“Culture eats strategy for breakfast!” Using visual arts to facilitate self-compassion in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

In the organisational psychology literature, there’s a phrase that’s sometimes used: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast!” Culture eating strategy for breakfast is what we found when we first tried to run compassion focused therapy (CFT) groups for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (hereafter respectfully referred to as Indigenous Australians).

At the start of the project, we were well aware of the need for cultural relevance and adaptation. So we held several preliminary meetings with Indigenous health workers. Our aim was to make the CFT materials and strategies culturally appropriate. After the health workers’ feedback we made a number of adaptations to standard CFT materials – made them more visually appealing, made the concepts more culturally relevant, using some Indigenous examples etc. But ultimately the groups were predominantly wordy and verbal - like most groups in a therapy context (including CFT groups) tend to be. The usual “sitting around in a circle talking” way of doing CFT groups didn’t translate well to the Indigenous Australian context.

We were pretty concerned after these first groups. What did we need to do? One thing we did was carefully listen to the feedback from group members. A couple of them said: “Why don’t you try art?” So after a big rethink, we teamed up with some local community artists, and channelled compassion skills training through the medium of art.

Second time around, the difference in response was extraordinary! Instead of the groups’ “threat systems” being activated by all the “wordiness”, art facilitated the group members “soothing systems”. There was lots of humour, laughter, fun and joy – as well as participants’ favourite music on Spotify.

The groups had a three-part structure:

• 20 minutes of introduction to the topic of the day by the psychologists;

• 2-3 hours of art focused on the topic of the day – and a tasty lunch together;

• 30 minutes showing, discussing and reflecting together on our art and its meanings.

Examples of artwork created by the group members

Each week introduced a different aspect of compassion (e.g. safeness, the three circles, the three flows of compassion) which became the focus of the art for that week. Typically while doing their art, group members started informal conversations. This enabled them to engage with compassion in an easy, non-threatening way, giving and receiving compassion in the process. The images above, used with permission, are examples of the artwork.

At the end of 2020, we published a paper in the journal Frontiers of Psychology describing the arts-based group and its impact on group members. It can be accessed here. Not only was bringing art into compassion focused therapy something new in the CFT world. We had recognised the wisdom of the members of that first CFT group - and had taken on the understanding that when it comes to working outside of majority cultures, culture does indeed eat strategy for breakfast!

James Bennett-Levy & Natalie Roxburgh
University Centre for Rural Health, The University of Sydney

Reference: Bennett-Levy, J., Roxburgh, N., Hibner, L., … Gilbert, P. (2020). Arts-Based Compassion Skills Training (ABCST): Channeling Compassion Focused Therapy Through Visual Arts for Australia’s Indigenous Peoples. (2020) Frontiers of Psychology, 11, 568561.

This article originally appeared in the CMA newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.