62: Messy, Beautiful, and Real - Healing and Emotional Resilience Through Art with Susan Day

Sometimes words just aren’t enough. You can analyze, journal, and talk through your pain—but your body still remembers what your mind is trying to forget.

In this episode, Darla sits down with Mindful Arts Therapist Susan Day, who’s redefining what healing looks like through creativity, mindfulness, and play. Together they explore how art, movement, and even “messy expression” can help women process emotions, calm their nervous systems, and rebuild self-trust—without needing to say a word.

You’ll hear how coloring, painting, or crafting can unlock parts of yourself that talk therapy can’t reach, why “making mistakes” is essential to healing, and how art teaches us the most powerful lesson of all: you can keep working on it, and it’s still beautiful.

Susan also shares insights on women who’ve spent years being told they’re “too much”—why they often feel guilt or shame for standing out, and how creativity can help them reclaim peace, confidence, and a deeper sense of wholeness.

This episode is a reminder that healing isn’t supposed to look perfect. It’s supposed to be yours.

If you’re ready to stop shrinking, embrace your individuality, and discover new ways to feel whole again, this conversation will open a new doorway back to yourself.

Connect with Susan Day:

Website: https://mindfulartstherapy.com.au/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindfulartstherapy

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mindfulartstherapy/

Books: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHZ27ZPL

Connect with Darla Ridilla:

Book a free call: https://www.highvaluewoman.info/call

Website: https://www.highvaluewoman.info

Send me an email: highvaluewoman7@gmail.com

Sign up for newsletter: https://www.highvaluewoman.info/newsletter

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550835718631

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/highvaluewoman7/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HighValueWoman-m7w

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/highvaluewoman7/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darla-ridilla-3179b110/

Transcript

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (00:00)
My job really is to build emotional resilience. My job is to bring into my clients lives that ability to bounce back and develop coping strategies. And I tend to work, interestingly, I tend to work with pre-teens and teens and then older women. I don't really work so much with people in between. I'm happy to. it's, yeah, for me, building emotional resilience in pre-teens is...

horrendously important, and teenagers of course, because they've got the most extraordinary difficult hurdles ahead of them and they need to know that they will get over them, that they will bounce back and that there is something really good in life. And I think that's where a little bit of art can help you realise whether it's kind of like a crayon disaster or something that really really beautiful and resonates and speaks to you somewhere deeply inside.

Yeah, I think it can bring you that joy. And you can replicate that in other areas of your life.

Darla Ridilla (00:58)
Welcome to You Have the Power, the road to truth, freedom, and real connection. I'm Darla Radilla, a certified somatic trauma informed relationship coach for high achieving women who've been told they're too much. If you're exhausted from being the strong one in every room, if you're done second guessing yourself, and after every conversation, over explaining your needs or quietly carrying resentment in your most important relationships, you're not broken.

You're just stuck in a pattern that's no longer yours to carry. This podcast is your permission slip to break that cycle. demand self-abandonment, whether that's a partner, a parent, a boss, or even yourself. Because here's the truth, you're not too much. You're just accepting too little.

Each episode offers bold truth, nervous system tools, and radical strategies to help you reconnect to your voice, your worth, and your relationships on your terms.

If you're ready to stop settling and start living fully expressed, let's get started with today's topic.

Darla Ridilla (02:11)
Well, welcome everyone. have another guest today and I'm super excited to talk about this topic. It's something that I haven't dived into a lot. ⁓ But let's be honest, sometimes when we just talk to death about our issues, our obstacles, what we're healing from, ⁓ we feel like we're just analyzing, journaling and rehashing our story. And then our body is still saying, well,

I don't feel like this is resolved, right? And so we have a guest today that's really gonna talk about how we can help our nervous system to calm down, how we can process emotions, and we don't even have to say a word. So I would like to introduce Susan Day. She is a mindful art therapist, author, and app developer with a visionary approach to creative healing. Through her carefully designed art therapy activities, she empowers women.

neuro divergent people, and healthcare professionals to harness the transformative power of creativity in their practice. Susan believes that art, regardless of skill level, serves as a profound tool for navigating life's challenges, fostering emotional resilience, and reconnecting with one's true self. Susan, welcome to the podcast.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (03:30)
Thank you for having me. It's lovely to be here.

Darla Ridilla (03:32)
I would love before we dive into the questions, I'd love to hear a little bit of your story and how you got into doing our therapy.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (03:40)
It's a funny story. I've always been an artist. So I've always been drawn to art. like, and when one of those little girls spent a lot of time drawing, I used to write my, used to, I think I've got my first book I wrote when I was four and a half. Still got it. And I went into teaching, I tried to go into teaching, awful, long political story I won't go into at the moment, but I didn't get a position. But I kept up and I did tutoring and things like that.

And one lady ⁓ asked me to edit her thesis and he'd had been rejected by the university because of the English was so poor. So I said, yeah, sure, I'll do. And it was about art therapy. And it was one of those, I was like, this is a thing? You can do this for, I was like, what? It's just the most amazing experience I in my office on my own. Yeah, and I went into it. That was about eight years ago. ⁓

I've always been attracted to mindfulness and meditation. And the more I learned about art therapy, and the more I realized that the two, for me, the two go together. So I was sitting in a cafe and I thought, well, I've got to do something. I know I've got to do something about this information and this knowledge and these skills that I've got. And so I started mindful arts therapy. And it's arts with an S because we don't just paint and draw. We do all sorts of craft.

creative stuff like writing, like journaling, like you mentioned in your intro and even music. yeah, it all started with it. Yeah, like that was fun.

Darla Ridilla (05:12)
that's cool.

So I more art too than I think. I don't draw well. I did actually do a drawing class last fall and I had never done anything like it. I kind of surprised myself. It was actually a watercolors pencil class. And it was kind of fun. We were given a picture and tried to recreate it. And I, for a beginner, I felt like I did pretty good, but I'm kind of crafty too. Like I do cross stitching and sewing. So I never really considered that as part of that kind of therapy. Yeah.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (05:42)
Yes, yeah, yeah, it's part

of your ⁓ expression. It's part of your creativity. And I think women do it better than men, because the culture because women do crochet, they do so they do knit, typically older women. ⁓ And I think it's part of even though some women may not even be that aware of it, but it's going to be part of their healing as part of their emotional resilience building. It's part of

Darla Ridilla (05:48)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (06:11)
that ability to focus on something and forget the rest of the world for a few minutes or a few hours. that's a really ⁓ emotionally, that's a really healthy thing to do. Not rather, not so much escapism, but that focusing on that creativity and using all different parts of your brain.

Darla Ridilla (06:32)
You know what's interesting, and I hadn't thought about this in a long time, but I used to go to a support group ⁓ for people that had been in an abusive relationships. And they always provided pencils and crayons and adult coloring books, mostly shapes like diagrams. And now I understand why they did that. And I thought, I guess we're talking about very traumatic experience, mostly physical and sexual abuse. And a lot of the women just the whole time would just sit and just color.

And I'm sure if you want to explain that process a little bit, how does that work? mean, there's so much focus on talk therapy, but how is it that people can heal without even expressing it in words?

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (07:15)
It's really interesting, isn't it? science is really taking a really good look at this now. Obviously, art therapy doesn't replace talk therapy. It can work alongside it. In Australia, where I am at the moment, there's ⁓ a shortage of therapists, counsellors, and some of them have locked the doors. They don't take any new clients. There's all sorts of issues, particularly ⁓ after the pandemic. But you can use art therapy.

in the meantime, you can use it as well as, or you can use it on its own. It depends on your condition. So what, how it works is you, you know, we've been, as a species, we've been drawing on walls and caves for a millennium, you know, that's what we do. We, what happened today? I'm just going to scratch out this buffalo. know, ⁓ and it's really interesting, you know, you, you, you watched toddlers and they don't have any problem expressing themselves through art.

that unfortunately they tend to do it on the walls ⁓ or each other. ⁓ So yeah, but it's, it's fundamentally part of our humanity, I believe that. And I think what we watch, what we're seeing is the subconscious, I don't know where your subconscious is, but it's sort of screaming to be heard. And it doesn't work in words, it doesn't work in language. And also the other issue we have is that when you try to explain your trauma, particularly ⁓

Darla Ridilla (08:17)
Yes.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (08:44)
we don't have the words even adults don't really have the words to say this horrible thing happened to me. ⁓ But you can do it through art. You can do it, you don't have to be artistic. So when we're without therapy, we're not creating something you might have on the wall, we might even throw it away or rip it up when we're finished. We it's the process. It's the process of expression. It's the process of choosing a color.

what kind of marks you make on the paper, whether they're lines or circles, scribbles, ⁓ where you put that mark on the paper, whether it's at the top or the middle or the bottom or the sides, they're all significant. ⁓ Because it's your way your brain is expressing itself and through, you know, through research and through psychology, we're beginning more and more to understand how important this process is. So yeah, for those, those poor women in those circumstances,

Darla Ridilla (09:24)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (09:40)
just being able to pick up and again, we back to mindfulness that the feeling the feeling of the crayons or the pencils. So I might find working with someone who's very tense, ⁓ or somebody who's perhaps depressed, I might I might suggest we use paint. Because pain is beautiful. It's fluid. It's kind of the opposite of what they're feeling. So if someone's very on the other end, if they're very anxious, and they're very heightened, we might

Darla Ridilla (10:04)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (10:10)
use something like gel pens, you know, you know, gel pens that they have that beautiful finish to them, don't they? They just look, but you've got to do it slowly. You can't rush a gel pen, can you? You can't scribble with a gel pen. just goes so it's about like, it's about training the mind. I always begin my sessions with a guided meditation, which I develop around the theme of the session.

Darla Ridilla (10:24)
Right.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (10:37)
just to remind us to begin that deep breathing process as well. it's like it can be just a few marks on a paper, but underneath there's all this layer, there's all these things happening as well. And for those women in that center, that's a great opportunity to just sit there and look, you know, sometimes you just need to take your anger out, better to take it out on a crayon, piece of paper, than anywhere else.

Darla Ridilla (10:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, that is an absolutely great point.

You know, for those women who I work with women that have been told they're too much, they're very successful in their careers, but they are also, we tend to be extremely independent, very demanding and very outspoken. You what would you recommend to them to kind of use mindful arts as a way to relieve that stress?

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (11:36)
I love women like that. yeah, go, go. I love that. Just go for it. But the internalization of that, I suppose, and perhaps looking at maybe guilt. Why am I like this? ⁓ One thing your listeners might be interested in is that there's new research, it's only a couple of years old, and I've been looking at it with a client of mine, ⁓ that speaks to the fact that a lot of older women may be autistic in some

Darla Ridilla (11:38)
Yeah.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (12:06)
and that they haven't been diagnosed. So they may have ADHD. The lady I'm working with is 72 years old and has just received her diagnosis. She's always used art to and she says I've always tried and she said I'm not very good at it. So I'm like, well, you are but we won't go to that argument. Because you don't have to be good at it. Always use art to express her frustration. So again, with high powered women, this is what I'm

Darla Ridilla (12:27)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (12:33)
I'm sort of getting this idea that these are women that don't fit a mold that society has put for them. And they don't understand it. Society doesn't understand them in a way. ⁓ And, you know, so there's feelings of guilt, there may be feelings of shame. therapy can certainly help you dissolve those. ⁓ The meditation and the mindfulness can keep you centered and keep you much calm, as well as a lot. There's a lot of art therapy activities I've developed for that.

developing a sense of peace and calmness and being able to say what you need to say, but do it in a way that it can be heard, that it's not abrasive. Yeah, but yeah, it's really interesting. And I'm thinking, I'm sort of seeing, you know, a lot of people now looking at differently at a lot of older women and saying, you know, I think there's something there. I think it could be on the spectrum in some way. And I'm not.

I'm not sort of saying that, you know, I'm not sort of denouncing or trying to undermine the fact that there are people, severely autistic people, and I've worked with them. I've worked with those sorts of people and we have them in our family. I'm not saying that, I'm not trying to, you know, say that there's something, you know, ordinary about them or trying to take anything away from their condition. But I think there's something in that neurodivergent field, in that space that a lot of high-power women fit into, yeah.

Darla Ridilla (13:39)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (14:01)
and

Darla Ridilla (14:01)
You know, that's possible. Yeah. Yeah. And you do work with neurodivergent people a lot. Do you want to speak more to that? Yeah.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (14:07)
Yeah, yeah, I love,

I love it. I just love the fact that they don't fit in. Because what the rebel in me says, why should you fit in? You know, yeah, it's about you know, conforming is a horrible, can be horribly constrictive to your energy to your purpose in life. ⁓ I love people who celebrate their their own diversity, however that however that speaks to Yeah, to them.

Darla Ridilla (14:26)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (14:37)
I mean, my mother never understood me. And I'm 60. Yeah, she never got it. She never wanted to, you know, wanted to do this. Why don't you do that? And she asked my daughter, my daughter, I don't know. So it's, yeah, I just, I just think that these, it's an art therapy can really speak to people, because it allows you to make mistakes. It's meant to be messy.

Darla Ridilla (14:50)
Alright!

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (15:07)
You're not meant to, your work of your watercolour was probably beautiful, but I wouldn't call that art therapy. It was therapeutic in its sense. And you know, like talking to your girlfriends is therapeutic, but it's not really therapy, you know, in that sort of, it's stressful.

Darla Ridilla (15:16)
Yes, yes.

Right, right. I guess it

kind of sparked that creative thing. It actually, I didn't think I'd be able to do it. And there was this feeling of satisfaction, because I know you talk about art not having to necessarily meet a certain standard per se. I thought I did pretty good, but it was there was something peaceful. The room got very quiet. It was all women. I was probably the youngest one there. ⁓

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (15:44)
Thanks.

Darla Ridilla (15:49)
But then at the end, we were all comparing, not like, ⁓ you're so much better. It was more like, my god, that's so beautiful. But how people interpreted the original picture was interesting too. Everybody's was different.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (16:04)
Absolutely, yeah, and that's a beauty of art. I love that. just really, yeah, such a celebration of everyone's unit. You can get 20 people like to draw the same picture and it would be different in so many different ways. It would be amazing. ⁓ I took a group, a class at a local community house. I'm not sure we call them in the States. We call them neighborhood houses here. And ⁓ my rules were there were no sketching, right? And there was no erasers.

Darla Ridilla (16:07)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (16:33)
So if you made a mistake, you had to paint directly onto the paper or the canvas or draw, and ⁓ it just blew them. They just couldn't cope. lot of times, was just... When I'm sitting, we just wait till you leave the room and then we know what to do. But when I stopped sketching, when I stopped worrying about making a mistake, when I gave myself permission to just make marks on the paper and draw or do something, my creativity...

Darla Ridilla (16:42)
Hahaha

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (17:02)
and my art skills went through the roof because I suddenly let go of this idea that I had to sort of create a sketch that was perfect. And then from that, this beautiful artwork would develop. And sometimes it didn't. And I would get upset with that. And I've since learned what I do now is, and I've got a stack of drawings behind me, just paintings that I just do on bits of paper. And I just do whatever comes to my mind or whatever I like to do.

and I if it's wrong I just keep working at it so it's a wonderful metaphor for life isn't it if it's you just keep lying in the pain or so it's wonderful yeah no and I've learned to be messy so I can I can pretty much draw paint anything ⁓ sometimes I've got a cartoon behind me sometimes I do really realistic stuff sometimes I don't but it's

Darla Ridilla (17:39)
Mm-hmm.

I was thinking that, yeah, go ahead.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (18:02)
It's a sense of freedom that allows me, now that creativity and that release has allowed me to transfer those skills into other areas, including my business, including the nuts and bolts of bookkeeping and analytics and all that sort of really boring stuff. Sorry. That's right. But I can enjoy it now in a sense because I don't feel oppressed and I don't feel like.

Darla Ridilla (18:18)
The more, you know, left brain versus right brain, right?

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (18:30)
been constricted in some way that I've got this wonderful sense of relief. And I, you know, often when I, I offer, I'm offering at the moment a 15 minute free chat with people if they're interested in art therapy, we can get together and I can, you know, we can talk about what it can do for them. One of the things I do during those chats is I show people my art therapy journal. And it sometimes it just looks like a four year old has squibbled across the page because that's what I needed to do at the time. So yeah. ⁓

Darla Ridilla (19:00)
I love your your connection to it's okay to have art be messy and then that transfers to life because I was thinking about healing like whether it's trauma grief, whatever it is you're healing from it. I will always be on a healing journey myself. And and sometimes it's messy and sometimes it's clean. And that is a beautiful way to say it's okay. You can keep going. And you can keep working on it. I like how you say

you just keep working on it. And that is such a beautiful metaphor for whether it's narcissistic abuse, trauma, anything like that. Everything's gonna be different. Every day is different. Some days we have to keep moving forward. Some days we did it. We did it good. ⁓

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (19:44)
Yeah, yeah.

And it's tiny, like everything's baby steps. And, you know, to be honest, that's the best way to process any anything is in small increments. Yeah. And I was, I often, I mean, when I, my website has over 450 blog posts. And so when I started, it was all, it wasn't quite clinical and all, you know, my therapy does this and does that. But now I take inspiration from my clients and

was working with a young girl the other week and she said, said, how you feel about what you've done? You know, I was talking about feelings a lot. And she said, I don't know, it's just weird. And I took that and I thought about it. And I said, but it's good though. She went, yeah, it's good weird. So I think it was published this week or last week as this whole blog post, this whole article about how weird is good. How it's not, she's not conformed to.

Darla Ridilla (20:29)
Hahaha!

Mm-hmm.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (20:41)
what a picture should look like and I can't remember what it was about. And it was actually quite beautiful because we're talking about safe spaces and she'd drawn herself cocooned in her blanket on a bed and she was curled up. It was really beautiful. It was just in stick figures. It was just, and she'd gone, I don't know. And she'd done this, all this circling around herself, this circles of contemplative actions. And yeah, and I just thought that's just lovely. Art therapy is messy. It can be...

It's explorative and yeah, it just wierd It just can be wierd What's that? I don't know. It's wierd

Darla Ridilla (21:20)
If something you heard today spoke to you if you've ever been told you're too much yet you find yourself over giving, silencing yourself, or stuck in relationships that leave you drained. Listen closely. The truth is you're not too much. You're just accepting too little. Right now you're standing in a pattern that keeps repeating itself and what you actually want is wholeness. Relationships that feel mutual.

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In 30 minutes, we'll uncover the real patterns that are keeping you stuck and we'll map out your next step toward the connections you've been craving. No pressure, no pretense, just clarity, truth, and the freedom to choose yourself. Check the show notes and book your free call today.

Darla Ridilla (22:22)
Right. And it goes back to what you said about people not fitting in the mold and that's just so, ⁓ that speaks to me because I've never fit in. And, know, as, as I embrace that, you're right. As I embrace that more and more, I'm finding that my tribe is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And that was very, ⁓ upsetting at first. And I think just recently, very recently, I really just accepted that. Like that's okay. ⁓

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (22:30)
Me neither, hands up.

Yeah, it is,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Darla Ridilla (22:49)
There are other weird people like me out there that are just as nonconforming. ⁓ It's interesting with the nonconforming too because I say what's on my mind and shock people. Just last week, I was at a networking event and a lady asked me what I did and part of it is dating. I said, well, dating at midlife is like a shit show.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (22:52)
Yeah.

Darla Ridilla (23:13)
and the look of like, she said shit at a micro event, but that's how I am, you know, and it's the truth. It was almost kind of fun to see her reaction, you know, it's really, I love how you embrace that and you bring it out whether, you know, it's someone who's neurodivergent, who's not, it doesn't matter because all of us have individuality.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (23:19)
See you.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And yeah, and I love that honesty. I'd rather work with someone who was brutally honest with me than, you know, overly polite or even say, I mean, obviously we need to be courteous to each other, but I love that. Yeah, I love that approach. You I was married twice. I wasn't really very good at it. That's all I can say. just like, I give it a go. I tried it. No, not for me. Yeah.

Darla Ridilla (23:40)
Right.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And what do

you do with those clients who are just really intimidated by it? Like, gosh, I'm not creative. I don't think I can do this. How do you help them just to get started?

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (24:18)
it's just a matter of, anyone can do art therapy. There's a few myths that we try and debunk. ⁓ People think it's just for children and it's not. And people say, well, I'm not artistic. And I said, well, you don't need to be because we're not producing a piece of artwork. If you can hold a pen or a pencil, you can do art therapy. And sometimes it is just making a few marks on the page.

Darla Ridilla (24:38)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (24:43)
And I think it's really interesting because in this craft group, sort of art group that I was running at last year, because I've just moved away from the area, there were two gentlemen that in their, gosh, I think 50s or 60s. And I was curious about why they'd come. I didn't ask them straight up, but one gentleman just sat down and he had acquired brain injury. But he was very high functioning.

He was just so charming. I said, this is the activity. I said, he's like, and he just sat there very quietly. And I was sort of monitoring the quiet people more than the chatterboxes, because they're obviously processing stuff quite nicely. But it was lovely. And he just said, I haven't done this since I was a child. This is just amazing. I love it. I just love it.

And was just wonderful just to see this joy back in his face. And then he turned to me and he said, why don't they, why did they stop us doing art?

Darla Ridilla (25:48)
Good question.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (25:49)
good question. And I said, yeah, didn't. But there's a few, obviously, there's a few of us that just kept it up. But yeah, why did they stop us doing art? When you need to be creative, you need to solve all sorts of problems, whether they're political, scientific, engineering problems, engineers and scientists are the most creative people, because they get a problem and they're like, oh, we've got to fix it. We've got to find different ways to try and fix this. Yeah, so it's really

Darla Ridilla (25:55)
Mm-hmm.

You've inspired

me because I am looking for some more creativity in my life and I'm thinking maybe this is what I should do is get those art pencils, those pencils back out and get a sketchbook that's blank, not with the... we did sketch, we would trace and ⁓ just see what comes out for me.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (26:24)
Thank you. Yep.

Yeah, absolutely.

Darla Ridilla (26:34)
You do

have an app by the way, which I was gonna bring that up and this might be a perfect segue. I was thinking I should download your app because I know you have free options as well as some other additional options you wanna share about that?

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (26:45)
Yes.

Yeah, so the app was developed. When I first became an art therapist, it became clearly obvious that I was the only person that kind of got it. So one of the things I did was I wrote books, because I've written books before. So I understood the process of self publishing and how all that works. And I'm more graphic design orientated than artistic, if that makes any sense. So I love, like, I just love Canberra and that sort of stuff.

⁓ and I get it, you know, like people, it's interesting cause I was watching a show and they were taught and the maths person was talking about, like she goes through the supermarket and she does all the maths about, you know, how much, how much an item might be per ounce in Australia to grams. you know, like she'd go, no, that's, that's more, this one's more expensive. And the English person was talking about, well, I go on and look at all the grammar mistakes or, you know, how language is used in advertising. And I was like, well, I walked in and look at colors and, know, and look at how, how images.

Darla Ridilla (27:27)
Yeah. Yes.

Ha!

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (27:43)
words of place beside each other. ⁓ Yeah, so it's, you know, just an interesting way the way our brain works. you know, so started with the books and I thought, you know, people might want to hire an art therapist, they might, they might not get it. So for a $20 book, you can have a go, you know, so there's now I've got 10 books. Yeah. And then I thought that's, you know, you know, so socially, older people buy books, younger people don't.

So the app came into being. The app was one of the most painful experiences of entire life. Getting through the gatekeepers of Google and Apple ⁓ was, yeah, anyway, was horrendous, but not because there's anything wrong with my app, because they're so highly protective, which is a good thing. You know, you've got to, it took two to three weeks, I think, to get through the Google process. And you had to have, you have to like 20 people test it and you have to, it just,

Darla Ridilla (28:31)
Yeah.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (28:41)
This is whole process ago. ⁓ Apple actually sit down, somebody at Apple sits down and goes through every minute detail of the app and it got sent back and rejected like nine times in a row for tiny things that you wouldn't realize. Yeah. So when you open my app, there's a section that says, our guest. And that's because of Apple. It's cause they said the other one you have to log in. ⁓ which yeah, which was just really, I don't even know why we had that bit, but anyway, so yeah, it was like that,

Darla Ridilla (29:01)
okay.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (29:11)
It's the same sort of thing. You open up, there are nine categories that talk about different areas that you might want to work on, whether that's compassion, healing, calmness. And then within those are, there's 25 art therapy activities. To cover the cost, if you want to go up to the, there's a paid amount, which is about, I think it's $39 US, ⁓ to access all of the activities through that entire app. ⁓ But,

Yeah, it's, it was, it's just a really, it was really, really interesting and I learned a lot. I thought it would be a lot simpler than it was. ⁓ I've built websites and I did coding and I was like, this was just out of the ballpark for me. Though I developed the concept and the layout and all the art stuff and the content and then a team of people put together the actual, did the technical stuff. So yeah, but I'm really proud of it. It's available, but obviously I wouldn't gap.

for Android and Apple. ⁓ Yeah, and it's, it gives you again, it gives you a little bit of taste of what you could expect in an art therapy session. It's something you can just pull out of your pocket and access whenever you might feel the need to express yourself. Yeah.

Darla Ridilla (30:26)
I like that. You you just have it with you wherever you are, particularly like if you have someone who's a professional at their work. ⁓ that seemed to be where I got tested the most is when I had a job under someone else, you know, instead of going in a bathroom and crying, which I did many times, maybe you can just go, you know, go sit outside on the curb and let me go through this app and work through whatever topic today fits. Right. you know, you said that ⁓

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (30:36)
Yeah.

Darla Ridilla (30:51)
that art therapy can be used in conjunction with the traditional talk therapy. Where do they overlap and where do you think each has its own specific benefits?

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (31:06)
absolutely. That's a really good question. ⁓ For traditional talk therapy and psychologists, they will deal with the much higher end, more complex ⁓ mental health issues. So as an art therapist, I wouldn't solely work with somebody who was schizophrenic or bipolar, for example. ⁓ Although the activities themselves certainly would speak to that condition and their experiences. And the other...

often, mean, one of my new project the moment is working on a membership for healthcare professionals, where they can ⁓ access for monthly fee, they can access hundreds of therapy activities, guides, journals they can download for their clients, meditations, all that sort of stuff. And most of that's done, most of that content is done, it's just now getting it up on the website. ⁓ Because like you know, like you experienced, and you mentioned earlier, they do walk hand in hand.

There's a, and you'll notice with child psychologists, the first thing they do is they use play and they use art to settle and to build trust. Research is saying that it can take up to two years for you to trust your therapist. That's a lot of time. It's a long time and it's a lot of money. But art therapy can bypass that because you don't need to explain yourself. You don't need to introduce yourself.

Darla Ridilla (32:24)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (32:33)
Yeah. What that means for me as a therapist is the sessions are very, quiet. And I'm a bit of a chatterbox. ⁓ I've really over the years, I've really had to learn to shh myself. So I will actually have I do a lot of my sessions in person online now. And so what I will do is I will actually have pens here pencils and I will ⁓ doodle I will be just but I'm listening and I'm sort of

I'm sort of present, but it stops me from being distracted, I suppose. And it keeps me more centered to work, ⁓ know, yeah, just something. Just to do a little bit while my client's working on their piece. And then I check in every few minutes to see how they're going. Well, maybe every five or 10 minutes because it's important not to interrupt the flow as well.

Darla Ridilla (33:27)
It's beautiful how you just covered like most of the questions that I had written. And I know there's so much more that we haven't tapped into.

What are some additional benefits or what are some things that I haven't asked you that I should be asking you because you know this art therapy and how it works way better than me. So what would the audience benefit from?

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (33:49)
I like you explaining with your watercolour is this sense of joy. This sense and joy isn't just a distraction. isn't just feeling happy until the sadness returns. Joy is empowering. Being feeling a sense of accomplishment of happiness can help you overcome your present emotional state.

Darla Ridilla (33:52)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (34:14)
My job really is to build emotional resilience. My job is to bring into my clients lives that ability to bounce back and develop coping strategies. And I tend to work, interestingly, I tend to work with pre-teens and teens and then older women. I don't really work so much with people in between. I'm happy to. it's, yeah, for me, building emotional resilience in pre-teens is...

horrendously important, ⁓ and teenagers of course, ⁓ because they've got the most extraordinary difficult hurdles ahead of them and they need to know that they will get over them, that they will bounce back and that there is something really good in life. And I think that's where a little bit of art can help you realise whether it's kind of like a crayon disaster or something that really really beautiful and resonates and speaks to you somewhere deeply inside.

Yeah, I think it can bring you that joy. And you can replicate that in other areas of your life. And I think that's the real power that you perhaps don't get, like we were talking about the difference between art therapy and talk therapy, is you don't kind of get that with counsellors. You know, don't, you know, I mean, I like going to counselling because I just sit and talk for an hour and complain about everything. And yeah, and but

Darla Ridilla (35:35)
Right?

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (35:41)
I, but there is a point where I think you can, ⁓ it doesn't, you can only talk for so long about something. And depending on your therapist, your counselling and on their ability to connect and listen, know, listening is a really valuable skill in this space. ⁓ Depends on how much further you can go with that. But you don't need to do any of that without therapy. You can sit in a room, we can do it on, we do it online.

Darla Ridilla (35:49)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (36:07)
And you know, I'll suggest something and we'll work through and you know, I craft every session for whoever I'm speaking to, like I said, and even the guided meditations are crafted and for that theme for whatever we're looking at, whether it's a sense of identity, like who are we? As older women, who are we? You know, maybe we're not mothers, you know, the kids might have left home, maybe we're now grandmothers. Well, what does that mean? You know, where do we fit in in that parenting role?

You know, where do we fit in in the workspace? We're not often welcome in the workspace, in the career space. And that's really sad. I find that really, really sad. And I've worked with women who are going through menopause and they're changing, obviously physically, but emotionally they're changing and the workspace doesn't leave room for them. At all. No, yeah, at all. Yeah. So

Darla Ridilla (37:02)
That's a great point.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (37:05)
know, there's a tolerance of, there's a very low tolerance, I think, of people who are adjusting, who are coping with psychological changes, but also our expectations of women seem to be much higher than they might be perhaps for men in the corporate world. And so how do women cope? How do women try to adjust and, yeah, keep the jobs and keep their families?

Darla Ridilla (37:33)
Yeah, I think the expectations are higher. And also I feel like when I was in corporate that I had to prove myself all the time. I actually had to work harder than the men had to be louder, had to be brasher because they would push me around. I I worked with C level executives and many of them were wonderful, but a lot of them had a chip on their shoulder and they saw women as the help. It like, do you understand that you travel three quarters of the time and I run this off?

Do you get that? But they don't. And as women, that's a very stressful place to be. ⁓ particularly if they're a single parent or they're the breadwinner or whatever that is, I love that you offer this creative outlet for that stress to go somewhere. Because if it doesn't, you either get a health condition or you just mentally lose it.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (38:30)
Absolutely.

And it's about and it's also apart apart from the stress relief, it's about valuing who you are. And who you are where you are now. Not not people's perceptions of you not who you were yesterday or last year or when you were 20. You know, for older women, it's about that where am I who and what values do I have? And my gosh, you have a lot of values in the corporate world in your home. You have a lot of values. And a lot of things that if you weren't there, things would really you know,

Darla Ridilla (38:37)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (38:59)
literally hit the fan and things that go crazy. ⁓ And it's about recognising that you have these values. And also, you know, with the therapy that I've done, you can, you can learn to shut off the people you look, look, and perhaps, you know, one of things I like to do is perhaps come from a place of compassion towards those people as well, which again, alleviates it, it takes away that, that if you like the barbs or the

you know, the claws in the relay in that sort of situation that are very disturbing. it's a re shifting a reframing of a situation like you said, you can't get out of for whatever reason. And maybe you don't want to, you know, stand is Yeah, yeah. But you need to. Absolutely. Yeah.

Darla Ridilla (39:46)
Yeah, for lot of with them, they've, yeah, they worked hard to get where they are. And to walk

away. Some don't want to walk away from that, because that's, that was their goal. And they, you know, while it's uncomfortable, and it's stressful, it's also, in a strange way, what brings them joy, it brings stress, but it brings joy at the same time. For sure. Were you gonna say something else? Yeah.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (40:07)
Yes, absolutely. No,

no, that's great. Now it's just that empowerment, isn't it? And being able to, I suppose, sit well with it, to make it sit with you and to say, look what I've done despite the odds that I've encountered. also, and it sounds like, well, how can art help that? And it really does. It's really quite interesting, again, because we can bypass that part of our brain that needs to turn to the...

turn these issues into language and we can just use colors and materials like paints or pencils to express how it comes out. And you're like, yeah, I see now. I see where my relationship is with this person. Yeah, it's really, really interesting.

Darla Ridilla (40:52)
You know, to what comes to mind, well, it's not art. When I moved into my apartment a few months ago, I ordered, you know, one of those, I didn't want to spend a large amount of money on a piece of furniture. wanted a buffet, a long buffet along the wall. And so instead I ordered one that you assemble. Well, being a single woman, I used to, when I was married, I'd always ask the guy, and you guys love doing that stuff. They're really good. And it's huge. I mean, it's probably like,

four feet long and has, you know, drawers and, you know, and shelves and glass doors. And it was like a 50 pound box and I open it and there's pieces everywhere. And I'm like, my gosh, how am I going to assemble this by myself? And what I decided to do is get out the instructions and not focus on the big task, like the size of it. Like I'm going to focus on the next step.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (41:50)
Absolutely, yes, exactly.

Darla Ridilla (41:51)
It took me three days, three days to do it.

But the sense of accomplishment of I made this and I'm posting it on my personal page like, look what I did. But I know it's not art, but I think there is a similarity of I didn't think I could do this. Okay. Right.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (41:57)
Yes.

it is art. Yeah. Absolutely. reckon, yeah.

I mean, I've always been independent and always done things like that. And I, ⁓ yeah, I've done that and come up and like the last bit doesn't fit in because you didn't do the second bit properly. you know, 150 steps later, you're like, what does this bit work? And to go back and redo it will just sort of not fit into place. ⁓ But yeah, there's an art to that. There's certainly, and...

My son is that he'll look at, he could look at all those pieces and see them. I'm like you, I sort of went dead inside. And he has this spatial intelligence. He will look at all the pieces and in his mind, he can see it all put together. And he'll go, no, that bit doesn't go. And I said, I'm, you know, I've walked with him. And I'm walking around the instructions, he's going, yeah, no, no, we're good with you.

Darla Ridilla (42:46)
Yeah, like what have I done?

Mm-hmm.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (43:06)
together. Yeah. So yeah, I love that. I love that. That's, know, and that's such a wonderful sense of accomplishment. Yeah.

Darla Ridilla (43:07)
Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, every time I look at it every morning, it's my Keurig sits on it and I make my coffee. I'm like, yeah.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (43:19)
you

Darla Ridilla (43:23)
⁓ you know, what haven't I asked you that you want to share?

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (43:29)
⁓ gosh, think, ⁓ that's a really good question. ⁓ I would just encourage people to use their art and to celebrate those moments like you just did then. ⁓ you know, with art therapy, we can go quite deep. We look at, you know, all sorts of, ⁓ we look at ourselves and we work on our emotions. And I suppose it's the beginning process is that developing a self-awareness.

So what am I feeling now? Why am I feeling that? And accepting that it's okay to feel angry or upset or jealous. Okay, that's okay. How you behave is, you know, that's a different question. That's a different area. But yeah, I would encourage people to begin that self-awareness. And ⁓ once you begin that, you work on ⁓ emotional regulation. And which...

Darla Ridilla (44:14)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (44:26)
as women, think we're extremely good at, particularly older women, yeah. But also in how you can use that to empower and enhance your life, make it better.

Darla Ridilla (44:29)
Mm-hmm.

I love that. If people are just like really interested in what you do and they want to work with you or just take a look at your website, where can they find you?

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (44:48)
it's mindful arts therapy, arts with an S dot com. I have a logo which is a colored bird that's flying up which kind of represents that beginning that sort of sense of developing your freedom and empowerment. You pretty much find that on every social somewhere. So it's just here at mindful arts therapy. Yeah, Susan Day, my books are on Amazon. I think because there's so many books on Amazon, you'll need to search mindful arts therapy by Susan Day. ⁓ But yeah, yeah, and reach out if you want to have a chat.

three fifteen minutes put the kettle on. I love cake. Can't share cake online but I really love cake. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Darla Ridilla (45:22)
Have a virtual cake and coffee or tea, right? ⁓ We will definitely put those links in the show notes as well. So it'll make it easier for people to find you. Yeah, it has

been a pleasure. I've really enjoyed this conversation. And, you know, it's just it can be relevant to anything that anyone is going through, or just just general, you know, everyday stress relief and fun. So thank you so much.

Susan Day Mindful Arts Therapy (45:49)
Absolutely. Well, my pleasure. Thank

you for having me. So much fun.

Darla Ridilla (45:54)
Absolutely, and to my listeners, you have the power.

Darla Ridilla (46:00)
Thank you for listening to You Have the Power, the road to truth, freedom, and real connection. If you're a high performing woman who wants deeper love, real connection, and relationships that meet you at your level, but behind closed doors, you feel like you're always the one who's holding it together. If you've done the therapy, read the books, but still find yourself shrinking to keep the peace, you're over giving to feel valued, or questioning your worth when someone pulls away, you're not too much.

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