My personal relationship with knitting and crochet goes back to when I was a child. My grandmothers on both sides of my family engaged in both crochet and knitting as hobbies and as a connection to traditions passed on from previous generations. Ironically. I learned knitting from an art teacher and not either of my grandmothers. However, these crafts still hold a deep sense of nostalgia and family history to me. I chose to engage in crochet for this media exploration. Crochet was actually not something that I learned until I was in this program and a dear friend and classmate invited us over for a community gathering to engage with each other as we worked on knitting or crochet projects. This offered a level of social engagement and connection that felt incredibly therapeutic and applicable to my future work with clients. I was also drawn to the repetitiveness of the action, as well as the portability and the potential to abandon projects for an indefinite amount of time, to return to when ready.
I would like to consider the idea of working with adults diagnosed with Schizophrenia Spectrum and other Psychotic Disorders and the processes of knitting and crochet. I had the opportunity to work with a population of adults and older adults diagnosed with Schizophrenia and related disorders at my first practicum site. In the chapter on crochet in Craft in Art Therapy (2020), the idea of using crochet as a means of containment and processing. I think this could be very beneficial work to practice with this population. There is a particularly salient quote from the chapter that feels applicable here, “There’s a place where my pain can be contained but not forgotten. Respected but dampened” (Leone, 2020, p. 96). Many persons, in my experience, that are living with Schizophrenia or related disorders have painful memories or traumas associated with their diagnosis. In this media, I believe that crochet, specifically, could be helpful in containing these memories and traumas in a productive and safe way. Additionally, the calming and destressing benefits of knitting discussed in the Riley et al. (2013) could serve this population as well, as they process their lived experiences.
References
Leone, L. (Ed.). (2020). Craft in Art Therapy: Diverse Approaches to the Transformative
Power of Craft Materials and Methods. Routledge.
Riley, J., Corkhill, B., & Morris, C. (2013). The benefits of knitting for personal and
social wellbeing in adulthood: Findings from an international survey. British Journal
of Occupational Therapy, 76(2), 50-57.
