Coloured Paper, Glue Sticks and the Fear of Getting It Wrong

I had an experience recently that has stayed with me.

I offered a simple creative activity in a small group of women I know. It involved coloured paper, scissors, glue sticks, and an invitation to create a portrait of another person from our group based purely on “vibes”…what this person inspires through colours, shapes and textures. A playful attempt to reflect how we experience one another beyond physical appearance.

For some, it was joyful and unexpectedly moving. As often happens, people began cautiously, thinking their way through the task, before something softened and creativity took over.

For others, the activity felt uncomfortable. Even risky. Concerns were raised about whether it was appropriate to “define” another person, and whether reflective creative work might stray into the territory of art therapy. The suggestion emerged that exercises like this should really be guided by a qualified “professional”. I’ve been sitting with that response ever since.

Not because disagreement troubles me, but because it revealed something larger than discomfort with a craft activity. It pointed to a growing uncertainty about where ordinary human interaction ends and professional territory begins. When did simple acts of connection start feeling like something we might get wrong?

When Did Care Become Professional Territory?

There is an increasing sense in our culture that anything involving feelings, reflection or care must be professionally facilitated, clinically informed or safely contained within recognised frameworks. Therapy, safeguarding practices and professional expertise absolutely have an essential place. Many situations genuinely require trained support. 

But are we slowly outsourcing basic human capacities? Listening to one another, witnessing each other’s lives and offering presence when someone is vulnerable or grieving. For most of human history, these things happened in kitchens, around fires, in community halls, at bedsides and across garden fences, without accreditation or supervision.

When every reflective experience is interpreted through a therapeutic lens, ordinary connection can begin to feel suspect. A poem becomes “processing”. A conversation becomes “holding space”. Creativity becomes therapy-adjacent. Sitting with someone in grief starts to feel like something you shouldn’t attempt unless you are trained. Gradually, people begin to wonder whether they are even allowed to care for one another. I see this hesitation in everyday life.

The Cost of Stepping Back

Recently, I stood in a shop queue when a woman entered asking for help. A man outside was harassing her. She moved quickly to the back of the shop while, moments later, an older man (clearly intoxicated) staggered in shouting.

Several men were present, staff members included. Yet no one intervened to encourage the man back out of the store. Some watched silently. Others openly treated the situation as entertainment while the woman waited, visibly frightened, for it to pass. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to take responsibility.

It was a small but striking example of how readily we defer care and intervention to someone else; someone more qualified, more authorised, more officially responsible. Many of us like to believe we would step forward when needed. Yet increasingly, we hesitate, unsure whether it is our place. How many times have we second-guessed checking on a neighbour, offering support, or stepping into a difficult moment because we feared saying the wrong thing or overstepping?

Community has never been built on expertise alone. It has been built on familiarity, proximity and shared responsibility. On people noticing when something isn’t right. On meals appearing at doorsteps. On friends sitting quietly together when words aren’t available. Care has historically been ordinary;  imperfect perhaps, but given freely.

There is also a privilege embedded in the belief that meaningful emotional support must always be professionalised. Therapy and clinical services are vital, but access to them is unequal. Many people cannot afford therapy, do not wish to medicalise their experiences, or are simply lonely and in need of companionship rather than intervention.

If we begin to believe that support must come only from professionals, we risk creating a world where people feel they shouldn’t lean on friends because their friends are “not trained for this.” Community becomes something we hesitate to use rather than something we rely upon.

Ordinary Presence Still Matters

I encounter this tension often in conversations about end-of-life care. Questions arise about whether those offering emotional or practical support to dying people must hold formal qualifications. Yet historically, who sat at bedsides? Family. Friends. Neighbours. Community members who cared enough to be present.

Modern hospice and palliative care services are extraordinary achievements. But they were never intended to replace community care, they were intended to support it. If presence itself becomes professional territory, we risk reaching a point where ordinary people feel unsure whether they should accompany one another through life’s most human moments.

Therapy is structured, boundaried and designed to work with trauma and complex psychological need. Connection is relational, mutual and rooted in shared humanity. They are not the same thing. Confusing the two can leave us overly cautious, treating everyday acts of kindness as though they carry clinical risk.

Sometimes coloured paper and glue sticks are simply coloured paper and glue sticks. Sometimes being seen by another person is not harmful or diagnostic, but generous; especially in a world where many people move through life feeling largely unseen.

This is not an argument against professional expertise. Training matters. Safeguarding matters. Skilled therapeutic work changes lives. But there must remain space for people to gather, create, listen and care for one another without feeling they are trespassing into professional domains. Because when we lose confidence in our ability to do that, something fundamental begins to erode. We start to believe connection requires permission.

Professional care will always have its place. But community depends on something simpler: people willing to show up for each other. Presence, even when offered imperfectly, is powerful. And it is something none of us needs qualifications to offer.