Racquel KellerArtists! This month I am pleased to bring you an interview with a working artist- Racquel Keller. Racquel and I sat down for a lovely outdoor lunch as we discussed her creative career, and how she discovered herself as a creative artist: Interview with a Working Artist:Cindy: Thank you for joining me this month in the Artist Spotlight, Racquel! Please tell us what you currently do creatively? Racquel: Mixed media and assemblage. Mixed media predominately enjoying assembling and disassembling pre-Rafaelites- a secret society of young male artists founded in London in the early 1800s- I am transforming male gaze stereotypes from the late 1800s to a modern female gaze. It is an overall exploration of my artistic voice and style. Cindy: Wow! I hadn’t heard of pre-Rafaelites before. This is really cool (looks at some of Racquel’s current pieces- don’t worry! I will share where you can see her work at the end!) Racquel your work is amazing and exciting. What else can you share with us about yourself? Any quirks or tidbits that will help us understand who your are? Recognizing the Creative Artist InsideRacquel: I live in a farmette in the DMV. My studio is in a little red barn- I purchased the house for the barn! I like to hike- there are beautiful walking trails I enjoy with my dog close to my home- I am very inspired by nature. A benefit for me of the pandemic was being home more- I fell back in love with my studio and the natural landscape. Oh- and something unusual that is very “me”? I once jumped out of plane because I was afraid of riding rollercoasters. Really! I was afraid of heights so I thought I would just skip to the solution and face my fear head on- what better way than sky diving?! Cindy: (laughs) Wow, Racquel! That does sound like you! What causes more growth than moving through fears?! Epic. I love the visual of your studio in a little red barn. What an inspiring space! When did you first realize that you had a creative mind and saw that world in a special way? Creative Personality Traits on DisplayRacquel: I have been drawing since I was very young- I became conscious that I didn’t quite think like everyone else around age 11 or 12. I remember at that age during a move finding beauty in a broken faucet- I was always an acclimator and finding beauty all around - I didn’t know this wasn’t the usual way to see the world. Cindy: This is such a typical creative brain way to see the world. I like the way you said “acclimator”- I also say “intuitive” often- so in touch with your senses and feelings. That’s lovely. What was one of the first creative projects you can remember doing? Racquel: It was in Kindergarten. Putting my hand in plaster for a handprint project- I remember thinking “this is amazing!” I remember other art projects around that age like painting a heart shaped rock for my Dad for Father’s day- this is when I discovered paint mixing- and that if you mix all the paints together you get gray (laughs) I used all the colors and ended with the natural color of my rock! Cindy: One of the most amazing things about children! They aren’t afraid to explore and play. It is something we would do well to go back to as creative adults! Tell us something about how you grew up that shaped you in a creative way? Racquel: Moving around a lot. Creativity and art were my one constant. They kept me even-keeled. They helped me lift myself out of day-to-day and forget about everything for just a little while. Creative Minds are the Way we LiveCindy: You were so resilient! Even as a kid, somewhere you knew that being creative was authentic- and by doing that you were coming home to yourself. I love it. These are the things, looking back to our childhood stories, that tell us we have the imperative to create! Creative people are highly intelligent- and that can present itself diversely in the educational system. Tell us about your experience in school? Racquel: I learned very early on that everything has a system and if you can learn the system you can make it serve you . Answering- "what does this teacher want?”- can serve you well in school. I was also outspoken when a question wasn’t relevant or thought-out. I remember I used a college textbook in high school and realized teachers don’t know everything! Pretty early on I had no problem correcting teachers when they were wrong. Cindy: There is that creative brain showing up again! Adaptation and intuition- learning the system and implementing it when it serves- not being afraid to reject it when it doesn’t- THAT is the groundwork for innovation. I would love to see more knowledge and nurturing of creative kiddos doing this in the school system. Good for you! What did you want to do professionally? Is that what you ended up doing? What paths have your creative opportunities taken? Daring to Live AuthenticallyRacquel: I always wanted to be an artist but I did work in a law firm for 15 years. I realized at a certain point that this was not what I was supposed to be doing and started working with a life coach to transition into working as a full time professional artist. The most important thing I learned was to ask for help. Money was a fear but not as much of an obstacle. You can always go back to a skillset. I have been continually reinventing myself. If you remember you can do that it releases a lot of fear. It is important to remember you are your own most valuable resource. Cindy: Facts and wisdom, Racquel! So true. I love this. That inner knowledge and follow through is gorgeous. I get a lot of clients showing up because they are at the precipice of this. This is a hard move! I love that you are an artist who took it, survived, and is telling the tale! Amazing. What have been some of your biggest creative fears? Racquel: (laughs) That I will die with a garage full of art! It keeps me moving forward! Artists Dealing with CriticismCindy: Yes! That is such a motivating fear! It is so forward! And I love that. What was your biggest creative failure? Racquel: I don’t see things as failures so much as redirections. I have a file that says not “rejected,” but “not yet” for applications that didn’t go through. It has been a small but powerful shift for me to go from “why in the world would they pick me?” to “why in the world wouldn’t they pick me!?” When I am rejected from residencies and stuff, my heart of hearts says “I’m coming for you!”- my success is coming for you! Cindy: I love this so much. Failures are just redirections- fate, life, or whatever showing you the path that serves! I am relabeling my files, stat. Internal validation is so crucial. Tell us about your first creative success and/or proudest moments Success in ArtRacquel: I think it is my show at Montgomery College! It was a beautiful experience. It was a realization of a direction that was very satisfying artistically. I made good artistic connections, and it was wonderful to be able to share my interpretation of the theme. I was surprised by my elegance- it gave me a different perspective on my own work and myself. It showed me what I was capable of. Cindy: Shows are so great for that! The push, the connections, to step back and see yourself in a new way. I saw that show, Racquel, and it WAS all of those things! A great achievement. What are your creative plans for the next year? Racquel: I have a residency coming up in France at the end of this year, and another in the Bahamas in July in 2022. Overall I want to focus on making my own work, and streamlining the process. I will be spending August in residence in my own studio to help solidify plans for next year. I need to take a break from teaching and giving in art to make plans for myself- making and getting more of my art out into the world. Cindy: (wistful sigh) Residencies! Congratulations on these, Racquel! I can’t wait to hear more about them during and after! That is good wisdom to balance art outward (teaching) and inward (your own work). Now that you have accomplished so much, what is something you wish you knew, or looking back would tell a younger version of yourself? Advice for ArtistsRacquel: Whatever job you take is going to have difficulties, so you may as well do what you want to do. Put yourself in a place with other creatives. Leaving the law firm and working at the Phillips collection to be with like-minded people was one of the best decisions I made in my art career. Above all, stay focused and consistent. It will pay off! Cindy: Wise words. It seems like younger you did hear and heed those, somehow! What does it mean to you, to be creative? Racquel: It’s just life! Accepting yourself and who you are! It might be a little quirky or a little weird- but gosh would I want to be otherwise?! I guess overall I would say- it is settling into yourself. Cindy: (hands in the air) Yes! Yes. 100% agree. Nature gives you a gift with things on board for your creativity. Know it. Accept it. Live it. Settle into yourself. Love this. If we want to follow your work, how can we see what you are up to and stay connected? How to Follow this ArtistRacquel: The best way is on Instagram @racquelkellerart. I have a group for other artists- so if you are interested you can join this creative community on Facebook @purefirecreatives. I also interview the artists in the community and have a podcast on Spotify and Apple podcasts called Pure Fire Creatives. Cindy: Racquel thank you so much for your time today. You are an inspiration to us and such a strength and support and talent in the arts community. We will be following your art career on social media- and everyone- buy her stuff! She is so talented! Want to be a Featured Artist?Want to be interviewed on the #creativelyblog? Email me cindy@creativelyllc.com
Interested in connecting to learn more about Creativity Coaching or Creativity Counseling? It is always the perfect moment to nurture your creativity and build a future that excites you. Click here to schedule your free new client consultation. (c) 2021 Creatively, LLC updated 1/24/2022 www.creativelyllc.com Photo by Alex Azabache on Unsplash Hello, Creative Mind! I recently reconnected on social media that I have been busy this past year fulfilling my dreams- I had an internal shift (sparked in part by the pandemic- did you?) Why wait? My dreams will happen only if I face the profound vulnerabilities that come along with their pursuit. I promised that I would tell you how it all happened- so- let’s start! Creative People and Meaning MakingLet’s explore- through the lens of your life, your goals and your future. I have been studying the past few months with Creative Minds from all over the world in creativity classes with the Creativity Coaching Association and Eric Maisel- and the inspiration and wisdom is abundant and contagious! In classes this week we talked about the biological imperative of independence in creative people. Creative People are blessed with the need to make meaning of the world around them and find their own way, along with the energy and passions that it takes to accomplish this (read: it is not easy!) I talk often at Creatively about your personality having big feelings. Big passions. These are Nature’s way of giving you the tools you need to succeed at making meaning. It is important that you use them, however, because left idle they can become problematic. Creativity Counseling and Strong FeelingsOver the years I have had Creative Clients come to me for Creativity Counseling with concerns like chronic anxiety, depression, mood swings and other problems. I am not disputing that these things can be clinical. However, what I more frequently found was that these were creative personality assets misdirected or underused. When understood, channeled, supported and utilized by the bearer, chronic anxiety is a Creative Personality’s powerful drive to create. Mood swings are passion to work and understand the world around us. These are the tools nature gives us to work, understand, pursue, and grow. They are our passion and creative drive. When we don’t use them, doubt ourselves, let fear and mistrust of ourselves and others get in our way, we become frustrated, thwarted and unwell. The purpose of Creativity Counseling is to help you understand and use powerful feelings as an asset to your life by channeling and focusing your creativity productively.
Creativity Coaching is for Creative PeopleThere is so much more I could say about all of this but what I want to leave with you is Creatives are meaning makers. You have the internal strengths built in to do this work. Because of this not only is it important that you do creative work, but it is also important that you simultaneously actualize what is meaningful to you in your own life. This will mean deep honesty within yourself, facing fears and working hard. Above all this will mean intense trust in those inner resources. The work is intense and difficult. The rewards are epic and without compare. You are a dreamer, Creative, but also made of the stuff you need to live those dreams. Start Creativity Coaching or Creativity Counseling Today!Do you believe you can have the life of your dreams? I would love to help get you there. I am passionate about helping Creative People succeed, and I believe in the work I do as a Creativity Coach and Creativity Counselor. You can start meaningful change today - your free consultation is one click away! (c) 2021 Creatively, LLC
updated 01/27/2022 www.creativelyllc.com Photo by Zuzana Ruttkay on Unsplash Inspired by what has been in the sessions this week- please enjoy!: Creative People are Highly Sensitive PeopleHello, Creatives! The Summer has truly swept me away in the best possible way- the warm air, butterflies and lightening bugs, soft breezes, sounds of cicadas and frogs, and bright sun green through the filter of leafy trees have taken every moment I can spare- but it does feel good to take a moment to sit and write to you again. I am both excited about today’s topic and inspired by the sensory experiences of Summer- today we will discuss sensory sensitivity in Creative People (say that five times fast!) Counseling for Highly Sensitive PeopleLike many of the gifts that our creative personalities give us, this, too, is a gift with two faces. We have explored in blog posts past (or if you have been on the Creatively couches, in the workshops, or in the groups) ad nauseam about the Creative Person’s expanded emotional capacity. The new information: with expanded emotional capacity comes an expanded sensory capacity. These two things together are what allow you to tap into and translate your experiences into your art form. Usually your senses are especially sensitive in the same lane as your preferred artistic expression: dancers are kinetically and tactile-ly more sensitive, musicians auditorily more sensitive, photographers, graphic designers, illustrators, painters are visually more sensitive, chefs and culinary artists may be more sensitive to tastes and smells and so on. While specifically more sensitive in a specific area, you are in fact more sensitive in all 5 senses overall as a creative person, generally speaking. This is logical because this is where our emotional experiences also occur- in the body. We experience and sense the world around us very strongly therefore our real-time input channels are powerful. Irritability in Highly Sensitive PeopleThis means a couple of things for you, Creative. It means that you need to feed these channels in order to stay well. It means you need to be refueling your sensory channels often because your fuel tanks for these are necessarily bigger because your input levels are stronger, so your responsibility to keep those tanks full requires more regular work and attention (read: regular mindfulness practices and regular creative practices!!) It also means that when you are sensorily deprived, you will not feel well and you will notice. You will feel depressed, disconnected, low energy, like you aren’t experiencing life, poor self esteem, blocked from your creativity, and generally not like yourself (read: regular mindfulness practices and regular creative practices!!) The final thing it might mean is irritability. Let me explain: Attention and Investment in Highly Sensitive PeopleDo you ever notice it is really difficult for you to get pulled away from a task, project, experience or moment? This can be pathologized as something else, and maybe in your life it was. Imagine a person without what we are calling a creative personality, someone with normal levels of creativity (after all, all people are creative) looking at a beach scene. Imagine them connected to their experience by 2 hooks. The hooks represent how much attention is invested by absorbing the scene. Someone calls out to them for their attention, and it is fairly easy for them to disconnect from their experience. The same situation repeats for a creative person, except imagine this person is connected to their experience by 12 hooks. This is much more difficult for them to disconnect from. It requires more effort and strain and can generate irritability which might even be misdirected at the person calling to them. Overstimulation in Highly Sensitive PeopleLet’s imagine this same situation again, except now instead of hooks the creative person is holding a bucket, which is already full of water. The person without a creative personality is in the same situation with a bucket half full of water. The bucket of water represents how saturated the highly sensitive person is, sensorily, in their experience of the scene. Now imagine a lifeguard drives by on a loud ATV right in front of the scene. This adds 4 cups of water to each bucket. Non-creative personality’s bucket can withstand the volume. Creative person’s bucket overflows, again creating irritability. When you are more sensorily connected to your experiences as a creative person, added sensory information can more easily overwhelm and irritate you than a less creative person. Mindfulness for HSPsSo I said we would bring this back to mindfulness. After all, isn’t that what we are saying by default, that a creative person should also have an increased capacity for mindfulness tools? To be present? Ultimately, mindfulness is the perfect natural tool to harness this gift of increased sensitivity to our experiences, whether they are outside of us in the world, or inside of us in our feelings and reactions to the world. Mindfulness helps us with the element of choice when processing and receiving this information. Start your Mindfulness Program at Creatively, LLCIntrigued in learning more and jumpstarting your own creativity and mindfulness program? You can take one of these steps and begin today: 1) Book a Free Consultation. All new clients to Creatively, LLC are entitled to a 15 min, free consultation to sit with me and discuss your needs, services available, and we can problem solve and hand-pick best next steps to help you succeed. 2) Book a Coaching Package. Are you a working Creative in need of specific support? I offer a range of Coaching Packages- let's get started with one that is right for you. (c) 2019 Creatively, LLC, updated 01/31/2022
www.creativelyllc.com Clinical Topics for Creative PeopleThis week’s post is again inspired by clinical themes I have been seeing this month. At this point I have published enough yummy articles on my blog that they gorgeously cross reference and complement each other- in this way this topic is related to many others- so when it speaks to you and emotionally connects with you, I encourage you to pull the thread and browse some of the other topics and past blog articles about stress, creative people, feelings, and more. Flexibility Looks Like Distress Tolerance in Creative PeopleToday we are going to talk about the psychological concept of distress tolerance. In simple terms, this is our ability to stand still in a certain intensity of stress. I don’t mean change it, avoid it, or do anything with it- simply tolerate it. This underused but powerful skill allows our emotions to communicate their vital messages and naturally dissipate- freeing us to stand empowered in our lives to make better choices for our own happiness. It takes the power from variability and the unexpected and allows us large scale emotional peace and freedom. Word of Caution from the Creativity Counselor(I will give you the caveat that if you are in crisis, severe stress or worse, then tolerance is not your course of action. If you are unsure how this topic applies to your levels of stress, give me a call and let’s talk). Creative People Living with Weakened Distress ToleranceIn several past articles, I have referenced the biological function of emotions to communicate chemical signals and messages between the brain and body. In an ideal biological and natural sense, whenever we have an emotion we would fully express it and allow our brain and body to absorb its lesson (interested in the topic of the biological functioning of various emotions? Browse those past blog posts!) What happens instead is we feel emotions with an intensity we don’t like and avoid or bottle up, we absorb sociological lessons about which emotions we are allowed to express or not (different across norms), we lose touch with what are emotions are, what they are telling us or how to feel or express them. This diversion has the unintended consequence of weakening our distress tolerance. Stress Looks Like Emotional Avoidance in Creative PeopleWhat I am saying to you is our sociological adaptation to avoid emotions has weakened our ability to handle stress. This is unfortunately not to our advantage. Think about exercise as a parallel here. What we are doing is avoiding exercise because we don’t like it, which has the unintended consequence of making it harder for us to take the stairs when the elevator is out. Just like we build our muscles by slowly increasing our physical activity, we can regain our ability to tolerate stress by acknowledging and feeling emotions when they happen in smaller ways, and doing nothing else with them. Creative People can Overcome Stress with MindfulnessUltimately what our emotions “want” from us is to be felt without resistance. This allows them to fulfill their function. Emotions, as the communication signals they are, naturally crest and fall. If we don’t feed them, fight them etc, they communicate their signal in whatever intensity, then fall away. If we simply acknowledge and feel them they naturally dissipate. Build Distress Tolerance Using Creativity CounselingTo begin repairing and strengthening your distress tolerance try a version of this exercise: use the mindfulness 3 minute check-in to increase your mind-body connection, and allow the accompanying feelings to crest and fall while you simply experience them and survive. As your distress tolerance builds in strength you begin to experience stronger and stronger stressors without becoming overwhelmed or destabilized. You are free to make choices about action or inaction and how you can better shape the variables in your life. The end consequence we are going for here is (as always) empowerment to create a life that is happy and fulfilling. Begin Creativity Counseling Today!How strong is your distress tolerance? What are your personal patterns of emotional avoidance? Want to regain control and build towards more peace and happiness in your life? I can help! Take one of these steps today and change your life:
1) Join my Artists in Residency Program. This is a Free, Online Community of Artists where you can build support, accountability and a network of Creative People as a stepping stone towards reconnecting and committing to your authentic, creative self. 2) Book a Free Consultation. All new clients to Creatively, LLC are entitled to a 15 min, free consultation to sit with me and discuss your needs, services available, and we can problem solve and hand-pick best next steps to help you succeed. (C) 2021 Creatively, LLC updated 02/01/2022 www.creativelyllc.com Today I want to consider the Pareto Principle, aka the 80/20 rule: the simple idea that 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes. It is an idea used in business, economics, safety, mathematics and more, and something I want to borrow and talk about as a model in a general sense for responsibility and decision making.
Safety management offices regularly use this model to assess risk: assuming that 80% of accidents, for example, can be attributed to 20% of risk factors. We can turn this on it’s head and consider in terms of effort and productivity: what if 80% of our successes could largely be attributed to 20% of our efforts? What if there was a key 20% of things we would do that would snowball exponentially into an 80% gain in our lives? Oftentimes I hear from the creative artists that sit on my couch themes such as high levels of time commitments, extreme standards levels of perfection in their work, constant negative comparisons of themselves with other artists and so on. Essentially, the creative drive is in overdrive and escalate to paralyzing levels, preventing artists from doing creative work. Unfortunately what has happened is innate energy to create has turned inward into disabling pressure: we feel like no matter what we do, how hard we work, how many events we attend, how much we commit to, we will never be enough. I think you can see where I am going with this. Twenty percent of your efforts can be responsible for 80% of your outcomes. In other words, 20% effort can be sufficient, whereas 200% effort can be disabling. It is a matter of applying the effort in the most beneficial way for your mental and creative health. What is true is taking care of your mental health is fundamentally important to the creative flow which ultimately sets you apart as an artist. This is an important part of your 20% and not nurturing and caring for self is a nonstarter for creative success. What is also true is by not creating you are also severing yourself from your mental wellness. I hope what you are beginning to see is a creative person’s 20% looks like a balance of quality self care and regular creative practice. The specifics of what your 20% self care and regular creative practice looks like will be specific to you. This is the work that we do at Creatively! My job is to sit across from you in a room and listen to you describe your challenges and successes in your life to help you sort out this very path to success. When you have your 20% formula in practice, you will begin to experiment the magic of your 80% success and happiness. This is the “creating well” that I am always talking about at Creatively. Get that flourishing and watch yourself begin to live your happiest life! (C) 2019 Creatively, LLC An artist’s statement is similar to a cover letter for a resume. If it is for a specific piece, a program or a show, you are telling viewers about specific works- what for you ties them together. For a website, marketing, sales etc you may choose to speak more generally about your work historically and/or the period of work you are in. It is your chance to give a mini-documentary about the pieces you are making- a peek into your brain of motivation, inspiration and creation.
From a wellness perspective, I always encourage artists to have a working version of their artists statement, as a sort of touchstone for themselves and their relationship to their artwork. Exploring and knowing this relationship as it evolves and changes helps facilitate momentum and flow in the creative process. If this is your first foray into artist statement writing, or your first try in awhile, my advice to you is to write. It. All. Write all the things. Put fingers to keyboard, pen to paper and begin a free flow of ideas that come from nowhere and everywhere and eventually tap into the same place in your body that you create from. Keep it going until you feel done. In the same sitting you might make a maximum of one to three passes over your work to loosely consolidate and synthesize the general feeling of your statement, then put it away. You can come back to it hours later or maybe even the next day. The goal is to leave enough space so as to try not to get bogged down in words or married to sentences- but look at it asking yourself- how are these words reflecting the messages and spirit of my work? Make another one to three passes for clarity then set it aside. Rinse and repeat this process until you feel you have captured the spirit of your work. When you have that accomplished, you may go back through and look for more editorial things like length- generally a paragraph or so is pretty good- use of pronouns- we can overuse them inadvertently when communicating our own perspective- and so on. If you feel comfortable, have another person look at the statement only to see if anything like grammar or composition interferes with the message you are trying to communicate. You may also consider reflecting the type of media you use, the tempo or pace at which you use it, the volume (loudness and softness) of your work, thematic content, referential content, inspirational content, autobiographical content and more in your statement. As you write you may find the words compositionally mimic your work in various ways as well as describe it. Ultimately the statement will serve as a cognitive bridge both for you and your spectator to better understand your art. A quick word of caution about the “confusion phase”: many people (I among them) when writing an artist’s statement will reach this critical juncture. The statement becomes so chock full of content that even the writer loses focus of what they are trying to say. Don’t worry- the information is in there. This is a good indicator of a time to take a step away and come back again- and the messages you started with will again become clear to you. A final word about fluidity: like your work, your artist’s statement will be ever changing. Don’t forget to save earlier versions that reflect points in time just as your earlier works do- but also don’t be afraid to regularly revisit your artist’s statement and see how your purpose for art is changing and evolving and address that to yourself and document the flow. Your artist’s statement is, after all, a sort-of formalized documentation of your evolution as an artist and how that changes your work, how your work changes you, and life impacts you both. Happy writing! (C) 2019 Creatively, LLC This week you get a rare peek into an anecdotal blog- this is a topic I feel is important enough to share some personal information and opinion. Please, if this is not for you and not in line with your sensibilities, take no offense, I do not offer my views to you aggressively and am always open minded and grateful to listen to your thoughts and experiences:
I am currently preparing two pieces for a female artists’ invitational honoring International Women’s Day (the Holiday is March 8, 2019). This day has always been important to me and so is this show and its message. Because of this, women’s history, feminism, and I suppose the unfortunate current exacerbated global climate of hate, division and fear have been heavy on my mind, and not so far from home. I hear and feel in my heart your stories firsthand on the therapy couch. I don’t pretend to ever know what another person’s experience is like and to hear these stories and take care of them purely by the listening is a responsibility I take very seriously. What I can say from hearing your stories and from knowing my own is that we are universally connected in our experiencing of hardships- of how we have been put down, marginalized, criticized, overlooked, judged and worse by other human beings. In a strange way it seems to be a fairly ubiquitous experience of humanity- though in varying degrees. I marvel not infrequently that people don’t connect more often on this simple point: life is a struggle and we are all struggling together. This is a difficult topic to write about because I know how delicate it is. Each of us have been injured and many of us deeply. All of us so differently. That means there isn’t much that can be said specifically that won’t trigger someone else painfully. Perhaps, again, the best we can do is simply acknowledge, generally, this common experience of humanity. I wonder if healers, nurturers and helpers get a cross-section of stories and can see this better. Sometimes I meet a person that just seems to be born seeing “big” with “eyes open” able to consider the experiences of others easily. Others struggle or are unwilling to do this very thing. Regardless, all of us are neighbors, coworkers, and community members together. The big question I suppose, is will anything ever change? Has it ever changed, historically? To be honest, I am not sure about the latter. I certainly want to have hope for the former. I think most of us have a pretty good idea of what it will take: good human beings as our children. The most simple and beautiful concept- muddied by a chaotic world of influences that each of them, each of us, came into. I have been, and perhaps you have been, too, struck by this experience: watching young children, (perhaps 5 years old, perhaps younger) playing together. They do hurt one another’s feelings- but they also see each other’s pain and are quick to see their mistakes. They rally for each other. They are so beautifully inclusive. The new kid is incorporated. The shy kid isn’t left out. The crying kid isn’t shamed and someone gives them a hug. The child that doesn’t understand the game is explained the rules so they can play. Conflicts arise and are resolved. Clearly the potential for a future all of us hopefully want is there. We can see it in our littles. From my perspective that is the most important thing we have to do. Maybe we adults are broken. Maybe we are too set in our ways. Maybe our hurts, our past, our present, have entrenched us too much to really change. Maybe not. But maybe. But maybe not so much that we can’t still want different for our children and support their natural inclinations to do better. I think looking at them we know what this looks like. We know that it’s better. Can we give it to them? Can we allow them to have it? I see this as our most serious responsibility. These are my thoughts these days as I paint. (C) 2019 Creatively, LLC An important concept in mindfulness is decentralization- the basic idea that we are not our thoughts. It is commonplace for human beings to over identify with thought content and make the easy jump from thought content to self identity, but this extrapolation is not well founded. Just by virtue of being capable of thought, we must be greater than and separate from it.
Consider the image of a game of chess with two main components- the board and the pieces. In this comparison we will use the board to represent you and the pieces to represent your thoughts. In a normal game of chess the pieces move about on the board, independent of the board, the board not invested in or concerned with the action of the pieces. It is merely the place where they are moving and the game is taking place. In a similar way, we are the containers where our thoughts occur but are no more our thoughts than this. Understanding and internalizing this principle is an important step to allowing yourself the space to pay attention to self and individual needs versus thoughts and thought content- you must start with a fundamental understanding that they are not the same. Many of the concepts in mindfulness practices are about getting away from or not over attending to thoughts, and the ability of the mind to know things in many different ways without needing thoughts to give them voice- how that can even be a disservice to you. In fact, one way to learn, internalize and understand something without using thoughts is through art. When we use music, images, movement or other creative art forms, we are able to express and internalize concepts in a different way than through language. Writers are in more of a bind here since language is their main tool- so while its not impossible to use writing apart from thoughts you may try experimenting with a different creative modality as you begin practicing with mindfulness. In fact- it may even be beneficial for all creative artists to try a creative modality not in their wheelhouse to explore concepts while taking some of the product-focused pressure and accompanying thoughts out of the way in the beginning. In the spirit of mindfulness, creativity and the concept of decentralization, I suggest to you a 2D art activity. As always, take this exercise and make it yours- make it abstract, use a different media and so on. The prompt: Start with a self portrait. Some sort of representation of yourself. Consider as you work- what might this version of you be feeling? Physically experiencing? Thinking? How do you as an artist feel about the portrayal of yourself in your work? What are your physical, emotional and thought experiences as you work? Once you are satisfied with your self portrait and feel you have taken a moment to be present with it (in your “nowscape” not your “thoughtscape”- if these mindfulness concepts are new to you sit tight- more mindfulness blog posts are on their way), add a second “self” to the portrait that is “observing” the first “self.” What does this second “self” think of the original portrait? How is their perspective on the original portrait different or similar? How does this second self feel, emotionally and physically, to be in the painting with the first self? What are their thoughts? When your piece is done, sit back and consider your work. Feel your feelings and sensations identifying yourself as each person in the portrait. What insights can you glean? What if you label the original “self” as “thinking self” and the second portrait as “whole self”? How does this change your feeling about the piece? You don’t have to name or articulate your thoughts. Focus on your own emotions and sensations as you consider these concepts and try to stay present with them. As always, be sure to book-end your exercise in some way, with some sort of ritual to signify to emotional and thinking self that the activity is over and you are closing doors that you opened to return to level of functioning you were at before you began. The goal is to grow in understanding, not leave yourself open and raw in an unhealthy way. If you find you spend a lot of time in your thoughts, if you have ever noticed or been told you “intellectualize” or “avoid” as a coping skill, mindfulness might be for you. It is for a lot creative people. Come sit on my couch and let’s talk about how these tools can work for you! (C) 2019 Creatively, LLC This week I am giving you a post I have shared before- if you haven’t read it, I invite you to. If you have read it, and been have following the new flavor of mindfulness to the work going on at Creatively, I invite you to re-read it with an attitude of mindful acceptance of experiences. Take a read and absorb. Give me a call and come on in and talk!
Happy Mindful Days
The Holiday Season is quickly coming upon us and with its arrival we need to revamp our mindfulness. In this spirit, next week I will vacation from my blog, newsletter and website- so feel free to take the time to reread some past posts or take your own mindful break! By now you have had some introduction to what mindfulness is and some ways to use it in your life. Mindfulness is beautifully simple and uncomplicated. When we are mindful, we are quieting the mind and focusing on our present experiences. Even those of us that feel seasoned and successful in mindfulness practices can get diverted from this state of being during the Holiday Season. Part of the problem with the Holidays is we want them to “be” something. Therefore, we have expectations for them. We compare out and feel pressure to deliver certain things to those around us. Usually these are with the intention of giving the perfect Holiday Season to others. This year, I give you permission to be a little more selfish. Ask yourself what makes the Holidays memorable and special for you? Of the list of things you “have to do” for your Holiday Season- why do items make that list? Let’s make mindful choices this year for how and why we celebrate. Try this simple exercise (as always I advise not to do these exercises without the guidance of therapy sessions- so let’s schedule one of those, too!): Make a list, drawing or representation of your choosing of what you plan to do for this Holiday Season. If that is already too overwhelming (hmm) then choose one holiday for the exercise. When you are finished, go through each thing you plan to do and “mini-meditate” on it. Consider it. Scan your emotions, scan your body. As you consider this thing, how does your body react? With tension? With warmth? What are your emotions associated with this thing? Stress, joy, something else? Ask yourself, why do you do this thing during the Holidays? For yourself, for others? Allow your mind to consider and hold this information as you think about this first thing. Your goal this year is a peaceful, mindful, happy Holiday Season. Does this thing fit into that picture? Continue the exercise as you go through all your plans. Amend them to take away or add what brings you closer to a more peaceful and enjoyable Holiday Season. Allow yourself to feel the anxiety of eliminating things you might be accustomed to doing from your list. Give yourself permission to do something different. So often when there are big calendar events like during the Holiday Season, we become so focused on outcomes and making them “perfect,” we miss enjoying them for what they really can be: peace, happiness, family, love, fulfillment and more. This year your new Holiday Tradition is yourself: create a more mindful Holiday Season. Talk to you again in two weeks (unless I see you in my therapy chair- go ahead- schedule something!) Happy Mindful Days! (c) 2019 Creatively, LLC From Multitasking to Mindfulness
I have posted on mindfulness before (look through past blog posts for the basics)- and this week’s Creatively blog builds our basic knowledge of mindfulness into application in our busy world. We live in a society demanding us to be constantly moving, achieving, earning and doing- a frenetic pace necessitating multitasking to accomplish everything expected of us at the levels at which we are supposed to achieve them. We are expected to attain perfection at home, in relationships, socially, at work and *gasp* creatively, too. Any one of these is a full time endeavor, and we are endeavoring to achieve them simultaneously. Like any machinery- and like machinery our bodies are electrical and energy based- we cannot forever sustain this pace without consequences. Anxiety, depression, health problems and other disorders are prevalent today and part of the problem is we are running ourselves into the ground to meet impossible external standards (see last post on self esteem). Today I suggest to you an alternative perspective: change from being a multitasker to a unitasker. Instead of push, push, push- what if you pumped the brakes and valued each task, individually? What if you honored and invested fully in each goal and aspect of your personal journey? Inevitably, the other things on your list would need to be set to the side, but I submit doing this with intention is liberating. What would happen? What would happen if you relaxed your standards of perfection? What would happen if you allocated energy to one project at a time, rather than everything at once? Would you be happier, healthier, less stressed? Many creative people I talk to describe intense periods of creativity, followed by creative lulls where they become invested instead in self care, home projects, relationships and more. They feel guilty for not maintaining constant “level 10” creative output. Review the diametrically opposed creative personality traits blog post. Remind yourself the natural order of the universe is ebb/flow, expand/contract, and part of being a creative person is to have equal parts of very different tendencies. By giving yourself a rest from your endeavors, you are freeing up energy for your next creative push. (Of course, this is a different discussion altogether than “showing up” for creativity- and you will find a blog post here about that, too.) In the spirit of parsimony and “unclenching” as I often refer to it in session, I will leave you today with the simple idea, and an illustrative exercise to test it with. Give yourself a week for this experiment. Take a written calendar- like a pen-and-paper calendar. Keep a list at the end of every day of everything you did, and at the beginning of every day of what you wanted to accomplish. Observe the changes that take place in the planning and the achieving over time. If you don’t notice changes, extend the length of the exercise. Come talk to me about what you find. Happiness can be found in unitasking. (C) 2018 Creatively, LLC Hello, Creatives. This week, I bring you another theme from the couch. I want to introduce it to you clinically as an important and fundamental goal for personal growth, while giving it “creative people” flavor. The topic: self esteem.
You may be familiar with this concept under different names- and it can be presented in different nuances and aspects including: self esteem, self worth, sense of self and more. Who says what you are worth? How do we internalize what our value is? One of my favorite theories to conceptualize this is Person Centered Theory. Person Centered Theory will tell us that most of us build a sense of who we are based upon how others value us. From a young age, we internalize rules from others about qualities that make us good or bad, smart or dumb, pretty or ugly, worthwhile or not. In the creative world it is much the same. We learn if we are talented or not, if our art/writing/dancing/music is good or bad. We will likely learn these based on how closely our creative tendencies mimic those that others around us value (e.g. was a parent classically trained? They will likely value this more in you). Overall, these learned rules and internalized value systems that dictate our worth are called “conditions of worth,” and they are not helpful to us. The problem with conditions of worth (COWs in Person Centered Therapy) is they are based upon external forces. In other words, if we subscribe to them, we essentially allow our worth and sense of self to be dictated to us by others. There are a myriad of reasons why this is not ideal for us and I will leave room here for you to peek back into your own life and generate some examples- but basically it boils down to inconsistency and external locus of control. It’s ok- we all have COWs. COWs develop functionally because as children we learn about the world through mimicry and adoption of others’ value systems as a starting point to develop our own. The problem becomes a sort of self-esteem failure to launch, where, again, for many reasons, we get stuck in the former and don’t move into the latter. If you have now or have had in the past struggles creatively and/or personally with self worth, and examine your young adult years, you will likely begin to guess at some of the contributing factors. According to Person Centered Therapy, a fully realized, happy person with good self esteem is “self actualized” and has become congruent with their “organismic valuing process” or OVP. Essentially each of us intrinsically “knows” what makes us happy and peaceful, and making choices accordingly gives us happy and peaceful lives. Unsurprisingly, this in turn fills us with self worth because we are living authentically. If you haven’t guessed it, self esteem work can get emotionally sticky and for that reason I always recommend therapy as a starting point to build insight into your story. What are your levels of self worth? How authentically are you living? What points in your life can you identify as contributing to any stuck-ness in your process of self-actualization? If you haven’t read it- the “Referential Self” blog post is a good accompanying read to this topic. What I can give you in this post is a belief to launch you perhaps into consideration of a new mindset- a starting point for your own self esteem project. This is often step one when I am working with a client. The belief is based upon a concept of radical self acceptance- accepting yourself in this moment just as you are: “What I need, care about and feel matters.” What a simple concept. But- search yourself- do you really accept and believe this fully? Building self esteem through radical self acceptance does not mean avoiding the setting of personal goals for ourselves and working towards change, but it also doesn’t mean perfection. It starts with a place of love and acceptance for ourselves and our life experiences: a place of compassion, respect and understanding for who we are and who our lives have made us. Ready to build up your self worth? I have a safe place for you to do the work! (C) 2018 Creatively, LLC Hello, Creatives. In addition to working with Creative People one of my clinical specialties has been working with anxiety disorders- and for many reasons it is not uncommon for creative people to be anxious. So, in this week’s Creatively Blog, I bring you a self-coined term I have identified from working with anxiety to help you understand some ways you may be compensating.
Let’s start with some basic information about anxiety. Anxiety indicates a physiological aroused state where your body- to varying degrees- is perceiving and preparing for a threat. Anxiety is an emotion that activates your limbic system- some of your more basic brain functions live here- something I talk about in session as “lizard brain.” More or less, anxiety acts as a switch, either activated or inactivated. The prevailing psychological model for reducing anxiety is exposure response prevention, or, gradually reducing sensitivity to physiological arousal to perceived threats. Anxiety can be summarized as how sensitive our body is to activating emergency response mechanisms when a threat is perceived- and this sensitivity is largely inherited but also can be impacted and changed by life events (eg trauma). A frequently used set of terms in anxiety treatment are “triggers” (what makes you anxious) and “coping skills” (how you manage that anxiety). Some of these are fairly universal and some are more individualized. A coping skill that I see a lot, and that is frequently subconsciously used, is increasing the level of control (type A, much?) to offset the feeling of anxiety. An exacerbation of this relationship can be seen in classic OCD presentations. Anxiety is not always bad and in fact evolutionarily the emotion functions to keep us prepared and safe. Unlike many other emotions, it is not an emotion that you can “stop” from doing- in fact trying to “stop” anxiety may worsen it. Ultimately the best anxiety strategy is to not over-attend or feed into the cycle; allowing it to run its course, and reducing its overall severity and disruption is key. For more about anxiety, reference the “Pet your Inner Cat” blog post about self soothing and self care- a place I usually start treatment with most of the anxiety diagnosed clients that I treat. For more about anxiety and creative people, reference the “Creative People, Anxiety and Intuition” blog post. Now that you have some basic information, let’s move on to the phenomena I started to observe. Like many things in clinical work, I noticed it together with a patient during a breakthrough in session, which allowed me to see it again with another patient, and then another, and so on. Before I knew it, there was a behavior or series of behaviors I was watching my anxious clients engage in as a way to cope with their anxiety, which ultimately once labeled could serve them to identify the worsening or a change in their anxiety symptoms. What I noticed I began to call the “Control Perceived Imbalance Correction” or “CPIC” (pronounce see-pick). In my overview to anxiety I said that subconsciously many anxious people balance or offset their anxiety with control- they believe- usually erroneously- that by increasing control over something they can also increase control over a different thing. Often we feel excess anxiety about things we cannot control, and to offset this it feels good to take control of something else. For example- a person may be feeling anxiety about increased tension in their marriage- a perceived loss of control- and so to correct this imbalance they binge eat- an over use of a coping skill psychologically used to restore control or correct the imbalance. Sometimes there is a sense of self-fulfilling prophecy or self-sabotage- someone may be feeling a loss of control of personal finances, and to correct the perceived imbalance of control go on a shopping spree. On a psychological level they are taking control by doing what they want with money, but in a literal way of course worsening the stressor. CPIC is one, driven by the emotion of anxiety and not by logic, and two, is usually subconscious, and this combination can be problematic. Once I see this relationship with a client, I can help them identify the imbalance correction (eg overspending, overeating etc) and this can be used by the client to pinpoint the source of stress in the future and change course sooner. This is one reason why in therapy I will usually ask you about your week- anything unusual? How have you been sleeping, eating, etc? I am looking for evidence of changes in your life. CPIC is a bit more of a cerebral concept, but, I have found it very useful to my clients once applied. It is certainly something easier to unravel individually by example and through deduction and fact rather than hypothetically and conceptually in writing- and so I invite you to come sit on my couch and learn about yourself, Creative! Come start creating your best life. (C) 2018 Creatively, LLC Creatives, I can’t get over how the universe works in cycles and patterns. Part of the magic of my job is to vicariously experience, like a fly on the wall, so many different walks of life- I truly feel the magnitude of the gift of hearing your stories. It is from my third person perspective that I see cycles emerge- patterns of high and low energies, trends in struggles and successes, commonalities in content and themes. I am in awe and amazement of the beautiful intricacies of life that unite the human experience. Time and again I watch people who don’t and will probably never know each other struggle together, succeed simultaneously and seek the same insights at the same time. I find myself giving the same models, theories or suggestions in bursts, to be immediately followed by a fresh wave of commonalities. And so again this week- I bring you a theme that has been a focus lately in the Creatively rooms. I trust to the ebb and flow of the universe that it is timed well for your journey. Today’s topic is our innate psychological capacity to handle stress. There are many ways to conceptualize this- but by far my favorite is commonly called “spoon theory.” Imagine a psychologist at a restaurant with her psychologist friends, trying to describe a phenomenon she has observed in her work. She has noticed that the ability to take on stress is finite- each individual seems to have a unique threshold. She scoops up spoons from nearby tables and lays them down in front of her- representative units of stress management. She postulates that each part of our lives takes a certain number of spoons- some more than others- and when all spoons are in use (being “out of spoons”) you are in trouble. She suggests that psychological illnesses represents a certain number of spoons (depression, anxiety, bipolar) other psychosocial factors of life represent others (medical problems, financial worries, jobs, relationships). Her theory has many other facets, and also isn’t presented without solution- she also recommends activities that “free up spoons.” These are your personal recharging strategies- some of them fairly universal- a good night’s sleep, good nutrition, good activity levels, being around good and supportive people. Other strategies are more personalized- (read: individual coping skills), “me” time for introverts, “others” time for extroverts, “creative” time for creatives, and more. The short answer here is you are in need of your own personal cocktail of spoon-freeing things, and part of your regular self awareness should be checking in with and improving the effectiveness of this recipe. Let’s take this theory and apply it to our creative process. I have said before that creativity necessitates giving of ourselves (see creative personality posts) and therefore- takes spoons. We also talk about creative flow of energy, being in the creative zone- this happens when we have enough spoons. In a creative rut? You guessed it-possible explanation: out of spoons. The other thing to remember is you are caught in a feedback loop a bit here: creating takes spoons, but it also frees up your spoons. I suppose this just proves what I regularly say to the creative people I work with: creative people need to be creating to stay well. Feeling stuck? Create more. Feeling low in energy? Create more. Yes- that first push will take spoons- so do other “spoon-freeing” activities to generate some initial energy- but if you are creating regularly you can be in your own self-sustaining cycle of spoon maintenance. This is simple language to start a conversation ultimately about balance and psychological self care and use of resources in your life. Come sit on my couch and let explore. (C) 2018 Creatively, LLC This week’s post is again inspired by clinical themes I have been seeing this month.
At this point I have published enough yummy articles on my blog that they gorgeously cross reference and complement each other- in this way this topic is related to many others- so when it speaks to you and emotionally connects with you, I encourage you to pull the thread and browse some of the other topics and past blog articles. Today we are going to talk about the psychological concept of distress tolerance. In simple terms, this is our ability to stand still in a certain intensity of stress. I don’t mean change it, avoid it, or do anything with it- simply tolerate it. This underused but powerful skill allows our emotions to communicate their vital messages and naturally dissipate- freeing us to stand empowered in our lives to make better choices for our own happiness. It takes the power from variability and the unexpected and allows us large scale emotional peace and freedom. (I will give you the caveat that if you are in crisis, severe stress or worse, then tolerance is not your course of action. If you are unsure how this topic applies to your levels of stress, give me a call and let’s talk). In several past articles, I have referenced the biological function of emotions to communicate chemical signals and messages between the brain and body. In an ideal biological and natural sense, whenever we have an emotion we would fully express it and allow our brain and body to absorb its lesson (interested in the topic of the biological functioning of various emotions? Browse those past blog posts!) What happens instead is we feel emotions with an intensity we don’t like and avoid or bottle up, we absorb sociological lessons about which emotions we are allowed to express or not (different for males and females traditionally), we lose touch with what are emotions are, what they are telling us or how to feel or express them. This diversion has the unintended consequence of weakening our distress tolerance. What I am saying to you is our sociological adaptation to avoid emotions has weakened our ability to handle stress. This is unfortunately not to our advantage. Think about exercise as a parallel here. What we are doing is avoiding exercise because we don’t like it, which has the unintended consequence of making it harder for us to take the stairs when the elevator is out. Just like we build our muscles by slowly increasing our physical activity, we can regain our ability to tolerate stress by acknowledging and feeling emotions when they happen in smaller ways, and doing nothing else with them. Ultimately what our emotions “want” from us is to be felt without resistance. This allows them to fulfill their function. Emotions, as the communication signals they are, naturally crest and fall. If we don’t feed them, fight them etc, they communicate their signal in whatever intensity, then fall away. If we simply acknowledge and feel them they naturally dissipate. To begin repairing and strengthening your distress tolerance try a version of this exercise: pick precipitating events of small emotional weights and allow the accompanying feelings to crest and fall while you simply experience them and survive. As your distress tolerance builds in strength you begin to experience stronger and stronger stressors without becoming overwhelmed or destabilized. You are free to make choices about action or inaction and how you can better shape the variables in your life. The end consequence we are going for here is (as always) empowerment to create a life that is happy and fulfilling. How strong is your distress tolerance? What are your personal patterns of emotional avoidance? Want to regain control and build towards more peace and happiness in your life? I can help! (C) 2018 Creatively, LLC Do something that scares you, every day.
Years ago, someone whose resiliency and peaceful lifestyle that I admired, gave me this advice. I did, like you might, balk at this advice: do what? Needless to say I spent time thinking about this then, and it is something I have reflected on since. Today it is advice I share with you. What scares you? In a psychological sense, what I am really asking you is, what are you avoiding? We all have defense mechanisms learned throughout our lives that protect us from perceived threats. The problem is, we change and our lives change, so “once a threat, always a threat” does not apply. What have you conditioned yourself to avoid, but are now doing yourself a disservice from outdated or expired fear responses? I will give you an example that frequently surfaces in session: finances. For most of us, the younger we are as adults, the less money we have, the more fearful we are about having enough money to meet all our needs (recall buying something in your 20s, then covering your eyes and singing “la la la” afterwards). However, and almost regardless of how our financial status does or doesn’t change over time, this is a stressor we are more equipped to handle with age. We are more capable of planning, problem solving, have more support, etc. Always, but most especially eventually, we are doing ourselves a disservice by avoiding making financial plans because it is stressful. It may always be stressful- but that does not mean our past ways of dealing with it (avoidance) is functional. Part of what I am intimating is distress tolerance should increase with age. We should be able to persevere and tackle something stressful or distasteful more effectively in our 30s than we did in our 20s. If this is not true for you, than something is preventing you from being able to grow and develop this muscle (but that is not what I want to talk about today). What I want to explore is the use of the cognitive/behavioral variety of therapies to build distress tolerance. The alphabet soup referring to the cognitive/behavioral focused therapies continues to grow: REBT, CBT, DBT and more. Essentially what these and many other approaches have in common, is using logic and cognition to moderate or even change emotional responses, giving us more room to make different decisions. Generally in introductions to these approaches you will be given a formula that looks like this: precipitating event leads to irrational/rational belief leads to emotional reaction leads to behavior. Most of these theories hinge upon impacting the irrational/rational belief to linearly impact the other parts of this cycle (emotions, behaviors). What I’m saying to you is, when something happens our initial response to it is largely conditioned based upon our experiences in life. We will believe what we do about it based on our past experiences and strong emotions are tied to this. Ultimately we make the decisions about resulting behaviors (be they conscious or subconscious) from this personal data. Let’s go back to the money example. We have a new expense we weren’t planning on. Based on a personal history of financial stress, we panic. Based on panic, we avoid. In this scenario the key factor is making the judgement that the expense is a threat. If we could train ourselves to perceive this event differently, we will behave differently about it. Of course it isn’t that simple- when the expense happens we will still panic- part of these responses become fairly hard-wired depending on how frequently they have been used- but we can activate our distress tolerance to stay with that feeling just long enough to consider an alternative explanation, resulting in a different feeling and different choice. I will say that again in a different way: if we face something we are afraid of, just for a moment, we create enough possibility to view that thing differently and have a different outcome. Remember, creative people, that your emotions can be more powerful than a sampling from the general population. This means understanding and breaking these patterns is simultaneously especially challenging and important for you. Are you tired of avoiding stressful situations that maybe you know aren’t really a threat? Do you find yourself more emotionally reactive than you would like? Do you feel controlled more by your emotional responses than you want to be? Maybe it’s time to come sit on my couch and talk about breaking the cycle. (C) 2018 Creatively, LLC Today’s topic is both important to us as human beings, and has another layer to creatives. I’m talking about our urge to leave our mark on the world: to change or impact life in a meaningful way. This urge can drive and motivate us, or cripple us with fear, self judgement and anxiety. There are several key times in life where we may be especially tuned in to and evaluating our sense of personal and creative legacy. This is where I want to tune our focus today. In early childhood during the beginnings of the growth of our self esteem, again in young adulthood as this sense of self experiences another surge of growth, again in mid life (the ever-famous “mid life crisis”) and finally in our golden years: these are the predicted times during which our thoughts about our legacies pique. If you find yourself currently in one of these stages, you can expect this to be on your mind. If you aren’t but weren’t satisfied with your development and answers to legacy issues in previous landmark stages, you may chronically carry worries about your legacy with you. Creative people are additionally especially prone to the weight of unanswered legacy questions and the need for impact. Part of the reason creative people are especially prone, is part of our personality. We crave sharing our unique vision with those around us, and want it to impact them in the way it has impacted us. We want our talent recognized and validated en masse. It is certainly normal to crave that. Creative arts are also inherently competitive- and as such we arrange ourselves in “best-worst” structures. The result is we only allow ourselves to embrace and own our creative identities if we are the “most” creative and impactful, as evidenced by our legacies (not good.) The idea of a legacy is certainly important: it gives meaning to what we do and drives us to create- even inspires us. But- legacy- as we typically know it- is a fallacy. I want to introduce to you the concept of “big L” vs “little l” legacy: Big L Legacy represents what we normally think when we to reference significant creative impact. Big L legacies are those that history has remembered, text books reference, and others revere, imitate and immortalize. The size of Big L Legacy is global. Little l legacy represents how we impact those we interact with personally. These are our individual, humanistic, organismic, direct, person-to-person, emotional interpersonal interactions. It extends to the community directly around us who know and experience us intimately. I think the problem here is clear: we are holding ourselves to big L Legacy and disregarding little l legacy. The problem is that big L Legacy is not decided by us. It is really decided by zeitgeist (unfamiliar with that concept? Do a little side research- it’s awesome). In other words, there were more than one DaVinci, Beethoven, or Einstein. The reason those that we revere with big L Legacies got that name, as opposed to the others of equal standing, is a variety of time/place/person specific variables that the individual that got lucky on the Legacy score could not control. Maybe I will dedicate a future post just to looking at creative zeitgeist. I submit to you- that since Legacy is decided by others- usually strangers- for us- that it is less valuable and certainly unhealthy to chase. It is truly moot, in a way. Little legacy is where I want you to redirect your urge to make an impact. The most important value we have is to those who know us intimately. On a personal level, our close friends, family and neighbors are those who are directly impacted by and therefore valuable in our lives- us to their lives and their lives to ours. Creatively, we may not be the most amazing global artist (which is also subjective and arguable what that even means), but we are the person at the place who shared what another person or group of people needed. You may want to dismiss this idea as “ok, sure, we all get trophies” mentality- this is not what I’m saying. I’m saying you are an important and necessary part of the fabric of your interpersonal and creative community. Your investment and time spent with the world directly around you leaves the mightiest impact you can possibly make. I understand this concept is counterintuitive and so I challenge you to challenge it. Do a little experiment or series of experiments. Spend more time on a relationship, in a local creative event or in your community. Watch how quickly and positively others around you respond. How grateful they are. How quickly you are integrated. How you begin to feel about yourself. After all, how many “great” creative people are on your own list of the most influential people in your life? How many people on that list are those that took the time to be present in your life, and that you spent precious minutes of your life with in return? Are you plagued by personal legacy fears and questions? Are you at one of the legacy milestones? Do you want to resolve one that has passed? I am here to help. (C) 2018 Creatively, LLC Today I want to tap into what I affectionately call in session “the lizard brain” or petting the cat: the natural, organismic, animal part of you. This is the part of you where instinct and body knowledge live, untampered with by your mighty prefrontal cortex. It is a set of natural drives and signals that most living things live by, and in many ways we have evolved away from. For better and worse, we bring in the “intellectual committee” when making decisions, sometimes overriding our organismic needs. There are certainly times for that. There are also certainly times when it is less useful. Ideally, I want you to be able to identify both your natural instincts and your “committee” decisions, and make a choice as to which you need to follow. Since I think human beings are evolved and accomplished at doing the latter (“the committee”) I want to dedicate this blog post to the former (“the lizard brain”). So- let’s take some time and space to check in with yourself: how are you at listening to your instincts?
You may connect with this notion of instincts by one of its many names in today’s society- body knowledge, Mommy instincts, protective instincts, gut feelings, initial reactions, first impressions, etc. It is a visceral screaming of “yes” or “no” inside you. If you have to “decide” about something, then that is probably not your instinct about it. I was listening to a book (still listening to Caroline Casey) who quoted a zen master on this very topic- she said this zen master described the concept of zen to her as “when I am hungry, I eat, when I am tired I sleep.” What a basic and beautiful example of meeting simple organismic needs. Yet- how often do we neglect to do this? We eat when we aren’t hungry, we don’t sleep when we are tired- yes, I know there are many reasons why- but we can’t deny that the overall effect is neglecting our animal self. When we neglect our animal self, or “basic needs” in hierarchy of needs psychology, there is a fall-out. One of these is that we lose sight of and connection with that part of ourselves. If we aren’t giving our body what it wants, eventually we stop listening to what it is asking us for, until we finally block it out altogether and aren’t even sure what our instincts are. Another cost of this behavior is- we are in a contestant state of alarm or stress. If, again, you think about an animal without regular reliable food, water, shelter, safety, routine, structure, exercise etc, what you get is a stressed out, unhappy, neurotic animal. For human beings it is the same. When we neglect our basic needs we are constantly plagued by an undercurrent of anxiety and stress. I want to take a minute and address the difference between instincts and hedonism. In other words, needs vs wants. All livings things also have a survival instinct that drives us to excess (hedonism). It says- “this is good- more!” and is not the same as meeting basic needs. This is something for you to keep in mind as you tease apart what your natural self is asking you for- for now, remember that these two things are not the same. I said earlier that one of the modern-day society names for these instincts is “body knowledge” and in fact this is a concept touted in psychology (especially related to trauma). Essentially what it means is- your body stores experiences and knows what you need on a visceral level. This means you can trust that your instincts. If you are listening to them correctly, they are giving you an accurate picture of your needs. Instincts know when you are suffering, when you are well, and what you need to stabilize. Your body stores your own individualized instruction manual for the recipe to your peace and happiness. Sounds a little too good to be true, doesn’t it? To strengthen this natural force within you, you need to tap into it and listen to it often. If you haven’t done this much, or even at all, I want you to start by “petting the cat.” Consider your most basic organismic needs (do a simple inventory) and make sure that they are met. Drink enough water. Eat enough good foods. Be physically active. Be social. Get enough sleep. Adhere to a routine. Eliminate toxicity and poisons. Do this diligently for at least two weeks and record your anxiety and stress level as you go. I promise you will feel more grounded, safe and calm. By “petting the cat” you are getting back in touch with your instinctual natural self by giving it what it needs. A second step: once you are meeting your basic needs, begin to notice when your “lizard brain” is asking you for something. You will begin to notice fatigue when you deviate from a routine, miss a meal, etc. Begin to make the connection with these natural and basic patterns of cause and effect in your body. Strengthen the connections by noticing them and meeting the needs they are asking you for. As you continue in this work, you might add a meditative practice to quiet your thoughts (eg consciously telling the committee to stop talking to you) and access your instincts. Begin to notice the answers to questions like, what “feels right”? Over time, my goal for you is not to lose you intellectual capacity, but to supplement it with your strong instinctual knowledge. When making decisions I want you to have access to both an intellectual and visceral information source, and when these differ an ability to choose between them. Did you know this skill enhances not only your overall sense of wellbeing, but also your artistic practice? Give me a call and let’s talk more about how. (C) 2018 Creatively, LLC So often what I am inspired to share in my blog is advised by the skills I see clients most seeking, or find I am most frequently recommending. This particular skill- grounding- you may have heard of before (especially if you have sat in my office!) and I have referenced in past posts. But- it is so powerful and has gotten so much clinical mileage for me lately that a blog post dedicated to the skill seemed apt.
Let’s test what you know. I was in an HR based skills training trying to get clinicians to buy in to some organizational changes several jobs ago. The hook to the training was about tying your shoe. The presenter said things that you think you know how to do and have been doing for years, you may be doing wrong. To prove the point, the presenter showed us all the “correct” way to tie our shoes- which was different by one move for most of us. I share that experience to say to you- you may think you know grounding- but there may be more to learn to do it more effectively for yourself. (I think I am in a story-telling mode to illustrate points from listening to Caroline Casey’s audiobook- which is wonderful by the way). Grounding, put simply, is focusing on “lizard brain” things and not “prefrontal cortex” things. In other words, I am not interested in what your inner cerebral committee has to say during grounding exercise. I am interested in sensory experiences and direct data input happening in real time from the world around me. What happens is, since we are higher brain capacity and cognitive beings, we can become tied up in those parts of ourselves to our detriment. Life experiences can also take control and get us “stuck” in our heads. Grounding is essentially doing something, or a series of somethings, to bring you back into basic functioning and absorption of immediate experiences. Something you may have mislearned: meditation does not mean grounding. Meditation can be relaxing and has a great many therapeutic benefits (I definitely use them myself and in client work!) but they are not what I mean by grounding exercises. Oftentimes, we hear meditation and mindfulness used interchangeably and together, and so equate them. In fact, meditation is not the same as mindfulness, which is closer to grounding activities. I also want you to understand that while grounding exercises are be necessity very simple, there is power in that simplicity and such is the point. When you are doing these exercises your goal is to engage in them at a length of time that is proportionate to the amount of stress you were under before you began. You are trying to bring yourself out of your head and into the present, so you have to spend as much time coming out of the rabbit hole as you spent going in. Grounding exercises are also not the same as coping skills. While grounding can be used as a type of coping skill, and some coping skills are certainly grounding, an association does not a mirror make. Remember too, that coping skills are meant to help you survive a period of time or a certain thing- that is their function. The function of grounding is to accomplish a very specific thing- take you out of your intellectualizing prefrontal cortex altogether. Of course I wouldn’t share an article with you about grounding without giving you some grounding exercises to try. While these are good exercises for anyone, I have found this particular list to be especially useful to creative people:
(C) 2018 Creatively, LLC If you are having an emergency, dial 911 or go to the nearest emergency room.
**IF YOU CANNOT ANSWER THIS QUESTION “YES” YOU ARE HAVING A MENTAL HEALTH EMERGENCY: CAN I KEEP MYSELF AND OTHERS SAFE?” You may also contact one of the following resources for urgent, non-emergency help: Grassroots Crisis Hotline (Howard County Residents): 410-531-6677 Sheppard Pratt Crisis Walk-In Clinic: 410-938-5302 National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1800-273-8255 Baltimore County Crisis Response System: 410-931-2214 Maryland Crisis Hotline 1800-422-0009 app: “There is Hope” Suicide Prevention App for Smartphones: Apple App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/there-is-hope/id1122136102?mt=8 Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nextlogik.grassroots&hl=en Six reasons why you feel emotionally drained after an art show
Have you ever been in an exhibit, show, critique, concert, performance or other display of your creative work? Did you anticipate it and invite friends and family to share in your moment? Did you expect to feel accomplished, proud and satisfied? Were you disappointed? Did you feel drained, let down or upset? Sometimes it is as subtle as being off your routine afterwards, feeling irritable or not yourself. Guess what, Creative? This is normal. Let’s talk about the six reasons why you feel emotionally drained after an art show: 1. You are in the ebb of your creative cycle. Creating something requires you to invest your energy into something else- removing it from you to give that thing life - and oftentimes a show is preceded by a creative push to prepare for it. The end result is feeling drained of energy and at a low/less productive point in your creative cycle (for more about the natural creative cycle- look at the “Creative Cycle” blog post). 2. You feel exposed. Your baby is out of your arms! There is a very real separation anxiety that artists feel when separated from their work. You gave your work life, and it has left the safe place of its creation to go out into the world. Your alarm bells are ringing that it is outside your circle of protection. It may sound like we are over personifying your work here, but remember: the work is literally born and nurtured of your energy and so is a very real part of you that has been removed and put somewhere else without you. It is normal to have a visceral response to that. This feeling may be exasperated for you if you listed your art for sale (it’s never coming back!). 3. You feel vulnerable. Artwork is deeply personal. Creative people have a deep emotional capacity and you tap into that to produce your work. Whether you are writing, playing music, painting, drawing, dancing- whatever your modality- you are exposing very emotional and vulnerable parts of yourself in your work. Vulnerability begets anxiety in the form of an urge to protect and be watchful- a vigilance that is hard to maintain and becomes draining. 4. You feel judged. Maybe your show was curated and you respond to which of your submissions were chosen. Maybe all your pieces were presented in a group showing but you are reacting to where your work was placed, where in the performance order you performed, etc. Oftentimes shows are paired with awards from peers or judges. They may be categorized or given themes that surprise you or feel unnatural with your work. During the show you notice how people respond to your work. Who is looking? Are they whispering to each other? What do you overhear others say about it? Artists already are predisposed to harshly judge their own creative works and so this over- sensitized nerve responds negatively to being plucked further. 5. You are comparing out. This is also part of your human nature. It is a survival skill to perceive your place in a hierarchy. However, it does not serve you well creatively. It also doesn’t stop artists from doing it, which is another topic entirely. Creative people have internalized valuing systems like experience, technique, skill etc that socially are essentially used to categorize, rank and posture. I submit that in your own work there is a time to dispose of these things. What makes your work special is your unique voice in it, not the homogenized rules you have learned and copied from others. (If you are interested in finding and nurturing that unique voice, I am teaching techniques to help you do this in a new workshop at Root Studio). During a show, the tendency to compare is exasperated especially when you are showing with other artists. 6. You feel underwhelmed. This is really the product of the other five points. Shows are meant to be celebratory, and chances are those that attended your show that were not participating were very uplifted by your work. But, for all the reasons we have already explored, you may feel the opposite. After the event you are confused as to why you feel this way. You let in guilt and blame yourself for spoiling your special event. Your are at risk of your brain making a negative association with shows. If you don’t understand what is happening and can’t unpack it, then you will naturally start to avoid the discomfort and it will affect your ability and desire to participate in shows in the future. So, dear Creative, here are some things to do and remember during the times that you are showing your work: 1. Keep your insight. Know that energy depletion is a normal response to showing your work. It doesn’t mean you and your work are not safe and celebrated. Don’t give it the powers of mystery and meta-worry. Understanding and preparing yourself for the energetic let-down goes a long way. You are couching and soothing the experience and preventing a negative long term association (or debunking and healing one already held). 2. Self care, self care, self care. Leading up to, during and after your show, be hyper attentive to meeting your basic organismic needs. Eat enough good foods. Drink enough water. Get enough sleep. Attend to your basic hygiene. Stay around supportive people. 3. Get grounded. Get out of your headspace. Get away from any thought distortions and negative self-talk. Tap back into the energies in the world that naturally inspire you. Get outside. Find beauty. Stay in a normal routine but allow yourself to expect less from yourself during this time. Give yourself some positive self talk. Engage in creative projects that are exploratory and playful (process, not product focused- for more on that look at past blog posts!) 4. Remember, there are many audiences, shows and opportunities. You can choose for this to not be the last show you do. You can choose to do more. Volume takes pressure off of singularity. 5. Remember, you are not all things to all people. There is no “perfect” art or artist. Everyone sees art differently and that is part of the beauty of it. 6. Remember, you are evolving. Heraclitus much? The only constant in the world is change- and this applies to your art! Don’t love your art today? It is not a static thing. Allow it to grow and change with you and your life experiences. This is natural and healthy. 7. Remember, your work is valuable. There is a place in this world for your work and it is important. It’s uniqueness that is innately yours that is exciting and valuable. Showing and sharing your work is a sacrifice for you as a creative artist, but in its way, that makes it worth doing. It is important for the world to see your work and it is important for you as an artist to share it. Knowing what to expect will help you nurture and care for yourself during these important events. Have a show coming up? Just had one and and feeling stuck in a low place? Already have a negative association with shows you would like to unpack? I am here to help. (C) 2018 Creatively, LLC Why is your creative teen self harming?
Self harm is a scary thing to see, hear or talk about, but it is nonetheless prevalent among today’s teens. If your teen, one of their friends, or other young people you work with have talked about it, you may feel unsettled, unsure and alarmed. In today’s blog post I want to dedicate some space to starting to demystify this behavior and talk about why it exists, the purposes it may serve and how to address it. Let’s start with some developmental psychology to set the stage of why the classification of behavior known as “self harm” is so prevalent among teens: Teens are children who, due to the natural societal progression in age milestones, have more stressors. They are more socially aware of friendship dynamics, they are beginning to question, identify and build independence and self-esteem. They have demands at school and are becoming aware of learning strengths and weak points. With all these things at play, their stressors have increased. However, they are still children, and their ability to handle the added emotional response to these new stressors may not have grown with them yet. In other words, they have lots of feelings, without necessarily more ability to deal with them (think an older stage of toddler temper tantrums). Along with growing stressors and limited control over emotional responses, teens are in a unique stage of neurological development where the separate hemispheres of the brain, while still building connections separately, do not yet have many pathways that connect them (think dirt roads vs super highways between the spheres). This means limited executive function capacity. Limited multitasking. Slower neurological processing time. Slower to make higher level connections. Slower to see big picture and build insight. Still very much functioning in the “here and now” of children, they are simultaneously growing into the higher level intellectual capacities of an adult (you may see, for example, your teen is very smart but has limited “common sense.”) Under these developmental pressures, teens may feel a disconnect between their strong emotions and how to handle them. They may feel a loss of control and an intense period of change personally and in terms of worldview. They are looking for ways to manage this discomfort and change. But why something like self-harming? One reason is that teens subconsciously use self-harm behavior to ground themselves and assert control. In this capacity, self harming serves to take them out of their spiraling headspace, into the current moment, while giving them a ritual or routine that is all their own. In younger children, we may see behaviors like resistance or regression with toilet training serving a similar function. Remembering our teen’s limited executive functioning and “common sense,” asserting control over ones’ own body is the “low hanging fruit” to manage the chaos of change. They are not rationally selecting a coping skill- rather experimenting with cause-and-effect choices over their own body. Self harm, of course, is not an ideal or healthy coping skill, however it is unfortunately one of the most accessible (control using one’s own body) and biologically very rewarding. Another reason teens self harm is for the biological reward. A natural response, especially in children, to change, chaos and stress is to dissociate or numb themselves. This is a natural built in survival mechanism, but one that most children find unwelcome and depressing over time. In an effort to “feel something again” a teen may turn to self harm. Unfortunately, self harm is very effective in fixing this problem because it causes a natural chemical reward in the brain- another built in biological survival tool- happy hormones are released to offset the physical injury. The combined effect is momentary pain, followed by a rewarding natural chemical rush and temporary relief from numbness. While again this is not a healthy way to reach these goals, knowing the motivations of the behavior can help you introduce the same rewards to your teen in better ways. Some things you need to know about self harm and your creative child: creative kids feel emotions deeply. This can make them more susceptible to finding relief with coping skills that are more extreme (because they are feeling more extremely!) Creative personalities also have the tendency to romanticize suffering- and in a childlike way the self harm can feed into this. Adults have the benefit of life experience to offset some of the romanticism to pain and chaos that children have yet to experience. So when should you worry? We need to remember and balance two important things when it comes to self-harm in our teens: one, self harm as such is not suicidal. If we are indeed talking about self harming behaviors as separate from depression and suicidal thinking, then the goal of self harm is not to actually harm onesself, especially permanently. However, the second thing to remember when it comes to self-harm in our teens is: teens and children are by nature impulsive. They have fewer protective factors, responsibilities, and less life experience to offset risk. As such, any talk of self harm should be taken seriously and immediately precipitate evaluation by a clinician, doctor or other licensed and capable professional. I would introduce a discussion on this topic without also giving you some tools to help your teen. Assuming you have involved a clinician/doctor/licensed professional as part of your process, here are some other recommendations to support them: 1) Talk. To. Them. Ask them questions. Show them love and interest. Show them you are a safe person to go to with your feelings and that you will hold and support them through whatever treatment they need. 2) Creative kids have their best coping skills built in: make art! I have researched and presented on this repeatedly throughout my career and I cannot emphasize this enough: if you have a creative child, they NEED to be creative in order to stay well. 3) It is ok for them to make scary art. If your teen wants to draw, paint, sculpt, write, or otherwise express the intrusive thoughts of self harm or other strong emotions that they are feeling, it is ok and it is healthy. The images or words may seem disturbing to you, but your teen is feeling relief from expressing and communicating them. 4) It is ok for your teen to cry intensely. Again- think of the toddler temper tantrums. Your teen is learning how to manage their growing stressors and strong emotions, and natural releases of emotions will help them be more successful with their coping skills. I know it is hard to do, but allow them a safe space to cry and emote, then be there for them afterwards to support them. 5) It is ok for them to talk about it to others. In the same vein as the emotional expression, talking about it with you, with friends, with other safe people gives your teen a way to make much needed neurological connections to deal with stressors better. 6) Help them find other emotional outlets. This may look like music. Arts. Sports. What helps them feel control over releasing some of the emotions that they are carrying? 7) Give them some control. Find ways to help your teen have control in appropriate ways in their lives. Is their a volunteer project they can participate in that will allow them to feel control and success? Can you let them choose something about their daily routine? Get creative. 8) Teach them mindfulness and grounding. This one, if you aren’t familiar, is a good one for you both to learn together. Try meditating. Try sensory practices together (cooking, hiking, swimming). Help them use soothing objects (pets, blankets, foods, music). The idea is to come out of the racing thoughts in the mind and be fully present in the moment. These are just some ideas and there are many others. The best approach is one collaborative between you, supportive people in your teen’s life, and seasoned professionals to make a diversified team effort that is catered to their individual needs. So, in summary: don’t panic, get help, and with good support better coping skills will be learned to replace this unwanted behavior. If you have concerns about your creative teen and self harm, don’t wait- give me a call- I can help. (C) 2018 Creatively, LLC You’ve Done Enough Coping
This is the antithetical post where your therapist tells you to stop coping with things. Today I want to reflect upon a clinical observation I have made in practice over the years, as well as in the world around me. I want to debunk some of the most popular psychological advice and offer my own based on my own clinical readings, learning and experience. I do, of course, caveat this with- if it doesn’t feel right or healthy for you, don’t follow it- and- consult your therapist about it before making any radical changes to your behavior. That said: I want you to stop coping. I will say it again: Stop. Coping. Stop distracting yourself from your problems, numbing yourself to your pain, filling up emptiness with things. Creatives, these things are not meant to be permanent solutions to your problems! They are, at best, temporary survival mechanisms that do not (I repeat NOT) serve you well in the long term. If you want to heal, and you are truly ready and able to do the work, it is time to feel the feelings you are protecting yourself from. There is no other way to move forward. I want to acknowledge that it is not always the right time to do this, and coping mechanisms are survival skills when life comes at us too hard, too fast and too harsh to deal with. They are good for that for awhile. Sometimes you can cordon off some of your pain to coping skills and take out smaller things to feel and deal with- and this is an important accompanying skill (read: emotional boundaries!) and so we see evolutionarily coping skills and protective mechanisms have an important function- but they by definition are preventing you from dealing with your emotional baggage, which, by definition is weighing you down. So: stop. With. The. Coping. The reality is this will mean pain for you. The reality is, this will mean struggling. But that is life! Life is struggle and survival and emotional ups and downs. They give us perspective, meaning and allow us to grow. As long as we continue to protect ourselves from it, we are staying stagnant and not allowing ourselves to come into living our fullest, best lives. And that’s it for today, Creative! Another parsimonious nugget to let roll around in your brain. Assuming you accept this idea with me, the logical next step is: “how do I do the work?” Luckily for you, you know a therapist! Let’s talk about some strategies for you in session. (C) 2018 Creatively, LLC Hello Creatives! This week, in honor of the expansion of two of my Creatively workshops to the Columbia Art Center this Summer, I am giving you a sneak-peak of what you can look forward to if you attend the “Getting Unstuck” workshop (which is available now at Root Studio!)
At this workshop you can expect to meet some amazing local talent, and in the beginning of our time together we all swap information about our work, current projects, and where we may feel stuck and/or need a boost of creative energy. The goal of the workshop is to get a push into the flow-y, energized space where we are ready to resume our work. Once we have all met, we will review some information that you may have already explored in previous blog topics. The thing about being “stuck” is, there are many reasons, explanations and sources of the stuck-ness. To do our best detective work, we need to review some of the context and information we already know about creative people. So we will discuss the following possible explanations for being stuck: This is individualized; where are you stuck? Diametrically opposed traits of productivity vs rest Product vs process oriented Perfectionism Overworked End of a phase Need mindfulness/exit intellectualizing/conceptualizing Next we will explore the following approaches to troubleshoot getting unstuck: Approaches: Meditation for mindfulness and being fully present to senses; tap into body needs and inspiration Cross-modality; goal to take of “product” focus and perfectionism Regressing images, supplies, approaches; goal to “play” Repetition; goal to nurture creative rests and reenergize flow Look at other work; goal to get perspective and see if you are overworking Critique: hear from others feedback, identify where your needs are, if you need to change direction, if you need to pursue or edit, give voice to help gain insight Feeling “stuck” is very specific to you, and unfortunately in one workshop we cannot try many of the things that may help you- but there is one specific practice that we will dabble in: that is the process of cross-modality. I will have each participant engage in a project similar to what they currently feel stuck on. I will then introduce you to two alternative modalities that are not your standard and probably not your strength. I will lead you through using these to get unstuck by directing you to go back and forth from them to your original piece- taking bits of inspiration and energy along the way. It is here we spend the meat of our workshop. In addition to my feedback, I expect you to communicate with each other, also garnering a kind of “cross-creative-flow” to help you in your process. At the end of every workshop we will have a critique. This is not an art critique you may be familiar with from art school, for example, as it is not product focused. We will take the time as a group to talk to and hear from each member about their experiences, their struggles, any “aha” moments, and give supportive feedback to each other. We use the important insight from others to reflect upon our own experiences and needs. You can expect to leave with ideas, energy, started pieces, new techniques, new inspiration and enthusiasm to bring to your workspace. You will not leave with a masterpiece but you will leave with some small pieces to take the energy you have found from the workshop. The workshop is 90 minutes in total. It is available currently at Root Studio (here) and soon to be at Columbia Art Center (more details to come!) Feeling stuck? Ready to change that? Tired of reading things to try and ready to dive into some practices? This could be for you! (C) 2018 Creatively, LLC Creatives: this week we are going to springboard again from our look at the creative cycle and creative personality character traits (if you haven’t already, I would recommend going back to look at the “Creative Personality Paradox” and the “Creative Cycle” posts for context) into some of the nuances in which it may impact you. Specifically: the ebbs and flows of creativity and birthing your creative work.
(I want to be sure to also introduce this concept with a clinical caveat: all human behavior exists on a spectrum, and most all behavior exists in some way in most people. When we call something clinical or diagnosable, we are saying certain behavior patterns become disruptive, and interfere with daily functioning in a certain way. When we talk about some of these creative energy cycles, I am talking about them as natural, not clinical. If you are unsure if any of these behaviors or cycles are disruptive or unhealthy for you, call me, email me, come sit in my chair- we need to talk about it.) We know that one of the paradoxically occurring trait pairs in creative people is productivity/rest. We know from our exploration of the creative cycle that we naturally oscillate between these two states. What I want you to understand, Creative, is that having periods of intense productivity and creative energy is normal and natural to creative people. Don’t spend energy fighting or dousing it- embrace it and use it! What is also natural and normal is a period of rest and less interest and energy in your creative pursuits- you will not have this level of interest, inspiration and excitement in your work but for so long- and necessarily so- because creating expends energy. Let’s consider two elements to this dynamic: reactivity and productivity: Reactivity: you cannot indefinitely sustain an intense period of creative energy (imagine sprinting) natural energy laws dictate that in proportion to energy expended will be energy absence or opposed. In other words, you are going to need to rest after this push. That leads me to- Productivity: by definition when you are creating something you are giving of yourself- your emotional, cognitive, neurological, physiological and other individual resources- you are partitioning some of these out to give birth to the new entity you are creating (think having a creative baby). This means you will be “less full” after you have done creative work, and will need to rest and restore yourself. Do you ever enjoy a period of intense creativity- thinking to yourself, “Yes! This is the level at which I want to work! This is how I want to create/produce,” only to feel exhausted, unmotivated, uninspired and discouraged shortly after? Do you feel like you have failed because you cannot sustain the original creative push? I want you to know this is normal, natural, and to let it happen. To rest and restore is an important part of your creative process, and will allow you to more fully engage in the next flow of work. What should you do during these lower energy, recovery periods? Creative people are emotional people. Too often what I see happening is that creative people punish themselves for the change in productivity, challenge the pieces they have produced and put them down, feel sluggish and anhedonia, and become depressed. They don’t know why they feel this way and blame and diagnose themselves. They may further deplete creative stores by trying to push through and back to the level of energy they were previously at without success and worsen their self esteem. This is obviously understandable, but what NOT to do. During the “ebbs” of creativity, what is important is to replenish. This is a time to focus more fully on the healing process of creating, rather than product oriented work. Play in a new or different medium with childlike curiosity. Dabble in and get inspired by other creative works. Tap into what energy stores feel low and listen to your body’s wisdom on what it needs to replenish these. There is no set length of time for ebbing and flowing creatively, not for groups of people and not even for individual people. You may experience any length of high and low productivity states. You will experience different strengths in your ebbing and flowing. Your task is to know yourself, recognize what you are experiencing, and pair it with the correct course of action. It’s a tangled web with lots of work attached- but so fulfilling, empowering and important to your ongoing wellness and longevity as a creative person. Do I need to give you my usual invitation to come to my chair to begin this important work? Let it percolate. Look for examples within yourself. I invite you to take control and create your happiest self. (C) 2018 Creatively, LLC |
get more from The Creativity CoursesLiking educational topics and knowing what's hot in creativity? Creatively has online courses, with an interactive creative community, coaching sessions and more in the Creativity Courses. Want these blogposts in a newsletter? Subscribe here, and get a free gift. Cindy Cisnerosis a Creativity Coach, Creativity Counselor and Professional Artist in Sykesville, Maryland. She provides Online Creativity Counseling in Maryland and Virginia, and Online Creativity Coaching throughout the USA, Canada and the UK. The information provided in this blog is from my own clinical experiences and training. It is intended to supplement your clinical care. Never make major life changes before consulting with your treatment team. If you are unsure of your safety or wellbeing, do not hesitate to get help immediately.
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