How mental health professionals in Flagstaff are working through their challenging jobs

A black cat is photographed against a bold-red field. Over the dressing room is a pastel painting of a barn quilt block, interrupted by the silhouette of a raven on a square canvas. Rays of light peak out from behind a mountain’s peak in a pencil drawing — made graphic by black sharpie on a white background. Behind a stack of sweaters is a piece of pottery, and above the register, an orange person with a mushroom cap head sits surrounded by tiny white flowers.

What binds the pieces together is their purpose — not for the viewers, but for the artists.

Rainbow’s End is showing work created by Flagstaff mental health professionals. Counselors and social service providers, who in tending to the mental and emotional needs of others, need ways to cope with pressure themselves.

The show is the “brainchild” of Sirene-Rose Lipschutz, the Crisis Clinical Manager at Terros Health.

She’s got two kids, is currently studying for her PhD and is in charge of two crisis response centers in Flagstaff.

“I couldn’t do it without going home at night and painting or sculpting,” Lipschutz said. “For me personally, I do a lot of art, incessantly to make myself feel better. I dabble in all kinds of things and just get on these kicks of things that make me feel really good. Ninety-nine percent of what I do isn’t topically related to mental health or anything specific. I paint flowers and I make little mythical creatures out of clay. Things that are fun and light. I use a lot of color.”

The art show celebrates the coping strategies of people who often work behind closed doors, or in the background of a world rendered more severe and challenging by COVID-19.

“In COVID you’re in a persistent state of flux. A state of not knowing. That is not sustainable for the human brain,” she explained. “We’ve had to just keep going in this state. Some people have the tools they need and the coping skills to get through that, but even some of the most resilient, grittiest folks have crumbled, at least at times. We all have hit bottom at least temporarily during COVID. So much research has come out of the pandemic about burnout.”

Lipschutz started to notice that Terros was being asked more and more often to provide support for mental health professionals during the pandemic — combating burnout.

“Suddenly I’m at a session with my own therapist and I felt the need to ask how she was doing. It’s not super common to be able to ask your therapist that and have them answer, ‘I’m struggling,’” she said. She also explained that the authenticity it takes for a counselor or therapist to talk about their own struggles is vital.

Self-care and art practices are key to maintaining some of that authenticity.

“If I want to show up as myself, I need to take care of myself. I believe that mental health work needs authenticity and it needs the individuals who are doing the work to be themselves,” said Deidre Hayes, a licensed professional counselor at Flagstaff Counseling Center. “If I don’t have balance, I will fall apart. Self-care is essential.”

Hayes has always gravitated toward jobs through which she could support others, from career work at the Guidance Center and Child and Family Support Services, to an earlier job working as a caregiver for children with disabilities. In those roles, Hayes has come face to face with trauma and had to cope with hearing about and supporting people through their darkest hours — on a daily basis.

“I had a breakdown at one point because I wasn’t taking care of myself. I crumbled to the floor and was like, ‘Nothing is working!’” Hayes said. “It’s an everyday thing to say, ‘What am I doing today that’s going to feed my soul, release the tension in my body, give my brain a rest?’”

Now, she paints. She sculpts. Most often, Hayes writes poetry. Whatever the medium, she says art has become a way for her to add variety and relaxation to her life.

“For me with COVID sometimes it was just the lack of novelty, for at least two years of our lives. It wasn’t that my client’s stuff was too big for me, or that my stuff was too big for me, it was just I heard it for eight hours a day and then I felt it for 24 hours a day,” Hayes said. “Sometimes when we’re in burnout, it’s because we’re experiencing something similar and it’s just too overwhelming and we don’t have anything different to turn to. Art can be that thing. A different type of meditation, a different type of exercise. Any novelty to the brain. I think art is one of the easiest ways to do that because there are so many mediums.”

Hayes has found art to offer enough benefits in her personal life, that she’s introduced it to her professional practice.

“I have tattoo pens, so when people are kind of out of it [in a counseling session] I’m like, ‘Hey, do you want to write on yourself and we can do therapy that way, or do you want to color?’ I use it in my practice. I use it in my personal life, and it’s a way to get away from that redundancy,” Hayes said.

Despite art’s role in her life Hayes never considered herself an artist. Until now.

“Now, technically, I’ve shown my art,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever called myself an artist, but I feel like I can now! It’s maybe like a new piece of my identity.”

For Lipschutz, celebrating mental health workers as artists and makers was one of the key points of the show.

“A lot of the focus is on our client, and it should be,” said Lipschutz, who also explained that art often finds its way onto “safety plans” Terros builds with clients to help them get through a crisis. “We need to be focused on our clients, but the way to do that is to take care of ourselves. That’s the point here, honoring our caregivers, honoring the people who are trying to hold us up, while also having to hold themselves up.”

In assembling pieces, she reached out to her network and distributed fliers to colleagues across multiple organizations and facilities.

She was surprised to discover how many people, like herself and Hayes, used creativity to cope and heal from second-hand trauma.

“We have representation from juvenile detention, and I’ve worked with her before and she’s an incredible artist. She has a pottery piece. I found out that people I’ve been working with for years or seeing and meeting are using art,” Lipschutz said.

Even one of Terros’ interns from Northern Arizona University’s masters in Social Work Program turned out to be an artist. Kersti Taha has responded to calls with the CARE unit and Terros’ mobile response team. Sometimes, she’ll ride her bike or go for a hike to decompress after helping a client through a crisis. Other times, she’ll put in headphones and grab a pencil.

“Something about it is just so healing for me and calming. Seriously, when I put my headphones in and I draw I don’t think about anything. I don’t think about the calls I’ve been on, or school, or anything in my life. I just create and it’s a very therapeutic experience for me,” Taha said.

During October’s First Friday Art Walk when the show opened, a passerby would ask if Taha’s drawing was for sale. Her piece, the one with the mountain crowned by radiating light in pencil and sharpie, has also become a point of pride.

“I just think it’s really cool. One of the really fun things on First Friday was getting texts from people whose art is up asking, ‘What time is First Friday?’ Just knowing that they’re proud that their pieces are here; wanting to come and bring their friends,” Lipschutz said. “I just want it to be visible. A lot of what we do is behind closed doors and the focus is not on caregivers as much. I just wanted to bring visibility to the folks in the community who are really holding the community up — through this little glimpse into their minds and into their worlds.”

Another element of that visibility is awareness.

Hayes said, “I think it’s just a really ingenious way to advocate for mental health. Because people think of therapy or mental health as like, ‘This is how I feel,’ right? To be able to advocate for mental health in a way that’s like, ‘Yeah, I painted tonight.’ It’s really relatable.”

The mental health caregiver art show hosted by Terros and Rainbow’s End will be up for the rest of October.