WOUNDED ARCHETYPES

‘Wounded Archetypes’,  a major series of fifteen works in oils was created as the artist’s response to processing her own post abandonment syndrome.

Post Abandonment Syndrome represents a severe, complex psychological reaction to profound relational loss  or sudden abandonment by a primary attachment figure, such as a parent or caregiver or spouse.  Because these wounds are so deep they can often trigger even deeper childhood abandonment or betrayal wounds and sufferers can struggle to process them with language. The resulting trauma becomes deeply embedded in the body's nervous system and the emotional right hemisphere of the brain. 

This leaves individuals struggling with an overactive fight-or-flight response, chronic hyper-vigilance, deep self-sabotage and an intense fear of rejection that disrupts adult relationships. 

Art-making bypasses the traditional limitations of talk therapy by accessing these non-verbal, physical trauma memories directly through sensory and visual expression. In creating art, the artist engages sensory-motor pathways that help ground a hyperactive nervous system and demonstrably lower physiological stress hormones like cortisol. 

This creative process introduces a vital psychological distance, allowing overwhelming emotions like shame and terror to be safely projected outward into a tangible object rather than remaining trapped internally. 

Ultimately, the tactile experience of shaping art within a supportive environment helped the artist to rebuild her emotional regulation, giving form to unvoiced grief and actively rewriting the neural pathways damaged by early isolation.