Today on the podcast, registered psychotherapist, art therapist and author Amelia Knott is helping us discover the art of thriving online and sharing ways to reconnect with yourself, your thoughts and your sense of wellbeing.
You’ll Learn:
- Common challenges that result from the online space and being constantly connected
- How to reconcile the good and bad of the internet and social media
- What art therapy is and how it helps us connect with ourselves and our needs
- Ideas for starting your own creative practice
Even (or especially) if you don’t think of yourself as an artist, stick around. This is not like your middle school art class!
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Amelia Knott is a Registered Psychotherapist + Art Therapist. She's also an artist, content creator and author. Her book The Art Of Thriving Online was recently published. Her mission is to support people in their mental health by combining psychotherapy, counseling and art making.
Art as Therapy
Amelia’s passion for this work came from profound experiences as a young person who was given the opportunity to use her creativity to work through significant grief and trauma.
She explains that, for many of us, language can feel quite limiting. It can be difficult to put our feelings into words. But art, whether it be writing, collaging, painting, drawing or any other creative medium, allows us to tap into our intuition and deeper parts of ourselves.
Art creates another access point to emotional regulation, communication, self soothing and self awareness. It has the capacity to surprise us when we look at something from another vantage point and helps us grapple with two things being true at the same time.
Art gives us agency in what type of art we create, what materials we use and what we choose to do with them. It allows us to practice being imperfect without consequences.
Whereas a drawing or painting class is focused on teaching a technical skill (and may end up making you feel like you aren’t a creative person at all), art therapy is much more about how the process feels. The final product isn’t so important. It’s about finding meaning in creating it.
Challenges in the Online World
In her new book, The Art of Thriving Online, Amelia helps us bring awareness to how our online existence might be impacting us.
While we both agree that there is a lot of value to the online space, it also comes with a lot of challenges. In many cases, it messes with our attention, sets an unrealistic standard and gives the sense that the world is more divided, scary and dangerous than it actually is.
Pretty much all online platforms, from social media to ecommerce and news websites, are designed to keep us engaged for as long as possible. They’re also designed to make it hard to stop. There’s no limit to what you could discover or feel inspired by, which means there’s also no limit to the things you could miss out on. You could scroll forever, but it often pulls us away from what we truly want and need.
Because of this pull and easy access to a screen that is distracting us in 10 different ways at once, our attention is fractured. It becomes hard for us to focus and actually get stuff done, which leads to overwhelm. We’re no longer accustomed to spending time getting a task or set of tasks done all at once.
Our nervous systems get activated by the type of information we’re fed online. In an effort to hold our attention, more “captivating” content (i.e. content that is inflammatory, divisive, negative or scary) is usually pushed out more readily than positive and hopeful posts and...
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