Episode 3: Feelings, empathy and self-care for Teaching Artists
Making art with youth can bring up a lot of emotions, both on the parts of the youth and of the Teaching Artist. Hosted by Louise Campbell with guest Alyssa Kuzmarov, this episode of the Arts and Youth Mental Health Podcast addresses how emotions can come up for youth in an art-making process, fostering empathy as a Teaching Artist, and the importance of self-care when working with youth.
Transcription:
Louise: Welcome to the arts and youth mental health podcasts. My name is Louise Campbell. I’m your musician and teaching artist and your host for this series. The Arts and Youth Mental Health podcast delves into youth mental health and well being as it relates to the practice of teaching artists. Our guest is filmmaker, teaching artist and social worker Alyssa Kuzmarov. It’s great to speak with you again.
Alyssa: I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.
Louise: Our topic of conversation in this episode is helping youth connect to their feelings, empathy on our part, which is an important quality to foster as a teaching artist, and the importance of boundaries and self care for teaching artists.
Alyssa: A lot of topics to cover, but all very important ones. Should we just dive into feelings right away?
Louise: Sure!
Feelings And Teaching Artistry
Alyssa: For me, feelings are so important. I just want to specify, as teaching artists, will we always dive into kids’ feelings? Sometimes, yes, sometimes no. Will we always go there? Yes or no, I think it’s a very important skill, a very important area to think about and to explore within oneself. Ideally, if we can help youth connect to their feelings, that could be a very important part of our work. Might not be always, but could be.
Louise: Art-making is a lot about feelings, whether it’s something that we feel ourselves or something that we identify as a certain feeling in a work of art.
Alyssa: Exactly. I was doing a workshop yesterday, and the girls were laughing and couldn’t get into their scenes. I said, ‘Channel a time when you felt frustrated, channel a time when you felt powerless.’ It ended up being these fun scenes that were also therapeutic in some way as well. Are all our workshops like that? We all work with different mediums as teaching artists, but it could come in there and be a very important part.
Creating A Feeling Vocabulary
Louise: One of the ways I introduce myself as a creative artist is I’ll improvise a very short little piece of music, and I’ll say, ‘Can you describe this to me in feeling words?’ It’s really fun, because there’s no right or wrong. It gets rid of that very school-based idea of pass or fail. No, no, it’s just feelings. Everybody comes out with something kind of different but in the same kind of range of feeling, and it shows that it’s okay. Then I’ll play things that are radically different, often music that they’ve never heard before. So you get a really big, huge range of feeling words. Then we’ll flip it around and say ‘What do you want me to play? What kind of emotion do you want me to play?’ It’s a way for youth to start to identify feelings and access all of that great vocabulary that we can keep using in the artistic process. Outside of the workshop, it also means that they may be able to name and access their own feelings when they feel them using more accurate vocabulary.
Alyssa: I love that activity, and that’s actually one of the things I wanted to talk about: building up a feeling vocabulary. You do it so well. What could a feeling vocabulary look like? Why is it important? Well, you just explained it very well. I think it’s something for them to access in their own lives, whether it be in their creative process or in daily situations that they face. We’re there to create this space where youth can express themselves, and in that space, there’s a lot that comes up. There’s a lot of insecurities that come up, there’s a lot of jealousies that come up. For me, I work a lot with groups. They get into small groups to do filmmaking so there’s a lot of dynamics that come up. Some kids get upset. ‘My idea isn’t taken seriously.’ There’s a lot that can be worked on within the creative process to get them to that end goal of actually creating something they’re proud of, or just exploring.
Why Feelings?
So where do we start with all this as teaching artists? For me, I think it’s very important that we ourselves get in touch with our own feelings, to be able to then mirror that back to youth. Again, I just want to be super clear: this may come up in workshops, it may not. We talked earlier in other episodes that some of our workshops are just pure fun, and that’s great. We don’t have to dive into deep emotions. But I think as artists, we sort of naturally do anyways, and I think it is a realm that because we have such a key and valuable role in the lives of youth, even though we meet them so briefly, that there’s a lot that they often share with us again, whether it be on a light scale or deeper.
I just want to put out there this idea of thinking about what you, yourself – I’m talking to whoever’s listening here – what did you learn about feelings? Did you learn that it’s not okay to have certain feelings? Did you learn that feelings should not be shared in a public room? Did you learn that certain gender roles apply to feelings? There’s all sorts of messages we learn as young kids about feelings. I think that’s a great place for teaching artists or anybody to start, just explore that within themselves. What do you think about that?
Louise: I think it’s a great idea. I mean, as a teaching artist, we’re going to have feelings when we’re in the classroom with students, right? And I think it’s an important thing to be able to understand that and manage that, because if we get reactive, then of course the students are.
Alyssa: Nice. Beautifully said, and that’ll lead further in the conversation to self care, that is a very important part. So I appreciate what you just said a lot.
Now, in terms of naming feelings, I want to play a little silly game here. I’m going to say a statement to you, and can you try to identify, name the feeling? So I’m going to be a kid or a youth saying something like, ‘This sucks. I’m no good at it. Whatever I try, it turns out terrible.’ I’m asking this one thinking of teaching artists and situations that we might encounter. These are things we encounter a lot where they think they’re not good at something, and so they don’t want to engage in the art activity. So if I say ‘This is terrible, I’m no good at it, whatever I try, it turns out not good.’ What would the feeling underneath that be?
Louise: You sound frustrated to me.
Alyssa: Okay, nice, nice. Could be, I love that. Could be frustrated. Could be upset, right? Upset. Could be insecurities there. There’s no one right answer to that, by the way,
Louise: It could be feeling inadequate or like they might be judged.
Alyssa: Yeah, yeah. Naming those feelings. As teaching artists, I think it’s so important that we realize that I’m a filmmaker, I can do it, but youth approach some of our workshops with deep feelings of inadequacy or insecurity. And I think part of why it could help to name these things is just to say, it’s true,it can be scary to do art. It could be scary to put your ideas out there, and to recognize that for kids as well.
Okay, what if I tried just one more: ‘I hate this activity. I don’t want to do it.’
Louise: That could come from many different places. It might be that they don’t like whatever it is that they’re being asked to do. Maybe they want to do something else. Maybe they’re feeling insecure, or like they can’t be good enough because it’s brand new.
Alyssa: Yes. You named frustration before, it could be frustration. So why am I putting this out there? It’s a bit like in the previous episode when we talked about different behaviors. Well, in this one, it’s similar. If we could help youth name what’s going on with them, we can move past it too. They can get beyond that ‘I don’t want to do this’, and we can say, ‘Okay, I get it. I hear your frustration, you don’t want to do this, or you’re feeling nervous to be in your group.’ We don’t know the youth that well, so we might not go further than that, but just to say, ‘How about try it anyway?’ Just by acknowledging what they might be feeling gives them a space that it’s okay to feel that art making can be scary and art making can be frustrating. It can be so many things.
Louise: Yes. I think it’s an important thing to be seen. I think schools, they’re big organizations, and sometimes there’s no time for a student to be allowed to have feelings and to have them recognized and acknowledged by somebody else, especially adults. So I think that ability to see a student for what they’re feeling and not tell them it’s wrong, that’s a big deal for a lot of youth.
What Is Empathy?
Alyssa: Yeah, what a great lead into empathy. Because to me, what you just said about acknowledging and and really seeing someone and respecting their experience, to me, is at the basis of what empathy is all about. If I ask you, ‘what do you think empathy is?’, how would you define empathy?
Louise: I would say it has a lot to do with trying to understand what somebody else is feeling from their perspective, as much as you can, also recognizing that you’re never going to be able to feel what they feel. So there’s a sense of being with somebody, but also being separate.
Alyssa: I love that. Well said, well said, so beautifully said. I don’t know if anyone has seen the Brené Brown video on the difference between empathy and sympathy, but to me, you just described empathy super well. In the video, there’s this idea that a person who’s having a hard time is sort of in this dark cave. They’re in a dark place, and they’ve descended some stairs and are feeling very alone. The idea of empathy is that we actually descend into that cave with the person, and we just be with them. Can we fully understand what they’re living down in that cave? No, but by being in that dark place with them, we’re just showing them that they’re not alone and that we’re trying to understand. You used those words, and I think that’s the key. It’s not that we necessarily can understand because we may or may not have lived with that person has lived. We may have very, very different backgrounds, or just not know what they’re going through exactly, but we could try, and to me, that’s a very important part of empathy.
Why empathy?
So how do we express empathy? That’s another question. I just want to talk about some basics. Why is empathy so important? Well, because it makes people feel heard. It makes them feel not alone. I think it’s important not to hold back, because some people just aren’t sure what to say. It could make people nervous. Teaching artists might feel nervous if some kid shares with them a very deep thing. It can be scary also, just not knowing what to say. So I just wanted to get into that a little bit, of what to say. I don’t know if you want to say anything about that. Does that come up?
Louise: Oh, for sure. Sometimes it’s a bit of a trick to figure out what to say because I am a teaching artist. I’m not a therapist. I’m not their teacher. There are some things that it’s okay to engage in conversation with a student, and sometimes it’s not. I sometimes feel like I have to say, ‘Wow, that’s a really big topic. I think maybe we need to find somebody else that you can talk about that with, rather than me.’ I might be jumping the gun a little bit.
Alyssa: I know, all these topics are interrelated, right? Because exactly what you said, that does lead to boundaries and what is the limit to our role. We can give empathy, but then, we don’t necessarily have to, or are able to or within our role.
Before we get to the limits of the role, empathy, to me, is that first step of just acknowledging someone. So if they share a lot with me or you, or any of the teaching artists out there, a good response is to just acknowledge it: ‘Thank you for sharing’. That’s a great empathic response. ‘Thanks for sharing. I appreciate that it must have been really tough to do, because you don’t know me that well, and it takes a lot of courage to talk about this.’ That’s a super empathic statement that anybody could use.
The one I try to avoid saying is, ‘I’m sorry’. I think social workers fall into that. I don’t know if artists do as much, but it’s this tendency to say, ‘I’m sorry you had to live that’, or ‘I’m sorry you’re going through that.’ I avoid that, because I feel like everybody’s living what they’re living, and I don’t want to take it away from them by saying ‘I’m sorry.’ It’s almost saying you shouldn’t be living that. Okay – you’re living it. And it sounds really hard. So another very basic empathic statement is ‘That sounds really hard’, or ‘That sounds very painful’, ‘Sounds very scary’. You can add any feeling there: ‘sounds very frustrating’, ‘sounds very enraging’. Those are some typical empathic responses.
Louise: I find sometimes it’s important to say, ‘Oh, wow, that sounds really hard. Does that make you angry?’ Put it as a question, because sometimes what I might perceive or think somebody might be feeling is actually really not the case. Then someone can say, ‘No, no, that doesn’t make me angry, it actually makes me feel really, really sad.’ But to me, their sadness looked like anger. So I think sometimes that clarification is really important to do.
Alyssa: I love that you said that, because again, all these themes flow into each other. If we can help name feelings, then that is part of giving empathy. On the other hand, we don’t necessarily know the right feeling, so checking with them is a really great thing to do. Exactly what you just said. To insert some social work lingo here, paraphrasing is a clinical skill of social work. It’s saying something like, ‘What I hear you saying is that you’re frustrated because everyone is dismissing your ideas, and maybe you’re feeling a little bit upset. Is that right?’ That’s a typical clinical, textbook kind of paraphrase. But the idea really is just checking in with the feelings, exactly what you just said. Maybe it’s not frustration exactly, maybe it’s not upset, maybe it’s actual rage. Maybe it’s sad, maybe it’s all kinds of other things. It’s a great tool to check in with someone: ‘Is this what you’re feeling? And if not, okay, tell me what you are feeling.’
Another typical empathic statement is, ‘Can you tell me more about that?’ ‘So you shared that you’re feeling a bit excluded in this group. Could you just tell me more about that?’ Because even though I’m still asking them to keep going, it’s still empathic in the sense of, ‘I’m with you, I’m hearing you. I want to know more.’
Louise: That’s a really important one, I think, in a workshop where you’re asking kids to do something brand new for the first time. ‘I can’t do this’ is one of those phrases that we hear frequently. ‘Okay, so you don’t think you can do this. Can you tell me a bit more about that?’ Then it’s a fishing question for me. Where is this coming from? And how can I help give tools to this person so that they are able to do this activity that I proposed?
The Limits Of The Role Of A Teaching Artist
Alyssa: Yes, I love that. Yeah, just this idea, yeah. Where is that coming from? I love what you said. Empathy, to me, is a bit of that too, just fishing. You used that word too, ‘what’s actually going on here? It sounds rough. And I want to help you.’ Maybe we can help and maybe we can’t, which leads into this idea of the limits of our role. Even if we can’t, acknowledging and just validating that person in the moment is enough, because we’re sort of being this witness to whatever they’ve shared with us, and that is enough. That’s actually huge. It’s huge. We don’t have to be clinicians or psychologists or social workers to make somebody feel valued and respected. Just saying, ‘Thanks for sharing, that sounds really rough’ can change somebody’s whole life because they’ve just shared something very deep with someone, and it was acknowledged and validated.
Louise: For sure. And I think in the role of teaching artists, empathy towards students’ work and their process is a really important thing to do. Maybe I’m asking somebody to make music for the first time, and they’ve never, ever done anything like this before. Just saying, ’Wow, you’ve really worked hard at this. How do you feel about that?’ is a really interesting thing to do, compared to, say, the person who’s been making music all their lives. That person also needs a certain amount of empathy and reflection of their work as well, too, but I think it’s different for each person.
Alyssa: Absolutely. In a previous podcast, I gave an example of a young man who wanted to do a video, and the other kids who didn’t want to do the same thing. I had given him some choices. I think the success of my work with him was just that I heard him. He had behaviors that I could see would probably annoy teachers that are with him. You also mentioned that earlier, teachers are with kids day in and day out, kids, youth, young adults, whatever the ages. Sometimes youth with behaviors that are a bit difficult to manage can rub people the wrong way eventually. I think the fact that I just took time to look this kid in the eye, or this young man in the eye, and say, ‘I hear you, I hear your frustration’ is important. We came to a solution in that case, but even if I hadn’t been able to come up with a solution because time ran out, or it just wasn’t possible, it’s enough to validate someone, because not all experiences are great, right? Sometimes youth go through very hard things and we can’t fix the situation, but if we can acknowledge and validate some feelings and give them some empathy, that’s huge. That is absolutely huge.
Louise: I think acknowledging when things don’t work is important, because that happens in the art workshop all the time, right? ‘Oh, well, that didn’t quite go with the way that we, well, the way that I was thinking it was gonna go. But things don’t always work the first time, and that’s okay.’ That can be a really big thing in a school system where you’re expected to provide the right answers all the time.
Alyssa: I love those words: that’s okay. I think that’s a great sum up of the school system where so much is not okay. So if we could just give them a breather and say ‘It’s okay’, whether it be your feelings or wherever the process is leading you, it’s important.
Empathy vs. sympathy
I want to talk about the opposite of empathy, because I think that’s also very important. As teaching artists, we come in quickly and we want everything to go well and we have great expectations. And again, our ideas are wonderful, and yeah, sometimes things don’t go as planned. False reassurance like, ‘It’s gonna work out?’, things like that… it may or may not work out. It is possible, a youth might be excluded. And in three workshops, we’re not going to change that, right? So we don’t want to give false promises or false reassurance. That’s actually the opposite of empathy, because it’s sort of like leading them to a place that, ‘It’s all gonna be fine’, as opposed to saying, ‘Right here, right now, it’s not fine and that’s okay.’ There’s a very big difference there. We don’t have to fix things for people. We can just let them be in the ‘It’s not how I wanted it to be,’ or ‘It’s frustrating,’ or whatever the case is. This tendency to want to fix situations and make everything okay is human and natural, and we all want to do that.
We brought up the Brene Brown video of empathy versus sympathy. Sympathy is about feeling bad for people. I just want to state that, because that’s not what empathy is about. Empathy is really just being with whatever comes up, whether it’s anger, frustration, sadness, happiness, joy, all of the above, as opposed to looking at someone and going, ‘Oh, that’s too bad,’ ‘Oh, poor you’ kind of feeling. Nobody likes that. Nobody wants that. Sometimes we can sort of fill space because we don’t know what to say, or we can bring it back to ourselves. Or we could give this idea of ‘Everything will work out fine.’ Or we can try to teach them something, or give advice. But truly, what people want in the moment when they’re feeling upset or frustrated or angry or sad, is just someone to be with and that’s it. I think that it’s hard to remember that because we’re trying to make it better. We don’t have to give advice. We don’t have to actually do anything other than acknowledge and be with those feelings.
Louise: That’s tricky to do, in the role of a teaching artist, because the time constraints are so rigid. There are reasons around those constraints, but it’s really hard to make that space when you’ve got a 55-minute class and there’s all of the other kids around, and the teacher is looking at their watch, and there’s curriculum that needs to be delivered. It’s hard.
Alyssa: It’s very hard. It’s very hard. It’s still something I really strongly believe in, but it’s very hard to put into practice, especially as teaching artists. As you said, everything’s against us in terms of the clock and the time and so many students and so many needs.
Louise: Do you have any tips or examples of ways that you’ve done that for students?
Alyssa: Well, I think the example I gave previously was to say, ‘This time is frustrating. Maybe we could check in for next time and see how that goes, if there is a next time’, could be one answer. I think the other one, and it sort of leads into this idea of self care and being with our own feelings, is to acknowledge that whatever we’ve done is enough, and sometimes that includes frustration for ourselves because we can’t do it all. There is no tip that I can give or an easy solution. I’m thinking now of a youth that I thought I had done a great job with, in the sense that she had shared with me. She was very anxious to do the film, but she really wanted to do it. She wanted to do it on her own. She had a story she wanted to tell about her own personal life. And I thought we made great progress, we had a great connection. And the second time I came back, she had a panic attack. I didn’t expect that, because I didn’t know her well, and it didn’t end well. That stayed with me, because I felt like I didn’t reach her, or I didn’t get ‘there’, to wherever ‘there’ is, because she didn’t finish her film. I think we have to just trust that what we gave was good, and good enough. Then there’s every youth’s process. That young woman, I hope, will tell her story one day. It wasn’t the right time then. We need to take care of ourselves in all these situations.
Louise: Yes, for sure. I have to say that I’ve had to learn a lot about the idea of boundaries, because as a person, I’m fairly naturally empathetic. I haven’t had to work at that much, but I can be so empathetic that I will completely forget about where I am in the situation. And that’s been hard, because there have been a couple times when I’ve been really over-subscribed to the point of a bit of burnout, just because I was too busy paying attention to other people.
Alyssa: I think almost every teaching artist can relate to that. In my hat as social worker, I think that those are common traits of people who want to help and work with people, and me too. In my life, I’ve had to learn boundaries. I’m still working at it. I’m not sitting here as an expert on boundaries at all. I know the importance of them, and I could play it out, because I’ve overstepped my own boundaries at many periods in my career. I think it comes from a good place, but it can actually be harmful, both for ourselves and others. I sometimes like to play it out with teaching artists in the sense of, okay, so we go into a classroom and a youth shares a lot with us. Let’s say they’ve shared a lot about their personal story with me, and then they want my Facebook or Instagram coordinates. They want my email. ‘How can we keep in touch?’ Of course, that’s natural, because we had a beautiful connection. It was very short, but it was very deep, and they want to continue that, right? I’m saying’I’, but it could be any of you out there. Louise, I’m sure you’ve had the same experience.
So what if that happens? So then the person, this youth, starts to contact me on Facebook or email and wants to keep talking about their story, or asks me to go for a coffee, or reveals very deep things. I’ve had young people reveal suicidal thoughts to me on Facebook. That puts you in a situation you don’t anticipate in the beginning, because you just feel like it was a great connection. It can go to places because maybe that youth is very needy and has nobody else to talk to and felt such a connection with you. That connection was very real, but you can’t sustain it outside of the workshops. We have to think of the outcome in the sense that you can actually hurt the youth more by opening a door and making some promises that you can’t fulfill, in which case that could lead to real betrayal and the youth feeling abandoned and hurt and neglected. Better to be clear from the beginning.
Louise: Yes. I have a very strong memory of a really fantastic teaching artist and social worker, Deanna Smith, who said, ‘If you can’t close a box, don’t open it.’ So I often think of that when I’m planning a workshop: we need time to open the box and we need time to close the box too. So what can we do in these three classes that will allow me to make sure that the box is closed in the artistic process. It’s also if we get a little bit lost in the weeds of the artistic process and feelings start to come out, excitement happens, things go in a different direction than I anticipated. How are we going to close this particular project so that I can hand it off to somebody who is going to be there for longer than I am? Hopefully that’s going to be the teacher, because they’re the first contact with all of the students. But it may be somebody else in the school. It may be the student’s peers, or if they have a really good, strong friend group, that’s another way to kind of go.
Okay, so this student has shared something, maybe in the creative process, that needs more support. Where can I direct them to? How can I hook them into the structures that are already in place in their lives, so that when I leave there’s not this hole that’s left?
Alyssa: You’re making me think of two things. First of all, I love what you just said, and it’s so important.
So let’s say this student says to me, ‘Oh, I have nobody else. I really trusted you, and I would like to continue to connect with you.’ To me, a very important message would be, ‘I wish I could. I’ve really enjoyed my time with you. It’s been very special to me. And I’m not just saying that to say it, I really mean it, I’m gonna carry you with me. But we can’t continue it outside of these workshops. The workshops are ending.’ However, I do plant the seed of, ‘You know what? You met me, you trusted me. There are other great people out there, and you have to find them, and you have to try. You know, not just anybody and everybody, of course, but the fact that you opened up to me took a lot of courage, and I hope, I wish, I trust that you will find other people that you can do that with.’ I think of this as a seed of hope. I don’t think that’s false reassurance, although I never like to say you will meet other people, but I like to say there are great people out there, and you’re a great person, and it’s a process to meet the right people. Just have a conversation around that is what I’m trying to say.
The other piece that I think is important is the limits of our role. For example, this happened the other day. It was the second workshop, and a girl lifted up her sleeve and showed me cutting, cuts that she had done, I think the day before even. It’s very important if they say to us, ‘But don’t tell anyone. Don’t tell anyone. It’s only you that I trust’, that’s not… I won’t say a trap. I don’t mean it that way, but it is in some ways. We can feel good about it because, ‘Oh, they trust me, and they opened up to me.’ But the truth is, I’m not the person that can help them, because, as a teaching artist, I’m there maybe three times max and and I can’t ensure their safety. It’s very important to give them a message that says ‘I really value and appreciate that you trusted me, and I would like to accompany you to talk to the teacher, so that we could figure out who could actually help you with this’. Or I might ask, ‘Do you see the guidance counselor here? Do you have someone that you have told about this?’ But not to ever fall in the trap of keeping that as a secret, because again, it might feel good to us in the moment that they trusted us, but the goal is to keep them safe, and we have to be very clear with them about that. That I, unfortunately, am not that person that can keep you safe and really help you with this. So I have to tell somebody about this. And again, I’m doing that with the intention of keeping you safe, not betraying your trust in any way, but to keep you safe and to make sure you get the help you need.
Louise: So within the school system, I think it’s pretty obvious that the teacher may be one of those people that they can go to. Who else? Who else could you go to as a guest in the school system, in order to say, ‘I have some concerns about this student. Is there a way that we can help them?’
Alyssa: To me, that’s when I really take off my hat as a social worker. In those contexts, I’m a teaching artist. To me, the teacher, or whoever brought me into the school is my contact. So if I have any concerns about a youth, I will go right to that person. If ever it’s happened, and I’ve talked to other teaching artists and they feel like the teacher is not trustworthy or won’t do anything about it, or, for instance, the student has told me this teacher is mean to them, or I don’t know what, then I would bring it to someone else in the school, whether it be the principal or a guidance counselor. But for me, our role as teaching artists is not to refer outward to the community. As teaching artists, I think we can learn some resources and things like that, but I think, personally, that’s beyond our role in the sense that it’s hard to refer people. It’s not an easy thing. It feels easy, but it’s not at all. We might refer them to a hotline number, and the hotline number is no longer an operation, for example. Or we refer them to a hotline but they have a bad experience with the person on the other end of the line. Or we send them to some community agency where they don’t speak English. Or they’re from a cultural community and they don’t feel comfortable walking into the type of places that we’re referring them to. There are so many reasons that referrals are, to me, beyond our role as teaching artists. So I really feel like the resources should be in the school and limited to that.
Louise: There are really quite a good number of people within the school too. So if it appears that maybe one adult within the school system is not the appropriate person, or the student says, ‘Please don’t tell my teacher’, there may be somebody else that you could go to and have a discussion with about this student.
Alyssa: Absolutely.
Louise: Oftentimes when I’ve done that, the school staff are already aware, and there are already things that are in place in order to try and help support that student.
Alyssa: Yes, yes, absolutely. I think that’s where we have to be clear with our boundaries and limits. Again, always thank them for sharing and say, ‘This is beyond my role. As much as I would love to help you, I’m not the right person. Let me find you that person’.
Louise: I have to say that when this has come up, there’s still me going home at the end of the day.
Alyssa: Yes. And that leads us back to: how do we take care of ourselves? Because we don’t know what’s going to happen with the type of student that we’re talking about, or other very deep, emotional things that come up in all these workshops. What do we do with our own emotions? We’re fairly alone and isolated as teaching artists, because we come in and out. We may or may not have people that we connect to around these issues.
How do you deal with tough stuff that you see or face in the schools?
Louise: My kind of self care, if we use that buzzword, is pretty basic: making sure that I have enough sleep and that I eat well. All of the things that made me happy when I was five years old, they still apply now. Also, I have a good number of very close friends and colleagues who do similar work as I do, and so I know that I can call them up and say, ‘Hey, I just had a great day in a school, it was so much fun!’ Or, ‘This thing came up, and I don’t really quite know how to deal with it.’ I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I have really great people that I can call if I need to.
Alyssa: I think this also circles back to the first topic we talked about: feelings. My go-to answer is to learn to be with my own feelings, in the sense of giving them space, taking some time after the workshop. Let’s say some classrooms are really extra challenging for some reason, or a particular group home or community center, or whatever the case is. So I actually know that I give myself time before, I give myself time after to create space for my feelings and just give myself time to let it sink in. I think if we don’t feel what just came up, then we’re not connecting. We’re not being empathic in some way, we’re not tuning into the depth of the feelings. Yeah, just giving space to whatever came up, letting it touch us, letting it affect us.
Louise: It sounds like a lot of it is giving space to ourselves and to the students for whatever it is that’s coming up through the creative process.
Alyssa: Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Louise: We’re at the end of our last episode. Is there anything else that you’d like to add?
Alyssa: I think we covered a lot. There’s so much more we could say about self care, about boundaries, about empathy, but I think we covered it all. Thank you again for having me here. I really appreciate these exchanges.
Louise: It’s great for me as well, too. I know that we’re both equally passionate about the work that we do as teaching artists and what it can offer you.
Alyssa: Yes, very much. Thanks very much.
Louise: Thanks to you.
Acknowledgements
Hosted by Louise Campbell, this podcast was recorded at ELAN’s Community Digital Arts Hub, with mixing and editing by Tyler Rauman. Music featured on this podcast was produced by Kuzmo, a youth involved in the creation of the soundtrack for the film RESILIENCE.
The Creative Care podcast is funded by the Community Health & Social Services Network (CHSSN), the Secretariat à la jeunesse and the Lucie and André Chagnon Foundation. The views expressed herein are based on the experience and professional training of the guests, and supported by information on mental health and wellbeing that were current at the time of recording in June 2024. These views do not necessarily represent the views of ELAN or the funders.