Karen Bender Quotes

I don't have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapist is in my paint brushes.

I just block out the demons. I sing. I block them away. I put my pain into my music. I paint. I make my own videos. I direct myself. No one directs me anymore. I am in charge of my destiny.

Experiencing sadness and anger can make you feel more creative, and by being creative, you can get beyond your pain or negativity.

I'm pretty terrible at writing, so the way I kind of therapeutically get through things is by drawing.

Therapy is therapy. Writing is for writing.

If it weren't for painting, I wouldn't live; I couldn't bear the extra strain of things.

I'm interested in how artists and writers do this, using art as therapy. Escaping into the worlds we create. We're all victims and few of us are truly free.

I've written several deeply personal songs this year, which I really love. Some of them came out of intense sadness. This has been an extremely difficult year for me.

Comedians don't have a monopoly on suffering. But creative people are sometimes fortunate enough to be able to incorporate their most traumatic experiences into their art.

Art is for healing ourselves, and everybody needs their own personal art to heal up their problems.

I was always writing music anyway. I just sort of fell into it. Writing for me is a therapeutic process.

Writing and singing does give me some kind of release from the demons of my past, it is a therapy of sorts, but to be honest, my marriage played a more important role in the acceptance of myself than performance has ever done.

I unfortunately had a lot of medical procedures throughout my life, so I decided to paint all of my surgeries as a way to heal and as a way to grow.

I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality... to protect myself.

I write songs about stuff that I can't really get past personally - and then I write a song about it and I feel better.

Performing was how I was able to release this pain I had.

When I write, it's to heal. It's my own self-therapy so that I don't actually feel sad all of the time.

Art became my therapy. It's an amazing outlet.

My songwriting... it's almost like a kind of self-therapy.

I've been writing books because it's been my way of dealing with the demons. The act of sitting down and writing the books down has started healing process that's been long overdue.

Talking about darker stuff from my life was definitely very cathartic and at times confronting.

Creating something beautiful out of pain helps ease the pain. So, that's kind of how I got to songwriting - quite honestly out of desperation.

In a lot of ways, songwriting helped save my life.

Creativity, for a lot of young people, is a coping mechanism. It's the only place they feel comfortable. It's the only time they feel like they're being heard or can make a difference, is if they can go into a room and do a drawing or go to a garage and play a song or retreat to this world.

I've used songwriting as a tool, I've used it as a way of being able to talk about how I feel.