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Lexie Manion, Art Therapist

@lexiemanion

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⋒ Mental Health Advocate
⋒ Art Therapist, MA, ATR-P, Resident in Counseling
⋒ 🎨 @lexiemanionart
⋒ 🖊️ Mental Health America, NAMI
⋒ @boycottthebefore

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I began this account in 2014 and carved out my voice of lived experience in body positive and mental health spaces many years before I decided to go back to pursue my education. I have contributed valuable work to these spaces.

Some therapists continue to still operate from the “blank slate” approach in which they choose to not disclose much personal information to their clients. I do not carry the privilege of perpetually walking in being a blank slate due to continuously advocating for important causes for over a decade. I’m also not sure how healthy or conducive being a blank slate always is; there is a balance to anything and everything in life.

I continue to uphold my ethical judgment in therapeutic spaces, which means keeping firm boundaries while simultaneously offering authenticity for my clients as needed.

I will continue to use my platform as a means of educating the public and providing resources. I am a human being before I am an advocate, and I am a human being before I am a therapist. Sensitivity and compassion will continue to be utilized in my work.

My posts are my own and do not necessarily reflect my current or future places of work. I will not share client artwork or stories to abide by HIPAA. And I firmly believe that therapy should be more accessible.

I am so unbelievably honored to model both self and community advocacy to my clients, as well as to be a human being who put in the hard work of choosing to go to therapy myself.

Fostering a safe space for clients to show up as they are is the foundation of my work. My own work is not a map or a guide, but truly one valid story of lived experience, learning, exploration, and healing. Your story of how you heal is valid and important.

This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or qualified healthcare provider. by @lexiemanion

I am so proud to share that I began my journey as an art therapist (ATR-P) in inpatient behavioral health. To watch this dream finally come to fruition after my years of hard work is everything!

I learned about art therapy due to being in and out of treatment centers and hospitals as an adolescent. I was once seen as “treatment resistant.” My art therapy groups were my safe space; I felt free to explore my thoughts and emotions in those rooms. I’m a big proponent of therapy, especially creative arts therapies for where talking alone may not fully touch the repressed, non-verbal wounds. Art has been found to be beneficial as a coping tool. Art is a vehicle for mindfulness, creativity, and freedom.

I acknowledge the privilege I’ve carried in order to participate in therapy. I strongly believe therapy should be accessible and affordable for all.

I am an artist, but you never have to declare that you are “good” at art in order to find catharsis or meaning in it. I believe everyone is an artist, and that we hold the key to our own healing.

I’m so grateful for the education and support I received, especially throughout grad school. There is so much more depth behind art therapy than I ever could have imagined at 15 years old.

It is a true honor to give back to my communities the safety and care I have received myself growing up in therapy. Safe spaces are needed in this world, and it is a privilege to provide one to human beings who deserve a place to rest, recuperate, and be seen. by @lexiemanion

Trigger warning: This post mentions suicide.

When @lexiemanion, an art therapy student, writer, artist, and mental health advocate, learned that one of her clients had died by suicide, she replayed everything that had happened up until that point, trying to navigate the loss.

According to research, 22-39% of psychologists and 51-82% of psychiatrists lose at least one client to suicide in their career. Having honest and open conversations about suicide, especially as mental health providers, is vital to suicide prevention.

On our blog, Lexie shares more about her experience and how leaning into creativity and community has helped her cope with loss. Read her full story at mhanational.org/blog 🩷 by @lexiemanion

I am Toxic Positivity and I am positively frightening! 👻🌈✨ I adore my younger self with her sass and sarcasm! 😂🥰

My art therapist side supports the psychoeducation that sometimes negative thinking can’t be so easily transformed into something positive, especially if it is invalidating AND could cause harm like toxic positivity. I encourage my patients to carve out the middle path, such as “I am doing my best today” or “I am learning…” to promote a bridge to the positive. Let’s learn to validate ourselves and others in healthier, more believable ways. ♥️ by @lexiemanion

When the set is so warm and cozy, you paws-itively transform into a bear! 🐻 Happy Halloween! #FableticsPartner @fabletics by @lexiemanion

I’ve been working on some new writings. (I’m always up to my creative shenanigans, even with life being so busy with my first full-time job! I’ve been finding my groove with my work and really enjoying it. It’s an honor to support my patients. I feel so supported, too.) I recently had a breakthrough in my healing that I’m excited to share more about soon. It felt so profound.

I cannot say enough that giving people grace, understanding, and love working through mental illness (and also just life) can be the most life-saving thing. Receiving these gifts was the foundation to my healing until I adapted to providing it to myself. I support and rescue myself time and time again today, but I cannot say enough about how my people save me every day — how you save me every single day. I’m so grateful. I will never stop finding ways to say thank you.

I think even the most unlovable are so easy to love; so endearing; so worth saving.

Please be gentle with yourself. Please be gentle with others. “We are all just walking each other home.” - Ram Dass by @lexiemanion

This came up in my Memories. I love sharing the middle path and wise mind with my patients today. A decade ago, I was a client in a women’s trauma program and then DBT therapy, figuring out my own thought patterns…and worth. Sometimes we forget that we are our own best resource; our own best thing. by @lexiemanion

“Flash forward and we’re takin’ on the world together
And there’s a drawer of my things at your place
You learn my secrets and you figure out why I’m guarded
You say we’ll never make my parents’ mistakes

But we got bills to pay
We got nothin’ figured out
When it was hard to take
Yes, yes
This is what I thought about

Do you remember we were sittin’ there by the water?
You put your arm around me for the first time
You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter
You are the best thing that’s ever been mine
Do you remember all the city lights on the water?
You saw me start to believe for the first time
You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter
You are the best thing that’s ever been mine”

Mine by Taylor Swift by @lexiemanion

With Halloween around the corner, I wanted to reshare my article from 2018. You can read the full piece on The Mighty.

As an art therapist working in inpatient behavioral health, I especially do not condone such mental illness “costumes.” Patients are in very vulnerable positions that are not their fault when they require mandated care. To me, it’s all very sad to witness when help needs to intervene. My team has to face impossible decisions and err on the side of safety while balancing ethics and patient autonomy.

Research reports high rates of trauma occur in psychiatric settings, including physical assault (31%), sexual assault (8%), and witnessing traumatic events (63%).

It is irresponsible for those who do not live the stigma of mental illness to don “psycho,” “mental asylum,” or even “Anna Rexia” “costumes” that can perpetuate deep pain — historically and personally.
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The mistreatment in asylums could have happened to any one of us had we lived back then, or even today at facilities continuing to uphold abusive and inhumane treatments.

No one deserves pain from people who are supposed to help. ⁣
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Mental illness is not a costume. We cannot so easily “take off” our struggles and be well when the night is over. It has taken me time, proper medications, compassionate care, and community support to heal from my pain. I will always carry the pain of my past in my heart and mind, and I also take my power back from those times because I have a voice now. ⁣
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Believe our communities when we ask for sensitivity and respect, just as we must listen with care to other intersections of marginalization speaking up for their communities. A costume is no longer a costume if it mocks, degrades, appropriates, stigmatizes, or shames.

***I wanted to acknowledge that it is always a beautiful thing in life, if we feel an immediate defense in our bodies, to make room to challenge, learn, and grow. These “costumes” harm myself and my patients whom I care about. Making a spectacle of human suffering pains me. Thank you for listening and growing with me.*** by @lexiemanion

I was talking with a coworker about how some become jaded in the mental health field. It can be any line of work, but it’s pretty prevalent for us, hence why grad school discussed self-care so often that it became a joke at times.

Becoming jaded is a fear I carry that I project onto the world around me. I have to check in with myself and lead with my own knowing. Because I get it. I am new to this. I am happy-go-lucky. I am bright eyed and bushy tailed. I carry immense self-awareness of how that can look. And what that could lead to should we struggle to care for ourselves. The job is new to me, but self-help really is not.

In my own processing of identity and self-protection, I take in the words “soft and strong” as a mantra. May I always be soft, always be caring, always be giving, always be gentle. And may I also have my protective side that is quietly a badass. Quietly assessing, taking note, storing away. Quietly taking inventory. Quietly doing the work. Work on self isn’t really optional as a therapist, nor should it be in life.

If the joy can be loud, the processing can be quiet, yet still bold with its same impact. It’s not that I meticulously plan to move in silence, but the silence is one of work that doesn’t stop. The work itself can look unseen when it is safely stowed away in the protections of a rose bush of boundaries. To be seen in the full beauty and bravery of healing, but evading being mishandled.

This is my baseline. I can’t look into the future, but I’ve been wholeheartedly who I am for 7 years. I intend to keep going. With full accountability that I need to take good care of myself amidst the inevitable bumps and blips of recovery.

I’m new to this. I’m also true to this.

And may I remember my own wisdom when softness begets pains in vulnerability. And the knowing that my softness will always be my greatest strength. by @lexiemanion

So, when you love and support me today, this is also who feels it. ☺️ by @lexiemanion

The universe has a sense of humor as it may have wanted to teach me the lesson in learning to slooooowww dooooowwwwnn, as I have been down and out with a bad sickness this past week. I am aware that navigating this at times does come with the territory of my work.

I had to radically accept that I needed to rest and just be still. There have been moments I had urges to be productive, but alas, I have done my everyday self-care as best as I could and let my room get messy while I worked to keep my mind clutter-free.

I return to this poem often, but it has a fresh perspective in quite literally lying in bed reflecting on life, but being unable to participate in it because rest is of the essence. And how that rest can feel like disengagement of everything you’ve carved out in your life worth living. We can be so hard on ourselves. And in the impermanence of living within ephemeral snapshots of struggle. I always think it’s life-saving when people model gentleness — the permission to be human.

Prioritizing rest is important to me, especially sleep hygiene. I was doing all the things, and I was doing it well. And life also be lifing and we need to slow down sometimes.

In the stillness do we take a step back and take an inventory of everything going on — around and within. This resting has made me reflective of the journey in gratitude in just wanting to return to the safety and meaning I’ve worked so hard to build and maintain. “She rose slowly.”

Rest can just mean rest when we learn to alchemize the pain and worry.

[I’m forgiving myself — in sickness and in health.]

If you don’t have an internal monologue that speaks to you in the most silly, endearing way, feel free to steal mine when you need it next: “B****, get your behind in bed and go rest!!! You need you tomorrow, so take care of yourself today!”

Signed,
Always Learning, Still Resting by @lexiemanion