Using Beauty to Heal Trauma: A Personal Essay
Talk is cheap until you hire a therapist (in a capitalist soul-sucking global economy).
There are many things modern psychology recommends for people with chronic mental illnesses. Not everything works for everyone in the same ways, but this is how I have journeyed and arrived at the most potent salve for my plethora of traumas.
Step 1: Seeing Trauma for What It Is
Being on the internet a lot is seeing how easy it is for people to trivialise trauma. Have you ever watched a video of someone absolutely lose their marbles over something they aren’t entitled to? They are so quick to yell how positively traumatised they are and how what was denied them has flat-out ruined whatever was left of their lives.
Then there’s the people who casually say ‘I have PTSD from…(insert silly thing like ordering from Shein)…’ As though Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is not an intensely debilitating condition that makes people crouch in fetal position under their showers and cry till they tremble.
Trauma isn’t an unfortunate inconvenience, so what is it?
For a long time I thought trauma was just something terrible that happened to me or others. But that’s only the surface really.
It now seems to me that in its very essence, trauma is not ‘something’. It is not a presence but a ‘taking away’. It is the violent absence of what should have been.
Example: A person who had the misfortune of being bullied in school hasn’t had something exactly ‘added’ to their life; instead, they have been robbed of the sense of calm or at least indifference, an untraumatised human being would experience in the presence of others. Now they get nervous just walking to class.
Also, they’ve been robbed of their sense of peace with themselves. So, they think there’s something wrong with them; they think, perhaps, they are inadequate in some way, and that’s why they’re a target.
Or think of it like this: when someone is plunged into grief, one of the ways they describe their experience is feeling ‘empty’. Trauma is an absence.
Step 2: Drowning ‘Absence’ from Trauma with the Presence of Beauty
Once I saw trauma as an absence, everything seemed to fall into place for the better. It helped me realise that healing might be difficult when you’re focused only on getting back what you’ve lost (when you can), redirecting your energy to ‘colouring’ through and around the hole with more positive things helps big time! It doesn’t get rid of the hole, but it transforms it.
This is how I stumbled on beauty.
Beauty isn’t as fickle a thing as the English Language may have the capacity to conceptually express. Beauty is something that can transcend time and space.
Like with music. Great music is an expression of beauty. When you listen to a song that’s so deep you almost start crying, and somehow you feel connected to the singer and everyone else who has listened to that song. That song has helped you ‘transcend’ yourself and your surroundings by drawing you into an experience of beauty.
I know all this may sound ‘woo-woo’ or technical, in the way philosophy can be ‘woo-woo’ and technical. But stay with me.
Here’s a latin quote I learnt in metaphysics class: Pulchrum et Bonum et Unum convertuntur.
Beauty and Goodness and Unity are interchangeable. And here’s the kicker- they are the characteristics of Being. As in PRESENCE.
So humans tend to experience beauty where there is an intrinsic order or harmony. Like the harmony of music, or like those ‘oddly satisfying’ videos on the internet were things just fit PERFECTLY together. Maybe when we experience stuff like this we say things like “oh yeah, that’s the good stuff”, or we just subconsciously recognise that there is something good and pleasing (not moral goodness) in them.
I hope you’re following my train of thought? Because if beauty comes with a ‘presence’, then it becomes one perfect thing to transform the ‘absence’ caused by trauma. The experience of beauty is something I can actively control, unlike the effects of trauma which I can’t.
So this is how I use it.
Step 3: Wielding the Power of Beauty
Yes yes, I know. I have left the main gist for last. But I really wanted you to see how I arrived here and why it’s actually helping me.
So how do I actually use beauty to heal from trauma?
By actively building my everyday life around channels of beauty.
I’m talking nature, visual arts, performance art, literature, food!
Everyday October (and somedays in September) I did one or more of the following:
- Listened to music on full blast. Especially songs from when I was younger and carefree. Nostalgia has a restorative value. I really listened to so many great pieces and done my best not just to ‘hear’ them but to throw myself into appreciating what I loved about each song — what made them beautiful.
- I started exploring mobile and self-photography. Photography is like capturing the beauty of a moment and preserving it for the future. So in the past month, whenever a ‘scene’ in reality struck me, I whipped out my phone and clicked.
With self-photography, it’s about me exploring my body — and I mean that in the most nonsexual way possible. I’ve sorta travelled into my mind and my soul with meditation but I’ve not gotten to know my body as much.
How it moves, looks, my angles, structure, quirks — and it’s the second half my being! So photography is my way of doing that, using my body to express beauty. I practice poses from my catalog on Pinterest and try them out in real time. Here’s a fave:
- I have danced like crazy. Am I a great dancer? Toh! But will I spend 15minutes every night gyrating along with Just Dance videos every night? You bet your knickers bestie! It’s so funny seeing myself in a mirror, wiggling up and down and missing the steps but having fun. I laugh so much that I often go to bed smiling at my own silliness.
- Embracing everyday art. What I mean is the many ways aesthetics fits in our regular life e.g how my room is decorated, how I dress to go out, how orderly my wardrobe is etc. It’s finding beauty in the little things like this hilariously funky neck pillow I got in Ibadan. Anytime I look at it, I chuckle because it looks like a cartoon clown threw up on it.
- And that’s another thing — humour. Anyone who has my personal number knows I’m a regular comedian on WhatsApp. Laughter is good, and since goodness and beauty are interchangeable, I see good humour as a channel of beauty too. Connecting concepts to bring the pleasure of laughter — what isn’t to love? So I always try to find a funny side to random things and I love sharing them to make others laugh too.
- Last but close to the top in my heart are literature and performance art. I’ve read about ten books within this period, and there’s always been some beauty ready to capture my heart in each. In The Life of Pi, it was the ideas on transcendence; in A Gentleman in Moscow it was how the author wrote about Russia; in The Girl with the Louding Voice, it was the depth of Adunni’s fortitude. The same goes for movies.
You may be wondering how I know that these things are actually helping me heal. I have two personal proofs aside from a general feeling of happiness:
- For the first time in a very long time, I had a simple dream. Usually my dreams are full of anticipation or complex narratives but recently they’ve been simpler. This month I dreamt I hugged a family member, then sat down and listened to people sharing good news. This has hardly happened since childhood.
- Secondly, I planned a trip to Ibadan with zero anxiety. Every time in the last 7 years I have had to go to Ibadan, I’ve been riddled with what I later came to understand was anxiety. This month I arrived in Ibadan, ready for adventure!
This has been long, maybe tedious for you, but it was necessary. I don’t know what pain or numbness you may carry within you, but I do know that if you try to actively incorporate more beauty in your life, you could find healing too.
Thank you for listening to me.
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if you’re currently struggling with depression, maybe this will cheer you up.
