Dis-Self Portraits: The Psyche of Trauma
This series expresses my interior world, staged and guided by my woman’s identification with entrenched brain altering memories of chronic adverse childhood and teen experiences that changed my emotional responses in adulthood.
The self of a woman is a constructed identity that regularly is not chosen but rather forced upon her by familial and cultural forms. Her personality brews in a medium that is influenced by her caregivers and the atmosphere of home. Her developing identity will healthily grow and integrate if there are injections of consistent encouragement, attention, affection, security, and autonomy. When there are not enough good foundational experiences and if she is exposed to violence, rejection, abandonment, neglect or abuse, she will need to form defence mechanisms to compensate for an overloaded emotional limbic system.