About Creative Personal Growth Advocacy
Welcome to creative advocacy! Creative Personal Growth Advocacy is a self help tool, an art class with your inner discovery as the subject matter. Its intent is to help participants put into practice creative methods to enhance quality of life and well-being by giving a safe place to process thoughts and ideas, gaining insight and giving new (or reviving old) healthy coping skills. It’s based on the belief that the creative process is naturally healing, life affirming and is great at teaching life lessons in gentle ways.
What is expected from me, your Advocate: I will be your guide for the media of art and of personal expression: watercolor, oil, paintbrushes, thoughts, projects and ideas. I, Linda Hill, have no certification in any mental health field. I have experience working with clients and groups for counselors in the fields of addiction, troubled children, anxiety, depression and domestic violence.
I will listen and offer ideas or suggestions to help with creative struggles (the glue isn’t working!!) and plan projects to help you do what you want to do and go in the direction you want to go. All of this is done with the utmost confidentiality on your own path of self discovery. You do the work and have the fun, I listen and support you and share my creative expertise and experiences.
What is expected of Art: Results. No matter how you decide to do art: alone, in a class, with a friend, with an advocate or with a certified art therapist, you will see good results. Saying that, not I or anyone else can capitalize on art’s healing and personal re-creational properties. It is already yours and it is free, like oxygen in the air. No one put the “healing” properties in art because art just is that way; no one invented it. If someone tells you differently, they will have great luck capitalizing on trees being green, too.
What is needed from participants: willingness, not talent :) Skill comes down the road if you work at it and its not ever necessary here. REMEMBER the beauty of the product is NOT what we're after… it’s the message. If it happens to turn out beautiful, great. You've succeeded when your image says what YOU intend it to say without words (unless its poetry :). Not all experiences are pretty, so not all art is supposed to be, either.
About Art’s Other Benefits
Although a natural benefit of art is its emotionally expressive nature, art’s other benefit is its meditative feature. Both can happen at the same time, but not all art is expressive and not all expressive art is meditative. Hobbies and crafts like knitting or painting and just being creative can help in the second way.
Art offers other forms of coping because it decreases anxiety, heart rate and blood pressure while increasing cognitive abilities, problem solving skills, concentration and emotional balance.
With art’s expression and relaxation properties, it becomes more powerful when both methods are combined because it helps participants in areas of emotional tolerance and disclosure. For this reason, art expression is highly effective in areas related to trauma and sexual abuse, bipolar disorders, anxiety disorders, and anorexia.
Mixing Art and Communication
The job of the art advocate is to help participants express themselves through their creations and to talk to them about their concerns and obstacles as they relate to and through their art. For example, an art advocate may encourage a person with cancer to create an image of themselves without cancer, expressing hope or the cancer as a conquered monster to express feelings about the disease that may be hard to talk about or may be unconscious.
If you can't say something, often your paintings, collages, mosaics, clay or poetry will... When we work on art, we do encourage talking about it, however, if you are too close to the subject and it is too threatening to consider, working slowly- in privacy or in email or journals- might be the most gentle method in the beginning.
I am here to help, whether its helping to maintain focus, bouncing ideas off me, being a supportive partner, or brainstorming subject matter too sensitive for an open studio. If you or your loved ones are interested in exploring art’s expressive benefits and need a little guidance with methods, materials or projects, Creative Advocacy may be what you are looking for.
Linda Hill's Qualifications
Creative Personal Growth Advocate Information
Education: BFA from University of South Alabama, graduated Magna Cum Laude Major Concentration: Painting Minor Concentration: Printmaking/Drawing Minor in Psychology
Experience: From 2007-2011, for Art with Heart in Mississippi, a non-profit started by Linda and Stephen Hill and Heather Pettersen, she offered therapeutic counseling at:
Private, individual settings, all ages
Martin Bluff Elementary (Gautier, MS, group setting)
"Differently Abled" group at The Gallery of Ocean Springs
Steven's Center (Pascagoula, MS, group and individual settings)
Mississippi Gulf Coast Women's Center for Nonviolence (Biloxi, MS, group and individual settings)
"Extra" Education: 26 years of independent study of art therapy, psychology, CBT, counseling, trauma narrative building (visually), trauma effects, domestic violence effects, addiction and recovery, anxiety disorders, depression, meditation, OCD, AD/HD, PTSD
Other Experience: Public speaking on the effects of domestic violence on children and the healing effects of art therapy, Gulfport, MS, for GCWCN
Public speaking on the benefits of art therapy for foster children, Pascagoula, MS
Mississippi
(There is more, but my computer is freaking out. So, there will be more to come.)
About me personally: My personality profile is an INFP (the Healer) mixed with an ENFP (the Champion). No matter how many times I take the Myers-Briggs or the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, this is what happens. Most of the time, its INFP. What this means is that its in my blood that I stand up for people and walk with them when they either need help or can't do it by themselves-- and I love it. I was born to create, help, counsel, teach or minister. I chose the word "advocate" carefully because it means that we are equals and that the advocate relationship is one of equal partnership.
I would be so bold to say that most Healers- either personality or professionally, like most heroes of stories, once started out wounded. Wounds, especially emotional ones, not only have the ability to create havoc in our lives, but once conquered often build character, empathy and an understanding that people with a more stable background may not fully realize in their lives. All people in helping or healing professions are just that-- people. Everyone has trials and tribulations and often, these real people have been in situations in which their experiences gifted them with the desire to alleviate suffering.
Experience: From 2007-2011, for Art with Heart in Mississippi, a non-profit started by Linda and Stephen Hill and Heather Pettersen, she offered therapeutic counseling at:
Private, individual settings, all ages
Martin Bluff Elementary (Gautier, MS, group setting)
"Differently Abled" group at The Gallery of Ocean Springs
Steven's Center (Pascagoula, MS, group and individual settings)
Mississippi Gulf Coast Women's Center for Nonviolence (Biloxi, MS, group and individual settings)
"Extra" Education: 26 years of independent study of art therapy, psychology, CBT, counseling, trauma narrative building (visually), trauma effects, domestic violence effects, addiction and recovery, anxiety disorders, depression, meditation, OCD, AD/HD, PTSD
Other Experience: Public speaking on the effects of domestic violence on children and the healing effects of art therapy, Gulfport, MS, for GCWCN
Public speaking on the benefits of art therapy for foster children, Pascagoula, MS
Mississippi
(There is more, but my computer is freaking out. So, there will be more to come.)
About me personally: My personality profile is an INFP (the Healer) mixed with an ENFP (the Champion). No matter how many times I take the Myers-Briggs or the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, this is what happens. Most of the time, its INFP. What this means is that its in my blood that I stand up for people and walk with them when they either need help or can't do it by themselves-- and I love it. I was born to create, help, counsel, teach or minister. I chose the word "advocate" carefully because it means that we are equals and that the advocate relationship is one of equal partnership.
I would be so bold to say that most Healers- either personality or professionally, like most heroes of stories, once started out wounded. Wounds, especially emotional ones, not only have the ability to create havoc in our lives, but once conquered often build character, empathy and an understanding that people with a more stable background may not fully realize in their lives. All people in helping or healing professions are just that-- people. Everyone has trials and tribulations and often, these real people have been in situations in which their experiences gifted them with the desire to alleviate suffering.