Art Therapy and its Influence in Developing Sensory Comprehension as a Deaf Person

To myself 2 years ago,

Have you wondered why you are able to observe the world so critically all the way to the last detail? Why may you be so into observation, structure, fine details, and tend to express that creatively in so much detail in your art? Why may you find art as a therapeutic tool to help you express yourself as a result of such sensory compensation? I found two really interesting articles or posts and its relationship to the development of an upcoming artwork that I think would give an explanation to these questions. 

 

"Art therapy is a means of connecting what is inside us to the outside world, transforming internal experiences into external realities." ~ Cathy Malchiodi, The Art Therapy Sourcebook.

What does it mean when art therapy can transform “internal experiences into external realities”? How does that help us connect “what is inside us into the outside world”?  Since it is known as a tool in encapsulating the ways in which we can bridge our own world of thoughts, emotions, and experiences with the external world, how does it aid in social interaction, self awareness, or effective communication? Art therapy aims to promote a non-verbal communication or expression to help in healing, self-discovery, personal growth to people with various adversities through the use of art materials followed by a store for all the emotions that are hard to express in words. With reference to our experience with sensory compensation and deafness, how does it facilitate introspection, self-awareness, as well as the ability of transformative power of our own self-consciousness and sensory comprehension? 

As a young child, art therapy aided in the exploration of complex emotions or experiences that would help express our own sensory experiences which are heightened due to deafness. However, in which ways does it comprehend sensory inputs? What does it mean when the interaction within sensory compensation helps in processing the world differently? In addition, how does this affect my perception and expressivity of this in my art? With reference to my first source by Lotfi B. Merabet and Alvaro Pascual-Leone on “Neural reorganization following sensory loss: the opportunity of change”, the process of sensory compensation and its effect on our perception of the external world, all comes down to the process of cross-modal neuroplastic changes in the brain. Sensory compensation is the experience when one sense is gone, other senses are enhanced to compensate for missing information. This does not mean having sharper senses but rather how is the information or in my case, perception of the world through deafness both artistically and in general experience, processed differently. 

According to the article, “current evidence supports the notion that multisensory integration enhances overall perceptual accuracy and saliency through cooperative advantages and provides the redundancy of cues that is necessary to fully characterize objects in our environment”. In other words, as a child, we have always dealt with early intervention in supporting and encouraging our ability to allow at least our senses even with the help of our hearing aids to cooperatively work together and comprehend the objects, subjects, landscapes, emotions, body gestures, and facial expressions, all the way to the last detail. But we may have noticed, as we grew up, in spite of our deafness, we were always observing in a very sharp manner and were able to comprehend the world around us so dedicatedly. As a result, it made us question how it is the case that our other senses heightened its capability to do this. 

It is quite likely that our capability to adapt to our daily experiences are due to changes at multiple areas of the brain. In other words, those areas of the brain that are responsible for other senses along with the area that is responsible for the lost sense work together to adapt to the environmental stimuli and experiences. As a result, these changes and interaction between senses work together that create behavioral skills and task performance, or in our case heightened sense of attention to detail, as well as early intervention with our mother, increase our performance that would equal or even superior to others with intact sensory functions. 

However, it was not always about the biological reasoning behind the whole sensory compensation theory in increasing my comprehension of observation and perception of people, and the situation around us. It was also a matter of early intervention and speech therapy through the practice of art therapy. Not only was art a way to help me express myself and a therapy through various challenges and obstacles that I faced, but it would also bring emphasis to the practice of observation through not only sight but also other senses. Growing up, we would comprehend through smell, touch, sight, taste, and even hear. However, when we perceived the world and acquired sensory memory through our other senses, we would visualize what we were seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, and even hearing. Furthermore, these images formed as a way of visualization to process and understand sensory information and memories. It created the ability to create visual, auditory, and other sensory representations in the absence of external stimuli to further comprehend newer acquisition of knowledge and past memories when heard, smelled, or touched. As a result, speech therapy developed further by putting words to these visualizations. 

However, you may question, how did I use artistic expressions to the process of sensory comprehension? It is quite likely the process of a combination of relaxation and observations developed the artistic sense to which we currently use so much. As a result of constantly learning to use words and develop more speech, it did get exhausting. Therefore, we would rely on art as it has that capacity for expressivity of emotions, thoughts, feelings, and sensory comprehensions that may not make sense in words. As a result, it was a constructive process relying on artistic expressivity and not relying on TV, sleep, or play with mindless toys which may not teach us as much. Consequently, it has helped us with problem solving, decision making, emotional regulation, intonation, voice modulation, development of creativity, stress reduction, cognitive development, as well as self discovery. 

At the moment, you may notice later on, that our art may not be going in the direction optimistically. At first, we benefited from the experimentation, observations, creative thinking to a certain extent, and most importantly just planning, creating art out of surface intentions to express the obstacles as a deaf person ourselves. However, it has reached the point that the topic gets repeated or we may not feel that accomplished as an artist. Certainly, the art we have created so far has given us insight into our love for art. However, does it really fulfill the expressivity to which we show others about our deafness or other topics of interest? Are we really going in depth in a sense that we realize how much we have truly grown or gone through to get this far? Or have we truly realized how our sensory comprehension and early intervention with art therapy has shaped our perceptions of the world? How did these new perceptions of the world lead to newer ideas? Why were we not able to understand this earlier?

The past 19 years, we have gone through so much in terms of early intervention, speech therapy, constantly being studious, bullying, lack of friendships, daily stress, integration into society, and many more. In spite of these challenges, our mother gave us the ability to constantly use art, poetry, creative writing, journaling, blogging, dance, and other modes of creativity for levels of introspection. How did these modes of art therapy help me with the levels of introspection? 

According to the Adelphi Psych Medicine Clinic on “The Philosophy of Art Therapy”, each of us have a conscious and subconscious mind in which stress or pressure “can hide in the subconscious”  influencing thoughts and emotions that can lead to mental health challenges. However, in our case, we have constantly been consumed by our daily acquisition of knowledge and skills that would help us get integrated into society, which in most cases have left us exhausted or having unexplained emotions. Therefore, we relied on art as a way to “open up new pathways between subconscious and the conscious minds” to “link those emotions to thoughts and actions, framing ideas and feelings” that may be tiring or challenging to put into words. This could also result in higher observations, increasing cognitive development, which would enhance our ability to comprehend and critically think about the world around us in an empathic and heightened awareness. Overall, it has aided in the exploration of complex emotions or experiences that would help express our own sensory comprehension with the influence of deafness. In addition, it has helped transcend the limitations of verbal communication and leverage our enhanced visual and tactile senses. This, as a result, has helped us explore new observations and interpret the world, increasing a sense of security, resilience, sense of attention, and adaptability. 

After considering this point of view of using art as a tool to open pathways between the subconscious and conscious minds, another question comes up: How did the little girl feel back then when learning speech therapy within the environment that she was exposed to, created by her mother and mentor? 

Without a doubt, we were way too little to remember, however, with our sensory compensation, heightened sense of attention, nostalgia, and its interplay with emotions, current moments can evoke those vivid, emotionally charged memories. Recently, our mentor passed away which may come as a shock. However, it led me to introspect those times. As a result of sensory compensation and nostalgia, we were able to get a sense of the smell of the room in which she taught mom and us speech therapy through exposure to everything around us. Our mentor and mother made sure that by being exposed to natural surroundings, our ability to comprehend the real world would be due to our ability to comprehend and train our senses within an exposed space rather than in a closed doctor’s office. 

Considering this, a new possibility came up where the concept of putting people into our shoes would give them the ability to see the relationship between sensory compensation, comprehension, and our perception of the world around us through deaf ears and hearing aids. In addition, it would actually give them the perspective of early intervention, sensory comprehension, art therapy, speech therapy, as well as our interactions with the environment through our perspective. In other words, my idea is to create a real life installation that would have an interplay between artistic elements and real life elements to represent an intersection between creativity, storytelling, and personal history. It would incorporate papercuts, light and shadow, and real life objects that would mimic the nostalgic representation of the memory which is created by the notion of sensory comprehension. The use of papercut and its delicacy would enhance the experience by providing the idea that memories and nostalgia are so fragile. In addition, the interplay of light and shadow can set the emotional tone of the work creating a nostalgic mood while the contrasting shadows would evoke those intensive learning experiences we faced. 

This inspiration was derived from a similar artwork where I created a papercut version of a memory in which a light was shown at it creating an immersive experience for people. This project gave me a new perspective on my own method of creating art to express myself and spread awareness about my story as a deaf person. Rather than having a 2D version of the expressivity of emotions that I faced, creating an immersive or interactive environment would enhance the ability to express what I want to portray in my work.  Thus, for my upcoming project, my installation would give people the insight to how we learn different concepts through interactions using sensory comprehension with surroundings. 

Not only was this a new development of ideas for viewers to experience, but rather, it provided me a sense of self-discovery of something that is beyond the surface of our experiences of deafness. It has made me more aware of what underlying feelings we had that we subconsciously stored. In addition to this, how we can facilitate introspection, self-awareness, as well as the ability of transformative power of our own self-consciousness and sensory comprehension. As well as allowing viewers to experience the feelings of the interactions between sensory compensation, comprehension, and influencing perceptions of the world through the deaf ears. The ideals derived by the biological and philosophical aspects have given its ability to help me discover a new possibility of showcasing the experiences of sensory compensation, comprehension, and its influence in our perceptions of the world. It may sound confusing to you, however, this will give you the ability to have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the complex interplay between sensory compensation and its influence in our perception of the world. 

(The posts that were used in this essay are at the bottom two pages)