When I'm painting, I don't feel anything.
I feel no pain, I forget everything. It's such a just, zen moment.
I have a really over-reactive brain now and I just dwell and dwell and dwell on stuff.
It's nice to be able to just have an off button, and that's the off button for me.
Marcie McCammond, and I was a senior airman in the United States Air Force.
People want to know, "What's wrong with you?"
And that's a tough question to get asked.
"What's wrong with you?"
We say grace? God is great, God is good.
People don't understand TBI, it can make someone different.
I would snap at people I never would have snapped at before.
Maybe they expected me to do something I used to be able to do and I couldn't do it now.
I did a lot of sitting in my room — a controlled setting. It's quiet. I can control the lights.
It took me away from a job I loved.
It took me away from a deployment that I was enjoying.
I had a lot of anger and a lot of that came from people telling me they didn't know what to do with me.
Doctors had said, "I don't know how to help you." Nothing was working. Nothing.
I'm Melissa Walker. I'm the healing arts program coordinator at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence.
Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy,
where the client uses art-making to communicate with the therapist.
We use the process of art-making to explore many facets of the self, to really be able to release feelings, emotions, discuss them in a safe manner
and then work through them.
The mask template itself encompasses the area that we're focused on — the psychological and physiological aspects of the brain.
They're storing all of this internally. After a long time, that can really impact one's lives.
I think the art therapy, it gives them a way to work through, to take control of these things that they're feeling
and be able to express them to us through the artwork. If they don't have the words, they at least have a way to show us.
2014 is when I went to NICoE for all my therapies and stuff, and then
I had the pleasure to go back and visit now.
It was a real reflection time for me, is "Here's where I was then, and here's where I am now," and it was pretty awesome.
What I love about Marcie is that she immediately was able to use the art-making as a way to symbolize parts of herself.
My first mask, I made it and I realized, "Wow, I did that,"
and now I can explain to you how I feel. I didn't know how to get any of that information out to somebody else before.
When I went to NICoE, they helped me realize that there's a new me and that's OK.
It helped me figure out who I was, you know, and knew what I couldn't do.
Then I did a project and it looked good, and so I was like, "OK, there may be something different here."
Are you happy now?
Yeah, yeah. I still get frustrated. I still have the Hulk sometimes,
but I deal with it a lot better.
All of this has been based on how I changed myself and how I continue to move on.
It's amazing. Before NICoE, I didn't even know if anything would ever happen.