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It’s taken me a long time to arrive at this point of healing. I started therapy more than twenty years ago while going through a divorce. Over the years, I worked with individual and group therapists, attended a 12-Step program, church, and men’s groups, participated in workshops and trainings, and read hundreds of books on trauma, addiction, and healing. I understood my trauma “by chapter and verse.” Yet I was often cut off from the emotions. Much of my change remained intellectual.

I knew I had abandonment and rejection issues, addictions to address, feelings of inadequacy, cultural and language barriers in relating to my first-generation Chinese immigrant parents, and a sharp tongue that had once protected me from racist taunts and mockery. Eventually, I resigned myself to being “traumatized,” and felt my growth was as good as it gets.

Things began shifting when I experimented with my “right brain.” I used poetry, photography, drawing, and even childhood TV theme songs to access emotions. Sometimes I cried without knowing why. I began to recognize what art therapists have known for decades: We sometimes need to give the intellectual, explaining side of ourselves a break from reflexively talking:

“Words alone are not enough to make it happen. Recovery requires creative expression in symbol and metaphor.” —Cohen, Barnes, and Rankin, 1995

As I put images to words, my need to explain my past diminished. My........

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