This is part two of my series here explaining how I manage being a creative person with a lot of limitations. This is a story about grace and some insight I’ve gained about being kind to the people who matter and yourself.
One of the biggest problems that creatives with Physical,Mental and other limitations face is the feels involved with not being able to create as much as they want or need to. I’m here to tell you, the best thing you can do about these feelings is be kind to yourself. In this post I’m going to share things I have found to help with this, as well as what work I did in therapy to help with this as well.
I don’t know about you but sometimes when I am not feeling my best I tend to get really down about how it affects my work. This often leads to me feeling really down on myself. I begin to have thoughts like, “If only my stupid body felt ok!” Or “Narcolepsy keeps me from doing so much, I hate that I am this way,” or “I’m having a bad mental health day/week/month and I’m so pissed I haven’t done anything creative! Why am I like this?” Or worst of all: “If only I was a stronger person I could work through this, other people have it worse! They still create, what’s my problem?”
It’s easy to have thoughts like this and put the blame on yourself completely especially if your own body or mind is working against you. How do you not take that personally, right? It’s easy to feel bad about yourself when compared to able-bodied people who are not suffering from mental illness or might be neurotypical if you are not. It’s also easy to see other people who DO suffer from these issues who are still creating or releasing art, and content, or making progress on their hobbies or projects of whatever sort. With all of this, it’s difficult to maintain a positive opinion or view of what you ARE able to accomplish.
I’m here to tell you, when you feel like this, these are the times you need to be kind to yourself or show yourself grace. Not only will you feel better emotionally, but it will also allow you to focus on feeling better or getting the rest or treatment you need whatever that may be, doctor care, personal care, sleep, whatever. The first thing I want to talk about is how to get past the feelings you might have if someone is pushing you too hard or doesn’t understand why you cannot create.
I think society is pretty toxic about “working through the tough times”, we are circling back to how many societies (especially America) are obsessed with toxic productivity.
We are told over and over again by people (sometimes important people or people we really love) and the media that we should be strong. “Have a stiff upper lip” “You have to push through” or things like, “So and so has such and such problem and they still do ….” The media and sometimes our family are stuffed with stories of people who “beat the odds” or “succeeded despite the adversity or challenges they faced.” These stories can be great for giving hope and as a little motivation and there is nothing wrong with that. This sort of anecdote or encouragement is usually meant to help and is usually given or told with the best intentions. But it can be quite ableist and harmful for people who are struggling. It’s ok and normal to feel upset or uncomfortable with these sorts of situations. You will find most people who have not experienced the pain and anger and disappointment of being unable to be creative simply don’t really understand. In this instance you actually have to do one more thing, I know you have enough on your plate but this will help you. You need to give these people who are trying to help you or understand what you are going through or even people who maybe don’t have your best interest in mind, you need to give all these people grace. You need to release them from the expectation that they will understand or do the exact right thing when trying to support you or help you feel better. You need to accept the intention of it’s good and take that in, if these people have bad or predatory intentions you need to remove them from your life, even if they are a major part of your life. Your energy needs to be saved for yourself and dealing with things like doctor visits, rest other sorts of treatments that help make you feel better or simply be alive. So basically accept the intention and let go of the message if it is toxic or not helpful.
So with that being said, how do you deal with people who keep on telling you things that are not helpful or make you feel worse? This is an obvious but scary answer. You HAVE to confront them if you plan to keep them in your life.
This can be insanely difficult or scary if you are close to this person or people, especially if you love them like a partner or spouse or member of your family you actually get along with in all other aspects. You have to not only release these feelings by saying what you feel but also by saying them out loud and confronting the person who may be hurting you in a way they don’t know you validate your own feelings. Validating your boundaries and feelings is a way to show yourself grace and take care of yourself. These sorts of conversations are important, and I recommend if you have to confront a loved one like this that you seek help from a therapist so the process goes as smoothly as possible with the least feelings hurt.
But some basic rules for this could look like, not using accusing language, expressing that you appreciate what they are trying to do, explain clearly, calmly, and confidently about why what they are doing hurts you. The other thing is to allow them to speak, and really try to take in their apology or their reasons for doing or saying what they are. You may discover different feelings about the situation you may not. If you need to set up time limits for each person to speak. Another thing that might help is for you to do research if need be, I also find it’s useful to make a list of talking points so I don’t get off topic. Remember it’s ok to have boundaries and it’s ok to enforce them. Give these people grace, it’s another way to give yourself understanding care, and grace as well.
If the person repeatedly ignores your boundaries or keeps hurting you and won’t listen, it’s time to let them go. If you are sick or need care treatment or rest, you don’t have the energy (some say “the spoons”) to deal with them no matter how much you love them. Obviously, there are very bad situations you might find yourself in where a person is abusing you or you cannot separate from this person safely. This sort of situation is not what I’m talking about and I recommend seeking professional help and trusted friends and others to help in your case. Sorry just thought I needed to address that.
So sometimes cutting people out is a way to show yourself care. By doing this you are investing in your recovery or treatment, and by accepting you are not a bad person for leaving relationships of any sort that do not function well or cause you harm or stress, you are showing yourself grace. And grace often can help us feel better in a small or even big way.
Being kind to yourself can take many forms, but grace is a little more specific. Grace can take a lot of forms but the basic idea I operate under is that Grace is interacting with the world and yourself in a gentle, kind, and forgiving way. Obviously, you don’t want to be a doormat, you don’t want to follow these tenets to an obsessive degree because that will not do you good, but these ideals I feel help make life a lot more pleasant.
Specifically when it comes to being a person with any chronic illness or a disability or any mental or physical thing that prevents you from being creative, I think it comes down to a few things.
Forgiving your body or mind for not being what you want it to be, or for not having it function in a “normal” way. You need to remember your body in the end houses “you” and focusing on its faults serves no real purpose outside of organizing care and treatment for it. The body isn’t separate from you, it is not an entity, it’s a container. The body isn’t doing this out of spite or for any real personal or emotional reason. This is especially true for mental illness. The body was just put together differently or has gotten sick. The body is not punishing you, the body is being punished itself by genetics, environmental factors, or other things. Your body is part of you and I find keeping my thoughts about my body’s functions good or bad logical and analytical sometimes really can help. I’m not saying you cannot ever feel sad or angry about the way your body is not functioning or an illness you may have or get. It’s important to feel feelings. But I’ve found a lot of chronically I’ll people including myself start to personify the body itself and treat it like an enemy out to destroy them, and most of the time these sorts of thoughts only hurt the person thinking them. Obviously, you should think what you want as long as it keeps you safe happy, and comfortable, I’m simply telling you things that worked for me for you to consider trying. Thought sometimes I do joke about my brain being a haunted house. My next point is that you need to maintain a sense of humor.
When my feelings about my illnesses and physical issues become overwhelming, I find humor really helps me break out of circular thought loops and obsessive thoughts that lead to anxiety and worse things. Sometimes I even make light of the mental and physical issues that plague me. Seeing the absurdity in life can help some people. Again, this too can be taken too far, so you really have to keep it in balance, but humor can really help. Sometimes the humor I find that helps is not self-deprecating, but just something I find amusing. I love to watch Twilight with Rifftrax or a good Neil Breen movie when I’m feeling bad. These movies are almost surreal and really seem to take me out of suffering. But this will probably be something personal to you. You can’t live in a fantasy world all the time, unfortunately, but sometimes it helps to escape for a bit.
Forgiving yourself is also a big part of grace. You need to accept things you cannot control. You need to forgive your mind or body for not working the way you want it to. If you have made a mistake, like let’s say you are trying to stop drinking so much caffeine, and you mess up and drink a ton of coffee. You need to accept that it happened and forgive yourself and then you can shelve it and move on and try again. Obviously coffee and caffeine are a dumb example, but this can really relate to anything. For me getting over self-harm at the height of my mental illness was like this. I held myself accountable when I would relapse, but I also forgave myself if I stumbled. I tried to be kind and forgiving to myself, and I can definitely say it worked better than beating myself up about my mistakes or missteps. The same was true when I was/am trying to repair my relationship with food after many years of suffering from disordered eating. You have to also forgive yourself for being ill in any way, and honestly, you have to accept the illness or mistake or whatever you are grappling with. I’m not saying you have to be happy about it, not at all, I’m also not saying you shouldn’t try to change negative aspects of physical or mental problems (that you have control of, some things you can’t change obviously), Simply that you should not expect perfection from yourself. Changing and healing are both journies and journies are never without ups and downs. Acceptance and forgiveness are key. Like I said just a little while back, your body or mind is not doing this to spite you, it doesn’t work like that. The next thing will specifically be talking about mental illness which can bleed into physical health as well.
I find that sometimes it is helpful to know that my mind is sort of acting on its own. When I finally started getting better from schizoaffective disorder, knowing that it wasn’t my inner person causing the hallucinations and voices was very comforting. In mental illness, your mind is not working correctly and this is not a reflection of who you are as a person, it doesn’t reflect what your soul is like. You didn’t choose to have depression/anxiety/psychosis etc. I also think it is helpful to move away from thoughts of mental illness being a punishment. You might believe in this sort of thing, but I think you can have faith in a higher power or the universe or whatever and still understand that what you suffer with is not put in place to punish you, even if you have done some bad things in the past. I know it’s very common especially for people with psychosis to think this, so I thought I would mention it. A lot of people may not like or agree with this stance, but I am of the belief that we sometimes have no control over getting mentally ill or mental illness getting worse. This is especially true if you have a trauma-induced mental illness. It’s hard to remember this, but it’s not your fault you are ill, yes choices you make can exacerbate the illness, but sometimes even those actions might actually be beyond your control. I know this sounds scary, but I find it comforting that it’s not the inner “me” wanting this or truly causing this. It’s genetics, the environment outside of myself, and other things that I really have little control over. Knowing you did not choose to be sick can be quite powerful. It’s easier to be kind to yourself with a mental illness if you truly accept that most likely it’s really not your fault and no greater thing is punishing you. (I know some religions might disagree, but I don’t think it’s a hot take to say that view is going to make things worse?)
The last thing I will touch on here is the big one. A big part of loving and forgiving and accepting and being kind to yourself is… FEELING THE FEELINGS. To truly take care of yourself, it is my opinion that you need to allow yourself to feel the feelings. (I know you are getting impatient thinking, this is all great but how does this relate to creativity? We are almost there I promise!) So if you are feeling mad about something, you need to allow that to exist, are you angry at yourself, OK that’s OK but you need to feel it, accept it, and finally release it. Are you feeling sad or tired, that is OK. But you need to allow it to breathe a little, you might even need to explore it. Even though you need to forgive yourself and be kind to yourself, I think the first stage of this is working through and processing our feelings. If you don’t feel comfortable doing this alone or feel unsafe doing this I recommend therapy but if you can’t afford or don’t trust therapy talking to a friend you really, really trust can be helpful. Don’t want to get vulnerable at all with another person? Write it in a journal or a blog. Writing can be such a good tool for many things. Writing about your feelings and experiences can be like a purge, very cathartic, but creative writing can also be enjoyable and can help your mood. I find journalling to be very helpful, especially when I am not feeling my best. I find if you write things down you not only have that release but you may also re-read these entries (only if you feel comfortable doing this)and you may find insights or patterns that may help you in the future. Being open to emotions is a big thing, especially if you are a creative person. As with everything I’ve talked about so far, this can go too far and become harmful, so again I’m going to say it’s all about finding a balance that works for you. If you physically cannot write or are too sick to go through feelings at the moment, that’s OK too. Doing nothing sometimes is so helpful. Sometimes a person just needs to stare at memes or watch Netflix or nap, or just zone out. But I would encourage you to try to exorcise feelings and maybe journal when you are able.
How do you start showing yourself grace? you just do it one day. An exercise could be like the gratitude journal I mentioned in my previous post, or it could be saying three nice things about yourself a day. It could mean for you, just celebrating the wins, as small as they might be, and forgiving the losses. You don’t really have to overthink it, it’s just forgiving, love and kindness towards
yourself and others. It seems so far away sometimes, I feel far away from these feelings at times. Especially if I’m sick from medication or unable to create.
So we finally got here, what you really want to know. How the heck does this relate to creativity? Well, the secret (I think) is that it is very connected. Our bodies and minds are the vessels that create our art, our writing, our music, our puppets, our knitting, our essays, and our creations. So naturally when you have a better connection between your body mind and very core being you feel better and can create more. Easy I know? But all the things I have mentioned before this are also ways to help your creativity. When you learn to show yourself grace, it’s much easier to do things like, accept mistakes you have made in your art, and not let small defeats or failures ruin your creative drive, and also will teach you dedication and also alternative perspectives on what you create. If you are more accepting of yourself, what you create will in turn be something you can also find more joy in. When you like yourself more, even the bad art you make becomes special. When you learn to live through processing feelings and thoughts and not letting them well up inside you, you most of the time improve the process of your art. And match all this up with gratitude and you will learn to respect the things you make. When you believe everything serves an important purpose, it can work like a self-fulfilling prophecy and everything you make will become meaningful for different reasons.
When you feel terrible and cannot create, instead of beating yourself up for it, you literally have to think of things in this way, “I’m too sick right now to create, but when I am able to create I know I will make something I value for some reason.” There are some times when you just cannot create for whatever reason, and once you forgive your body or mind for that things will be more comfortable for you. Because what happens without acceptance of the fact that at some points you won’t be able to create is you place this HUGE amount of pressure on yourself to create something amazing when you do feel well enough to create. I see this a lot, especially within myself that people who are chronically ill creatives go into major periods of art block because the illness makes them so hungry to create that they are afraid of “wasting time making something bad” or “failing”. Because the chronically ill creative has such limits on their time, they sometimes become paralyzed by the idea of “really making it count” when they are able to create. Not everyone does this, but a lot of people I have known including myself, do.
For me when I was going through a major art block for like, years, this was part of the reason why it happened. I felt pressure to “do it right”. It was like the pressure I was putting on my mind and body to “work right” carried over to my writing and painting and music. Once I accepted that my mind wasn’t going to allow me to create the same amount as a normal person or as much as I wanted to, then I went through the emotions, mourned the loss for a little bit, then finally acceptance came, and then at very least, I forgave my mind and body for not being “normal” or “ideal”. I vowed to try my hardest to stay well, and do everything realistically in my power to help myself…but I had a mental thought, “I need to let go of this anger, fear, and anxiety about the limited time I have and what I create.” That was the very day I began to paint again after a couple of years of not creating anything. I painted two ugly pictures that were not well done. But I was like, “That’s OK,” and I forgave myself completely for being ill and also for choices I had made that had not helped the situation. I began to “forgive” my artwork too. I came to the mind that I had to be kind to what I created as well.
When I feel ill or too tired or too messed up o create now, I always tell myself it will be ok, and I forgive my body and mind and show it grace. Once you stop fighting like this with your body or mind or both, the stress level and pressure go down. This ties in with being grateful for things of course too, but self-acceptance and forgiveness lead to you being more open-minded about your work, and in turn other people’s work. you have to be patient with yourself, because yes, you will be ill a lot. But there will be times you are able to work as well. And when you treat yourself nicely during the down times, it makes the creation periods so much easier. When you free yourself from obsessing over the periods you cannot create the periods you can are much better I have found. I also find leaning into your feelings may produce better art. Perhaps the way you are is important, sick or not. Perhaps this is just part of your story, this struggle with illness, and maybe because you appreciate these “well times” limited as they may be, you are in a unique position with your art. I really feel part of forgiving yourself and taking the pressure off of the limited times you may have with your creativity is acknowledging this is a part of your experience that colors your art and it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Your voice is unique in part because of this, not in spite of it all. Once you forgive you can begin to appreciate things even more than before, because you can truly focus on your work instead of being bogged down with the feelings and anger or sadness that come with having a chronic illness. The important thing I find is to not judge your timeline against others who also have struggles and to also accept your own limits and celebrate what you can do, instead of what you can’t.
I know this won’t relate 1:1 with everyone. This is just a long ADHD ramble about my thoughts and what allows me to keep creating and feeling good creating even though I really have very limited time due to the illnesses I have. It’s not always easy, but be gentle and patient with yourself. Do not give up, I really feel it is possible to beat art block and find a way to continue being creative even with chronic illness. Now obviously some people are so ill that none of this is applicable, for those people I recommend therapy or reading more about how to work in more severe situations. But I do recommend these things if you are still able to create sometimes, or if you are thinking about becoming creative again. All right I have babble enough. I’m kind of also writing all this as a self-help exercise for myself, so even if no one reads this, that’s OK!