Without following a prompt, my fourth comic (Figures 15 and 16) explored two challenging situations at placement that seemed ‘not connected or related’ at first. However, during the process I discovered a common theme about time: my ‘feel[ing] pressured by the school to help “save time” for my colleagues, the demands of “time” as a trainee art therapist and how people rarely have time for [the students]’ at school. I even felt an urge to expand into an extra page (Figure 16) to create more space, which helped me realise the importance of holding space and keeping time for the students as trainee therapist.

Data analysis: Harvesting themes

Comic as containment

The comics became containers for psychological content before I started processing them on a conscious level. As I inked the lines of the comics to finalise my artworks, I noticed I was ‘externalising my thoughts and feelings’ about the situation. I reported an improvement in mood after each session: I began the sessions feeling ‘anxious’, ‘overwhelmed’, ‘exhausted’, or ‘frustrated’, and became ‘calmer’ and ‘felt lighter’ after ‘having put [the thoughts and feelings] down on paper’.

Reflective space

Every comics-making session felt reflective, and encouraging of cognitive processes. When I created the drafts of my comics, I began by scribbling my ‘initial thoughts surrounding a situation or feeling that stood out to me during my placement week’. Fresh ideas surfaced during this stage, such as ‘how to deal with a tricky situation at hand’, and ‘new perspectives to understand growing therapist self’. Every session involved ‘making sense of’ and ‘creating new ways of seeing’ existing circumstances. They became important check-ins with how I was feeling, and I felt an ‘increased emotional self-awareness’ after these four sessions.

Highlighting the comical

Surprisingly, I found myself adopting a storytelling tone in these comics that is ‘more comical’ than my usual artwork in other mediums. The exaggerated facial expressions and punchlines in the comics ‘brought a sense of humour’ to my experiences. Representing my colleagues and myself as animal characters introduced absurdity and lightness into situations that previously caused frustration for me. My increased awareness of the humorous parts of these experiences brought a positive shift in how I understood my placement.

Archetypes and individuation

A notable archetype of the apprentice surfaced over these four sessions, which merged with the appearance of ‘magical girl genre’ motifs in Sessions 3 and 4. The emergence of this motif was a significant turning point that led to more confidence in my trainee art therapist self. While remembering the stories connected to these archetypes, I became comforted by the universal story of a hero character who keeps trying ‘in the face of challenges and adversity’.

Making the comics helped me become aware of, and connect to, the power behind the apprentice archetype and the narrative of learning. Exploring my placement experience led to ‘more direction’, ‘a sense of grounded-ness’, and ‘increased confidence’ in my trainee art therapist self. The process assisted my creative problem-solving, which resulted in newfound ways of practising art therapy. The sessions cultivated a more ‘gentle’ and ‘compassionate’ self-regard for my ‘growing student self’, who is still on the journey of ‘becoming a good (enough) art therapist’.  

Re-storying

Comics-making ‘encouraged a retelling of situations’, and the sessions were ‘healing’ and ‘transformative’. For example, Session 1 turned the disappointment in my performance into a discovery of the need for patience. I realised that the situation was not caused by my inadequacy. Instead, it was an occurrence in the therapeutic process that I need to learn to respond to.

The creative power from the second session even extended beyond my comics and led to direct action at the high school. Creating the comic led to my request for a meeting with the headmaster about possibilities to stay on next year – an action I had been postponing due to my fear of confrontation. However, this comic became a wake-up call that ‘encouraged advocacy and support[ed] action at placement’.

Discussion

The results of my inquiry show that comics creation can provide a space for synthesising art therapy and narrative therapy techniques, which aligns with existing literature on the therapeutic benefits of comics-making. My research comics created a container to externalise psychological content from the placement experience, to reflect and process the material that was formative to self-stories related to my trainee art therapist self, and in the process, transform my story and my growing artist-therapist self.

Across history, peoples have used storytelling to restore emotional and relational balance (Malchiodi, 2019). Narrative therapy achieves this through identifying, externalising, and deconstructing ‘problem stories’ – dominant problem narratives we have about ourselves and others that influence how we interpret certain situations and experiences in unhelpful ways (White & Epston, 1990). When we challenge these problem stories through identifying other stories, transformation and healing happen. A narrative therapy approach to comics can be adapted to construct a living experiential reality where clients gain insight and create cognitive shifts in their perceptions of their lives (España et al., 2024; Phang, 2023). Narrative art therapy encourages the comic artist to organise and recontextualise their sequential art narratives, and in the process, externalise and deconstruct problems they are facing, and discover their own hidden strengths (Khan, 2021).

Making these autobiographical comics led to the re-storying of my student placement experience as an art-therapist-to-be, growing from an ‘anxious’ art therapy student who was not confident in their abilities and who felt ‘not good enough’, into an art therapy student who was ‘more confident’ and ‘patient with [their] own becoming’. This process was facilitated by affordances unique to the art of comics-making:

1. The multimodal nature of the medium provided varied ways of self-expression (Lucas-Falk & Hyland-Moon, 2010), and comics (the process of their creation and the final products) offered a container for externalising psychological content onto the comic pages (Duff, 2024; Hagert, 2017; Mulholland, 2004), from which the problem story emerged.

2. The medium’s encouragement of humorous and cognitive engagement with my experiences helped me re-evaluate internalised self-stories (Duff, 2024; Fernandez & Lina, 2020; Heath, 2000; Khan, 2021).

3. The archetypes within the comics-making tradition assisted me in considering alternative retellings of my story (Bell, 2022; Mulholland, 2004).

4. The repetitive and immersive nature of creating my story through comics was useful in integrating new stories into my being (Hinz, 2009).

Together, these properties facilitated the re-storying process unfolding within my research comics – allowing the problem story of not being good enough to be dialogued with and transformed into an emerging story of gentle becoming.

Telling the problem story: ‘I am not good enough’

During the comics-making process, the problem story can be drawn and externalised from the self in visceral and concrete ways. My comics-drafting stage was akin to the practice of expressive writing. This method, developed by Pennebaker, has the potential to help writers bear witness to their experiences of trauma, find creative connections, and increase introspection (Pennebaker & Chung, 2007). The draft comic pages became initial containers for unprocessed internal content: I could lay down all memories, thoughts, and feelings in the safe hands of these non-judgemental pages before processing these experiences. The psychological material was then available as visuals and text on paper, which I arranged and rearranged to form ideas for the final comic.

Art therapists have explored the various ways the drawn border on a page (Riley, 1999) and comics (Hagert, 2017; Mulholland, 2004) can serve as containers for holding our symbolic images, storied lives, and inner psychological experiences. Experimental cartoonist and art therapist Malcy Duff (2024) proposes that the ‘gutters’ (the space between the comic frames) made room for imagination and containment. The gutters in comics provide structure to hold the story, whilst simultaneously offering moments of in-between spaciousness that support arising unconscious material – the untold stories, emotions and responses. As containers of internal content, my comics became a device to confront experiences and emotions in a safe and manageable way.

This medium encouraged externalising personal experiences that I would otherwise feel reluctant to expose, including ‘deeply embarrassing’ moments at placement. The stylisation of reality in comics supported an exploration of heavier topics, because the content felt less confronting when expressed in comic form (McCloud, 1993). The comic strip consists of bordered panels, pictures, and words that combine to construct a narrative sequence – it engages in storytelling as healing through a diverse range of modalities (Lucas-Falk & Hyland-Moon, 2010). The medium comes with a wide set of vocabulary that incorporates text and symbols to denote different emotions. These shortcuts expanded my toolbox for self-expression, helping me depict my reflections surrounding the placement experience. For example, I could express emotions of ‘uncertainty’ and ‘uncontained thoughts and emotions’ through the ‘lack of frames’ and ‘blurring of boundaries’ in the first panel of my third comic (Figure 14), before I had the words to describe how I felt.

From the data, a problem story appeared: my inner critic’s narrative of being ‘not good enough’ as a trainee. It was revealed how often I struggled with my impostor syndrome during my placement, feeling overwhelmed by insecurities and confused about forming my art therapy practice and identity. Externalising the problem story through comics allowed me to separate my clients’ struggles from my own. I considered the possibilities of unhealed wounds from the teenage part of me, and the way I might be vicariously experiencing the peer pressure and judgement amongst my adolescent clients. Therapists can experience vicarious trauma when they internalise the trauma narratives of others, which can negatively impact their well-being (Kang & Yang, 2022). I recognised my feelings as partially a result of vicarious trauma (internalising my clients’ self-stories), and an experience of countertransference where I felt helpless in the face of my clients’ challenges. Understanding my insecurities about the seriousness of my work as a trainee art therapist in a school through the lens of countertransference, I also realised the way my student-clients’ issues in life may often be seen as ‘not serious enough’.

Retelling the story: ‘I just need time to grow’

As an art therapy trainee struggling with impostor syndrome and an artist moving through burnout, I was on a path to heal, to learn, and to re-/build a new identity as artist-therapist. Drawing myself and my experiences into stylised comics had a distancing effect that was optimal for processing and re-storying. During the process, I was encouraged to consider alternative ways to tell the story of my trainee art therapist self.

Practicum training can be challenging for art therapy students (Jue & Kim, 2023), and the use of humour in comics encourages an alternative retelling of experiences that seem especially difficult. My comics’ comedic focus created a playful atmosphere for my life stories. This lighter atmosphere invited my regression and openness to exploration during the art-making, complementing other simultaneous creative processes. Art therapist Wende Heath (2000) created comics about the funny moments in her journey of battling cancer and undergoing operations and radiation. Her comics led to an increased awareness of the humorous moments in an otherwise dreary experience and expanded her readiness for positive events to happen. Like Heath, I began to view my challenges in a more light-hearted way, which shifted my understanding of the placement experience to become more positive, and improved my performance as a trainee art therapist.

The narrative construction stage of making comics encourages comic artists to take a reflective distance from their internal and external states, due to its strong demand for engagement with the cognitive dimension in the Expressive Therapies Continuum (ETC) (Hinz, 2009). The ETC describes the different information that is processed and attained by our nervous systems from our physical self, emotional self, and intellectual self during the creative process. The information is then compiled to generate adequate responses to the situation at hand. Instead of simply re-experiencing feelings and events, the comic artist has to observe the psychological content within their minds and make stylistic and creative choices about how to depict these experiences on paper (McCloud, 1993). Making comics involves constructing sequenced panels and a narrative through drawing, which provides a reflective distance that can be used for restructuring schemas and changing patterns of behaviour (Duff, 2024; Fernandez & Lina, 2020; Khan, 2021). While making the research comics, I could examine my thoughts, feelings, and experiences from afar: “Does this make sense? Is this the only way to understand my story?”

In comics, multiple perspectives and concurrent stories can exist within the same page (McCloud, 1993). For example, in my Session 3 comic, I could juxtapose my anxiety-filled inner dialogue as a trainee with my subsequent response that was filled with hope and self-compassion (Figure 14). Upon reflection, I noticed familiar visitors in the second panel of this comic: the floral and pensive figures from my supervision art (Figure 11) had transformed into my magical girl alter ego (Figure 14), alongside concepts of self-compassion and art therapist becoming. Here, another voice, more compassionate and patient, spoke up in response to my critical voice in the first panel. Within this same comic, I also documented my past self and present self, while drawing my future self into existence, depicting a non-linear unfolding of my various selves and states of being. Through dialoguing with my inner selves and stories in comics, I understood what Rubin (2016) meant when she wrote about art therapists as continuously becoming.

Gysin (2020) links the process of making comics with the narrative therapy approach of retelling. In narrative therapy, performing stories can highlight often-overlooked moments when we defied the dominant problem stories in our lives – these important instances of resourcefulness, resistance, or resilience become starting points from which we can forge new ways to story our lives (White & Epston, 1990). Through the externalised story in my comics, I understood the protective function of my inner judgemental part. I realised the internal critic was trying to keep me safe after the burnout by staying hyper-vigilant: if I performed perfectly, I would not be singled out as ‘not good enough’ and subjected to the shame and distress that previously led to my burnout. My comics allowed alternative voices that contradicted the critic’s fears to surface: “Other students struggle too, experienced therapists work with uncertainties daily, and leaning into the discomfort of unknowing is part of the process of becoming an art therapist. (In the meantime, why not have a good laugh?)” Presented with other perspectives and information, my inner critic softened. Making these comics was an act of transformative performance, where I created conditions for self-kindness and stories of enough-ness to grow in my inner landscape.

Through fostering light-hearted and reflective engagement with my experiences, comics helped me to complicate the world in which the problem story lived and challenge the existence of one singular dominant story. A story of growth and learning to be patient unfolded in the data comics: learning to be patient with the process, with my clients, and with myself. Instead of ‘not [being] good enough’, I ‘just need[ed] time to grow’.

Integration and becoming

Comics-making provides a space for the integration of new self-stories, during which the process of individuation can be supported, allowing for the emergence of self.

In Jungian psychology, individuation is a journey of reconciling with the different aspects of yourself – a path to becoming more you (Mayes, 2020). Comics-making facilitates the process of individuation through connecting the creator with universal archetypes that have been depicted in the medium throughout the history of comics (Bell, 2022). When we consciously relate to archetypal patterns within us, we can tap into the transformative powers of the archetypes and increase understanding of our true self as individuals (Carp, 1998, as cited in Bell, 2022). After creating their comic alter ego, the artist can express themselves through their comic counterparts freely, without the usual confines of real life (Bell, 2024). Using comics, the artist’s self can surface during the creation of a character (Bell, 2022). As he grew up, Mulholland (2004) created comics to make sense of different life problems he was experiencing. In the safety of the comic world, Mulholland explored his own growth through his character’s journey. The character’s storyline became a tangible way to explore conflicts and resolutions in the comic artist’s life, as he grew and became more him (Mulholland, 2004).

My four sessions of making comics assisted the emergence of my trainee art therapist self. In many stories, the apprentice is an archetypal hero who has to overcome multiple obstacles in their journey to master their craft. Through my student character, I was free to imagine what an ideal art therapist would look like or envision myself as a magical girl with superpowers. This process fostered the formation of my professional identity, led to more kindness and patience towards my trainee art therapist self, and increased insight into how to continue my ongoing becoming. This connection to the apprentice helped me reframe my experiences as ones commonly experienced by art therapy trainees on placement (Jue & Kim, 2023), which lessened my feelings of isolation and emboldened me to ‘change the story’ in real life. In creating these comics, I was working through my own insecurities as an art therapy student and modelling the process of individuation for the student-clients I worked with as well. Here, I consider how my comics helped me connect with my feelings towards the imperfections of the placement system, boosted my confidence in my trainee art therapist self, and fuelled my bravery to negotiate for more post-graduation security. When I realised that this was not only my story, but the story of a wider collective of art therapy students, I became moved to advocate for myself at my placement setting, rewriting the story beyond my comic pages.

Within the comic, I found a space to safely alter the narrative in ways that strengthened my sense of self; I was able to synthesise my external reality and my inner world to enable my becoming, which happens when one is connected to the creative dimension in the ETC (Hinz, 2009). Through making comics, I could revisit challenging experiences safely and freely, rediscover my own sense of agency, and expand my capacity for growth and resilience (Malchiodi, 2021; Oostdijk, 2018). Making comics helped me tap into the creative dimension, which supported my integration of new patterns of information-response generation (Hinz, 2009). When we tap into the creative dimension, we tap into the potential of integration: we strengthen bonds between the information in our nervous systems and the achievement of our goals (Hinz, 2009).

Making the placement comics provided a different experience to me compared to my supervision artwork. The comics stood out due to their long-lasting impacts on my well-being, and I became a much more confident artist and trainee therapist from the experience. The process of creating my final draft of each comic, and the subsequent inking of the drafted comics, became an experience through which new self-stories could be processed, made sense of, and integrated into my own being. This process of reflection and creative problem-solving related to my placement experience continued when I revisited the comics as a reader-researcher. After graduation, I continued finding new ways of understanding these comics and this research through reading and experiencing the stories again.

Completing the comics brought about a sense of accomplishment and improved self-esteem (Lucas-Falk & Hyland-Moon, 2010; Tjasink et al., 2023), which helped me heal from burnout. The finished comics became tangible proof that I could still create stories, and that my planned creative projects could end in satisfaction and accomplishment, rather than depletion and failure. Reclaiming my creative agency through comics helped rebuild confidence in myself as a storyteller and artist, and I practised becoming more compassionate towards myself through the process of creating and reading the comics.

In my internal landscape, my comics created a safe corner for other parts of myself to surface: the compassionate witness, the curious learner, the artist who loved telling stories... These voices challenged my inner critic and diversified the stories that narrate my life. My artist-therapist self emerged from my comics believing that ‘I am good enough. I can provide the art therapy that my clients need. I can make art I am proud of. I am not perfect, but this means that I have time to grow and become more me’.

Through the creation of these research comics, I connected to my trainee art therapist self and growing artist–therapist self through the student archetype and tapping into the creative dimension. This integration of my new story of patience and growth reinforced a gentle self-compassion towards my own artist–therapist becoming.

Comics as transitional objects

As I engaged in a final art-making session responding to my research, one last theme surfaced: comics as transitional objects (Figures 17, 18 and 19). Transitional objects are special items that help children feel secure as they begin to explore the world, keeping them company as they navigate between dependence and independence (Winnicott, 1971). Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott (1971) theorised that, when infants discover and take ownership of a transitional object, they find comfort and develop autonomy during the process of individuation, as they spend increasingly more time away from their primary caretaker. These transitional objects are often the child’s first ‘not-me’ possession, the first object in their lives that they can control and manipulate through the realm of imagination and physical interaction; the objects are also an extension of the child (‘me’), a part of their possession and their identity.

While Winnicott never wrote about the use of comics as transitional objects, he reached out to Peanuts creator Charles Schultz, seeking permission to use Linus and his security blanket to explain his theory of transitional objects (Caldwell et al., 2017). Like Linus’s blanket, my research comics held me through moments of transition and growth, offering continuity and grounding while I navigated uncertain terrains during training.