Nurture — Day 13-15
TRIGGER WARNING: I don’t normally include these, but the following post references childhood trauma—without venturing into any great detail. If you are particularly sensitive to these subjects, I ask that you don’t read this post.
I’ve decided to combine these three prompts as they are related in important ways:
Day 13: Describe a time when you were faced with a creative block, and how you overcame it. What strategies did you use to get back on track?
Day 14: Describe a moment when you had to step out of your comfort zone. What did you do, and how did it change you?
Day 15: Describe a moment when you were forced to confront a fear. What did you do to overcome it, and how did you feel afterwards?
One of the many things I’ve learned over life is that almost all “blocks” I experience—in emotions, creativity, or decision-making—have their root(s) in fear. We’re all familiar with the phrase “We fear the unknown…”. I would add a corollary to that:
We have learned to fear things we know to cause pain
I don’t fear the unknown nearly as much as I do those things, events, or persons that have harmed me. Repeated disappointment, expressed by myself or others, knowing that I’ve “missed the mark”, and that no-mans-land between exposure and invisibility have left me with a lattice-work of scars that continue to try and haunt me to this day. Alternately, I welcome the unknown like a new friend; I revel in being surprised. If anything, the small fear that I may experience is overcome by the potential of discovery.
I used to respond to fear by retreating to the safety of my “comfort zones”. As a child, I retreated to books and art. As a young adult, I retreated to the relative safety of being only as visible as I was expected to be in any given circumstance; I learned to change public faces with ease. I didn’t learn how I was damaging myself, and deepening the scars, until I undertook Art Therapy in the mid-90s. I referenced how life-changing this was in an earlier post (Day 4). When I started this program, I was fairly new to an in-patient program that addressed complex grief, depression, and other emotional affects that had been interfering with my life. I had barely begun excavating the roots of my issues, and was encouraged to use Art Therapy as an adjunct to therapeutic formats I was involved in. I had no comfort zones left…so I began by producing art that I thought would please the facilitator.
I remember being quite shocked and angered by her response to my first submissions. She said, “If you really want to waste your time painting pretty pictures, I won’t stop you…But, I have to wonder why you’re here if everything is this perfect…”. I was stunned into silence. I couldn’t react with anger as 1) she wasn’t wrong, and 2) I didn’t know how to react appropriately. Nor, could I just adopt a new public face as the staff operated on a reflection therapeutic model that encouraged patients to find their own solutions to problems. I soon realized that all, but one, of my much-used comfort zones were unavailable to me. I didn’t have my many public faces, I didn’t have a career to throw myself into, I didn’t have casual reading. All I had left was my art. In order to heal—which was the purpose of this whole exercise—I had to allow my inner children to paint with wild abandon. That was truly frightening in ways that I still find difficult to put into words…
Not to put too fine a point on it, but, my childhood was the polar opposite of “idyllic”. While the majority of art I created at the time reflected “innocence”, it did so precisely because I was escaping the hellscape of my childhood. Rather than re-creating what an inner child of an adult would be likely to make, I had to allow my inner children to fully express their fears, their hopes, their frights, their sadness…and their rage. Remember what I said earlier about what we fear? The possibility of giving any voice to these emotions was both fear of the unknown and a fear learned through repeated consequences. I did not know if I had the strength for this; but, I did know that I didn’t have the strength to continue as I had. I picked the unknown, trusting that I would have the support of others in that part of my journey.
It was raw. It was ugly. It was painful. It was rage-inducing.
It was, ultimately, the most healing I did in the shortest time possible.
I learned so much about who I was and what forces had shaped me. I learned why certain orange hues make me gag and why I always had to count the single set of stairs in my childhood home—forteen up and eleven down. I learned why I could “hear” certain colours and why others had a specific taste. I learned where my love of antique jade green started, why the phrase “purple feathers” made Marm chuckle, and why white was the antithesis of purity for me. I say I learned these things because remembering them involved having to learn them first. In learning, I began to remember who I had been as a child—that I had learned to present public faces at a very young age. I remembered…and felt…what it was to want to be an artist more than anything else in the world. I also remembered when my disabilities first began to affect my life. There’s just one problem with memories. They are much harder to file away when you’ve spent such time and energy excavating them. They tend to linger…
I’ve spent the 25+ years since I finished that portion of my therapy learning to re-integrate those memories—and everything attached to them—in my life.
I must say, while there was nothing inherently “comfortable” about the kind of art I created specific to therapy, the process…structure…predictable results became a kind of “comfort zone”. The pain, fear, rage, everything…being released…and recorded through images became almost habit-forming. One of the results was that I began to physically separate art I created as therapy from art that I created from a desire to simply create. This, as you can predict, led to a false categorization of what was “acceptable” for the outside world, and what wasn’t. The net result was the seeking-for-perfection that I’ve written about in other entries. It took me many years to realize that I had traded the prison of changing public faces for that of only presenting my “best” art to the public; one comfort zone just replaced another.
It would be dishonest to write that I’ve “solved” the complex relationship of:
Fear <—> Creative Block <—> Comfort Zone <—> Fear
I struggle with it most days. Most days, thankfully, I recognize this struggle for what it is—my reaction to important emotions that need to be given space to breathe, expression, and recognition that they are valid.
Rather than artificially separating private from public expressions, through my art, of my emotions, I’ve developed a habit over the past three-plus years that allows me to create work that is both healing and “commercial”.
I voice the fear in various art journals and sketchbooks—ignoring the more formal concepts of “art”.
I take note of the elements in that work: colours used, shapes that evolved, the play of light and shadow, how clearly the emotions are translated into a visual language.
I may choose to write about the experience—many of these blog entries started as sketchbook / journal entries.
I pick those sketches with the strongest emotional weight to use as inspiration or working copies for formal pieces.
Repeat as necessary.
I know that I’ve been successful if / when that specific fear has lessened to the point where it no longer affects me as strongly. Many of the pieces that I’ve highlighted on this site began as a reaction to some fear: (in)visibility, (not) meeting outside expectations, wasting valuable time, (not) working hard enough. Perfection still haunts me, but at a much reduced level. Now, I tend to see Perfection as a family member that gently reminds me when there’s room for improvement…if I choose to improve something. Perfection knows that he is free to come and go as he pleases.
Nothing is stopping him.
Nothing, but myself, is truly stopping me—from those fears that I can control.
The more time has passed, the more I’ve embraced that I must take advantage and ownership of those choices that I can control. I choose to look most fears in the face now and use them to inform future choices. As Frank Herbert reminds us in DUNE:
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
As always, be well Gentle Reader,
Gryph
