to name that thing in places where sometimes that thing needs to be named and it's not always the most comfortable or popular opinion. Mm. That makes me think of something. I recently had a conversation with a client about the phrase stirring the pot and how there's a negative connotation to it. So we kind of explored what is stirring the pot? What do you do? Like what's in the pot, right? Yes, well, I mean, let's think about it. When I'm making like... I don't know. I recently made like a pasta sauce with lots of vegetables, right? So I had to saute a bunch of stuff and then put it into the tomato sauce and I have to stir it. I have to stir it every once in a while, especially if it's bubbling so that the stuff on the bottom, you know, comes to the top and doesn't burn. And if I stir too vigorously, I'm gonna splatter shit everywhere. Yeah. Right. If I don't stir at all, things are going to burn. It's not going to taste so great. I won't actually if I try it, I won't know what it actually tastes like. So anyway, I just want to bring that up. Right. It's like we get to when we stir the pot, we get to see what's in it. We get to see, you know, the zucchini and the mushrooms and the tofu. We get to see the little bits. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Or there's that thing about stirring the pot, which by the way, I just wanna say, I'd never thought about this as a gendered idiom, but I'm like, who's stirring the pot? Is it witches? Is it a cauldron? You know, like, who is in the kitchen, girl? But I thought about stirring the pot, yeah, like making a pasta sauce, that moment where... the tomato paste and the sauce and the olive oil and garlic and spices and all that stuff, that moment where you're stirring the pot and it alchemizes, I'm making that a word right now, it comes together and then all of a sudden you're like, that's the shit. So stirring the pot actually, the negative connotation is that it's a bad thing because you're disrupting stuff. um you're gonna make the bad stuff from the bottom come up to the top but it's like girl the caramely bits on the bottom when it gets worked into the sauce is like the best part like what yeah we want the pieces. Yeah. Sounds like a really important responsibility to make sure that what's in the pot doesn't get stagnant, you know, or burnt. That doesn't mean that there have not been times where either I or someone in a class stirs the pot unwittingly, consciously or unconsciously. And maybe even somebody commits a microaggression and maybe even it's a microaggression that was so micro that I didn't catch it because I'm not. like AI. And like somebody, I'm going to try to stretch this metaphor out. Somebody tastes that spoon and gets a really bitter piece and is like, wait, this flavor has not been integrated yet. Yeah. hmm. Hmm. That's a great point. That's a great point, because what can happen with conflict that might arise from something that was conscious or unconscious. It's it can make a little bit of a mess that we get to be in together. You know, and that kind of that bridges to a curiosity around conflict. Like what? What can that look like in a class? What do you think about conflict as an educator? How is it a part of the experience? Yeah. Mmm. Well, that's kind of what I was thinking about how I did not grow up in a family system where conflict was seen as good. It was often something that, well, I think about like sport and how it permeated the culture of my family, which implies that there's like a winner and a loser. But I have to say, I didn't also have a lot of modeling in my family system that showed me, hey, conflict can be necessary, important. It can bring flavor. It can make it such that everybody has a chance to feel heard, and not everybody's going to walk away the winner here, and that's okay. Mm-hmm. And so I think going back to the body, I still have a body as a teacher, so much so that the idea of giving somebody like a C or something lower than that, makes me feel like I'm about to kill this person. And I'm so sensitive to how that might be received. Or I think about times in classes that I've taught where I didn't handle a microaggression in the best way. I didn't know how to handle it. Something that maybe not everybody knows is that the master's degree is the terminal degree in the field of art therapy at large. Right. There are some PhD programs, but they're few and far between. And in order to teach in an art therapy program, you don't have to have had any training as a teacher. Yeah, for the most part. Yeah. Saying that out loud is kind of wild. Usually people have some kind of training as a supervisor. And I think that does bring in like some, like some teaching skill maybe, but it's not something that's kind of mandated. And so when I think about, you know, being asked, I'm a teacher at Antioch, they're asking me to do these things and I'm like, sure, I'll do anything, I'll figure anything out. But there have been times where I think I didn't know what I didn't know. And I think that there were times where there were conflict in a class where people were hurt. And while I think I did... a good enough job of trying to hold all of my individual students and the group as a whole and all the learning objectives. You know, there's no doubt that there were times where I think that fell short. And I don't know, something that you were saying a minute ago made me go back to a comment that I said super early around group agreements, which was like, can you do everything that you can in your power to stay in the circle? even if shit gets hot. But I think there are times where it's appropriate to be like, I'm leaving the circle. I'm allowed to leave the circle. And as a student, sorry, good, good. As the teacher, I'm just like, and goodbye. Too hot! Well, I think there were times where, like once I began to move into teaching online, where it was so interesting, like the fantasy in a hot moment, just to be like, this never actually happened, but like, oops, I just had a connectivity issue in the middle of this moment of conflict. But I mean, I think that speaks to how my body learned to respond to conflict, which was with fear. Yeah. Um But yeah, I think that it is important. I think it's there anyway, whether we like it or not. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, you know, I think conflict can show up in so many different ways. And it can be from what's been generated in the group. It can be from like what's happening between two or a few. It can be related to the power dynamic, the reading or the podcast or whatever. The resources are yea it's it can and it can show up and in so many forms from like tension and silence and like specific body language to, you know, direct, direct cutting conversation, you know, or like deep tears. Because, you know, one of the things that I've experienced as a student, and I believe I have witnessed other students experience, is that school classes can be heartbreaking. The way something is facilitated can break my heart or cause heartache. And then of course also heartache and heartbreak are a part of life from breakups to different types of losses to chronic illnesses, right? There's just so many ways that our heart you know, maybe in pain when we enter into a classroom. And I wonder what, how that lands for you and what kind of what bubbles up around heartache and heartbreak in the classroom. Yeah. It's interesting because I think when I first started teaching, I was probably so focused on like, um, writing the syllabus correctly and like posting the readings and like having them be legible and like nobody like dying. Um, that I don't even know if, if Maybe this is not true, but my sense and my memory is that I don't even know if I was ready to allow the space to drop into heartbreak because that would've felt too much. And maybe that's not true. Even as I'm thinking, I'm thinking of students in that first class, I think once we got into it, the heart is gonna do what it's gonna do, the body's gonna do what it's gonna do, and the feelings are gonna come up whether you like it or not. especially when we're bringing the art in. But then I think, gosh, like, I'm thinking of like the last five years of our lives. I can't think of a time that heartbreak wasn't like seeping into the walls of the classroom. You know, I've been saying that I heard someone say recently in a faculty meeting, like, in a time like this, and honestly, I don't even know which time they were talking about. It was just like insert traumatic, massive global extinction level. At this point, I don't even know what those words mean anymore because we just have been spending. And hey, maybe there's a chance that we've always been spending our lives seeped in heartbreak. But I think that maybe, like I'm a child of the 80s. And so I remember a time where the internet didn't exist and we weren't aware of pain and suffering as instantaneously as we are now. Yea I remember I was teaching the multicultural class on January 6th of whatever year that was. I have lost a concept of time. What year was that? Was it? 2020? 2021? 2022? All right. It couldn't have been 2020 because that was COVID. I don't think it was the same. Yeah, okay. But I remember, so I think it was 21. I remember like I was teaching class and this was online and somebody like posted in the chat, like all hell is breaking loose in DC right now. And I remembered, I remember very clearly. feeling annoyed that somebody was texting and bringing us out of the present moment because whatever we were doing, I'm sure I was like, January 6th, that would have been the first week of class. So I'm sure I was like, we have to cover a syllabus. And I remembered us getting to a place where, I remember this, so I was like, what is going on? But then I look to my phone and then I'm like, oh shit, this is really bad. And so I was like, can we just all agree to like, let's take a break, let's come back and let's just kind of regroup because trying to jam this syllabus review through is not about to happen. And so we just kind of held space for what was coming up, I think in the best way that we could. Yeah. I'm thinking about a model that I've been practicing and that I've learned in the last five years or so. It comes from the world of AEDP, Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy. And there's a book for, that's not necessarily for clinicians called, It's Not Always Depression. that's written by a student who studied AEDP. And she created this concept of something called the change triangle to help us understand, first and foremost, that we all as human beings have this innate inborn capacity to be calm, connected, clear, creative, curious, courageous. Did I say confident and confident? But I think also compassionate so there's either seven or eight depending on who is talking about it and this comes from IFS as well, so you'll hear some overlap there and In a perfect world we would all spend as much time in this core state this authentic state this playful state Where we can be open-hearted and we can play and we can connect But this ain't a perfect world We have a body, and by nature of being a human being, we feel things. We feel things often, they arise in our gut. And in a perfect world, we would do what kids do when they feel a thing, which is like, oh, you took my toy? I'm just gonna haul off and punch you in the face. And what we know when we see that happen is that kid ain't hanging on to that anger because they let it go. They felt it, they were not afraid to just name it, to act on it, to ride the wave of that impulse, and then it was gone, and then they come back into play. Or like when a kid falls down on the playground and like they turn around to like look at parents and their like faces are freaking out, and then they see a parent go, you're fine. And then their face just goes, oh, and then they just go back to playing. So. I'm saying this because I'm thinking about how... It's only when we don't allow ourselves to feel that thing, to express it in maybe a way that's not punching somebody in the face, but that is like, I'm really heartbroken right now. But that when we don't allow ourselves to do that, we move up into inhibitory emotions of anxiety, shame and guilt, or we move over into our defenses and we're far away from our deep belly, from our core. And so I think when it comes to heartbreak. in the classroom. giving students a place to experience that so that they can ride it like a wave, so that they can then come back into their core state. And I'm thinking now, like, let's remember, these aren't our clients. We're teaching them to do this for other people and do with other people, so that inevitably, your client's gonna piss you off or you're gonna have a broken heart. now that you're in the role of therapist, you kinda can't flee the room either. So what are you gonna do to ground yourself to hold onto that chair and be like, oh my fucking God, I can't believe that this person just said this right now, but like, I'm just gonna stay in the room and like, this is okay. Like, um. Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, that practice of experiencing it, and then learning or practicing how to bracket it off, how to hold it and kind of put it down in a safe place and come back to it. Yeah, so it's so important to practice that with other people also. You know, I think that that's one of the gifts of therapeutic education. You know, you were saying earlier that in I would imagine it's similar in other creative arts therapies programs that there isn't. I mean, unless we're talking about CACREP stuff. There isn't a requirement to have a specific education around teaching, right? And that, and so there, and this is a therapeutic umbrella and a creative umbrella that, you know, are woven together. And so, you know, teachers, many teachers are learning as they go. They're learning from, or we're learning from each group, from each student, from each curriculum, you know, from each process. And that it's quite a road, you know, sometimes it's a bit of trial by fire to come into oneself as an established, confident and yet still like, you know, swimming in the unknown educator. Yeah. You know, I feel like it also requires a lot of humility, you know, and really coming back to that place. I think you said in the beginning, I think you said this, I'm not an expert here. You know, I don't know, or I don't know everything, I think is what you said. And that's just such an important place to hold, that as teachers, as educators, we don't know everything. Um, and that's part of the fun, you know. yeah, it can be. You know, I think I've seen teachers who I think, maybe I haven't spent a ton of time in rooms with these people as their students, but like I have eyeballs and I get a sense that. there is an intimidation or a fear about stepping into the room and not being the expert and not knowing that I think sometimes gets in the way of relationship. And I just also wanna name that like some people want you to show up as the expert and tell them exactly how to do this. And I'm thinking about my experiences teaching in China where I very quickly learned that I was being kind of put into this role of expert and, you know, tell me exactly how you do art therapy in like a proceduralized way so that I can replicate it exactly as is. And so I had to be like, no, like, do the opposite of that. Don't, don't do that. And so that there is that pressure, I think, that I still feel. to hold that balance of I know what I'm doing, and I know enough to know when I don't know what I'm doing, and that can also be okay, and that students introduce things to me all the time where I'm like, I don't know what that is. And... And I think that I tried to move through that space with as little ego as possible. I will say that maybe sometimes... I'm certainly able to be afraid and anxious about like, making sure that everything in this class is in its right place and everybody's learning with their learning and that like, I'm aware of when due dates are and stuff like that. Like as someone with ADHD, like that is something that is germane to my life experience. And I try to hold that with like a light touch and not like let that thing. suck all the life out of the room. And if I forget a due date, then I like take accountability for it, rupture, repair, and hopefully keep it popping. Yeah. Yeah, there's a flexibility that can be really helpful for everybody's well-being. You know, we are at the end of the hour, but there's, if you don't mind, I would love to. It's been 30 years, however long it's been. I love it. We keep adding five hours, or five years, every 10 minutes. So it's been a really long time. I want to, I'd love to talk about art supplies and directives and what, what you love to play with, what you love to facilitate with in classrooms. And then I want to throw something in and you don't have to add it in just yet. But the, the ingredient that I'm curious about maybe after talking about your art, art loves is consent. Mmm. Consent around directives, assignments, and the consent of students participating feels really interesting and important. But let's start with art supplies and what you love to play with or facilitate. So. I will often use this metaphor with students, which is like... I love to cook and I love to bake. Those two processes are very different. In my experience, cooking... let's start with baking. Baking is like if you follow a recipe exactly how it tells you to do it and you have like an oven thermometer in there so that you can be sure your oven is at the right temp. for the most part, you're gonna be able to replicate that thing and the cake is gonna come out like the cake that it's supposed to be. But... And I think that there are some ways in which art and maybe design and other kind of like fabrication processes can mimic that process. But I think that the work of an art therapist is to me a lot more like my experience of becoming a cook. Where like, there was a time where like I didn't know what an avocado like did or like what it, and I grew up in Florida. Like, you know, I just, I remember like getting to college and being like, what is this green thing? And so when I invite people into, the class, I tend to be fairly kind of, not hands off, but like broad in my invitation to instead of baking, spend some time like touching materials, exploring what's in this kitchen. And maybe you even are like feeling the brittleness of like vine charcoal and the lightness of it and how impossible that that density but lightness is in your hand, and then what does it do? And then shit, it keeps breaking. Or that's everywhere. I invite you, if you so feel moved, to hold chalk pastel, which is my personal demon. I hate chalk pastel. I hate it so much. Sometimes I'll use it because it needs to be used, but like. the sensory experience of that on my skin is like, no ma'am. But I really like to invite people into the kitchen of the studio space and to really like, use things for different purposes than they are meant to be used for. I live for a hot glue gun moment. Let's be clear, hot glue guns are like my favorite. I'm sure they're like horrible. but... But I also feel like, you know, living in Seattle for 12 years, like I also am very interested in environmental, in natural materials and bringing the outside in or bringing the inside out and playing with physical space and place. I will say that there is, there was an experiential that Jean Davis, who's my mentor and now my colleague, and I guess I'm her boss, hi Jean. She had us create a sculptural piece that brought our, first year internship sites into our group supervision class so that people could see like, oh that's the room you're in, but it's so small. And we were invited to do that in an entirely abstract or figurative or realistic way. And I remember taking that and doing an architectural scale model of my site. And there were these, do you know those? it's like a floor mat that like folds up on itself that you see like in schools or whatever and it was like each rectangle was a different color and I remember like fabricating that and I never forgot that experiential and starting in creativity symbolism and metaphor so long ago I began to create this long-form experiential where we would take 10 weeks to recreate a formative childhood home. And again, people were invited to be as literal with this as like, often they just come from family of origin and so they had genograms to work from. They could use that as inspiration. Go out and interview people, maybe there's photographs, do a Google Maps, like aerial satellite, you know, or like... literally I had people make like a gigantic nest out of natural materials and that was where they went with it. And so I'm just about to start that one more time next week. And what I love about that is that And we take, we bring in so much. There's actually a book called House as a Mirror of the Self by Claire Cooper Marcus. This is not an art therapy book, but it just spends a little bit of time talking about how we impact spaces and how they impact us, how we're reflected in them. I bring in poetry and maybe some film and We just like take a long time to work on this piece. So, you know, I love to incorporate, like I was saying, especially now like digital modalities as well. I just love to be in the kitchen and be like, oh shit, we need some paprika. Like, let's bring in some paprika. Is there a word for this? Is it? I'm this guy. There could be like a more brainiac way to describe what I'm talking about, but. No, it sounds like eclectic and experiential. Yeah. Well, let's wonder into consent around directives and assignments that encourage students to enter into a process that is evocative. It's like the experiential that you were just sharing about is potentially incredibly evocative. And I think that many, many in class and outside of class assignments, directives, techniques, invitations are evocative for a lot of reasons, right? We want students to explore some depths. of their lives and of their experiences so that they know what they're working with inside of themselves and so that they can be in a relationship with other people's depths, right? And it's not therapy, it's education. And so, yeah, how does consent show up? Where do students get to make choices around hard asks? Yeah. I thought you were gonna say hard ass something and then it just turned into ask. Into hard ass asks. Ha. Ha ha ha. I'm so aware, having had maybe now a hundred people do this experiential throughout the last 10 years or something, that when I present this to them, there is a part of me that feels like I'm calling in Art Robbins, who is one of the founders of Pratt's program, who was kind of a provocative trickster figure. who I think would kind of get off on going there with people. And I also am very aware, and I make a strong point to say, here's why we're doing this. Why we're doing this is because, A, I think that in my experience, it's pretty rare to have a, long form, 10 to 15 session long individual experience at your internship sites because it's often more group based. And I wanted people to kind of get the feel for that in preparation for possibly going into private practice or a place where like it's not gonna look the same. So I tell them that's why we're doing this. And. The ask is actually very simple. It's like build a structure, consider objects, people inside and outside, textures, spaces that you want to make visible or not. But you are the gatekeeper to your own self-disclosure. So you take that however you wanna take that. There is literally not a right or wrong, you decide that. how I'm grading you is your engagement with the process, and that's what it is. And so... people do kind of get to a place where they're like, oh shit, like I don't want to do this. And I say, then don't. Or ask yourself, is this a place where I feel resourced enough to kind of push? And will I be okay if I choose to do that here? Or maybe you make a decision to say, I'm gonna file that away in my bring to therapy jar. Um. Something that I've started to do more recently with this project is I have people kind of every third week break up into dyads and they take turns holding each other in the role of therapist and client so that they're not alone with this stuff and they can kind of process through where appropriate what's coming up for them or confusion that they're having. And then we also come back and do kind of a roundtable, not like, show me your piece, but like, how are you wrestling with this stuff? And then you all are about to graduate. What theory or theorists are turning you on right now? What are you curious about? Or what are you feeling wildly anti? How might you see what we're doing here through that lens so that maybe you use this entire application to inform how would you do this differently if you were to present this to your client? So I guess that's my answer. Okay, I appreciate that. Sounds like you offer a lot of context and choice. Yes, yeah. This really cool thing happens with this project where, by the way, this is only half of the class. The other half, we go from small to big to immersive. And I say, okay, working from Winnicott's idea of the holding environment, this is the holding environment that... brought you to this moment. You're about to be the holder. What kind of space do you want to imagine yourself to hold for your clients? What would you need to have in that space in order to hold them? I want you to go out into the natural environment or into the hallways or into a classroom and literally take over the whole thing. Consider sound and light and fog maybe you make food, like literally what kind of space do you want to create? Calling in all of those things that you want to take with you from that early home and calling in maybe new resources and dreams and color and texture from your own life outside of that home. Hmm. But at the end, I've started to set up like a little photography studio. And I asked their consent to photograph both of these pieces and then I have them professionally printed and then I give them to them the last week of class so that they can have these memories with them. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. Mm-hmm. Hmm. Yeah, it really, it really speaks to the therapeutic, the underlying therapeutic offering that, you know, the courses that you teach, the courses that are in Creative Arts Therapies classes that really offer, you know, and... you know, what you just shared just sounds so loving also. That like it's a it's a an exploration that is held lovingly. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I often think, will this be the year that I don't do it anymore? And I can never bring myself to do it because... There's always a moment at the beginning of this semester where I think this is gonna be too overwhelming. They don't wanna do this, they can't hold it, I can't hold it, like that fear still is there. But literally every single time for both of these projects, we kind of create these villages. And that's on that last week where everybody has the chance to share. their home in the neighborhood or their home in the village. And it is a flat out cry fest. I mean, it is like so powerful. And this ain't mine. This ain't my shit. I just brought an idea. That's all that I did. Well, and maybe I held in support or whatever, but like, yeah, yeah. But like this is... Well, you had asked in the list of questions something about like the third or flow. And I really thought about like spirit or I think about what we do is like making the invisible visible. Once that village starts to like come together and people start going, that ain't ours. That's not any of theirs individually, it's not mine. It's just like, it's this, whatever this is. Mmm. It's what we come together to be a part of, you know. Mmm. Thank you so much, Michael. Mmm, thank you. Thank you. What a look. What a joy on a Friday night. Hmm. Yeah. Mm, it's so good to reconnect with you and may this be the catalyst to come back together in less than 40 years, which is how long it's been since I saw you last. I'm just kidding. I think it's 50, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna stop our recording and then we can keep riffing. Alright.