~ How healing from trauma rekindles your creative spark ~
I’d always loved writing as a kid. When I was in year 4 I declared I would become a writer. My seat was next to the snotty unpopular boy of the class who was in love with all the girls and sat way too close for comfort. Despite this, I was determined not to let his unwanted attention distract me from my work. I was a bit of a teacher’s pet and doing well at school gave me the validation and pride I was craving.
In year 6 I started writing a book. It began as a co-creation with a neighbourhood friend who fast gave up on the dream – it had less pull for her than did playing and having fun with the boys on the street. I kept at it, enjoying the sense of accomplishment it gave me.
Fast forward to year 12 and I had taken up extension 1 & 2 English. I loved analysing classic literature in extension 1 but extension 2 gave me a more exciting opportunity: to write a short story. But year 11 and 12 were the hardest of my childhood life. I was suffering from intense heartbreak as my best friend (and really, only friend), had abandoned me and shut me out, without me knowing why. My confusion amplified my grief as I never had the opportunity to understand and get closure. Seeing her every day, having fun with her new friends, while I remained friendless and lonely was so much that I became depressed.
For a while I continued on excelling at school work, because it was one of the only things that provided some enjoyment. By the time I was writing the short story for my HSC, I was exhausted. Weighed down by an increasingly heavy heart, I struggled more and more to put words on the page. I’d lost my vitality, my spark, and even writing became something I no longer found joy from.
On top of that, the pressure of having to perform in a creative way was completely misaligned. How could I force creativity? Creativity came from the happy and expansive place within me, a place in which I could barely access anymore. My writing, and my senses, became dull to the colour of the world. My internal world was dark and slow moving, while outside of me it was chaotic, erratic, as if on another time-space continuum. Little seemed stable anymore. I even saw my first mental health practitioner, a Psychiatrist, who simply put me on anti-depressants which further drained the colour from my life.
Creativity thrives when we feel stable within ourselves. When we lose this sense of stability, we don’t feel safe, and we operate more from the sympathetic (fight/flight) nervous system. In this state, creativity is almost impossible to access. We simply don’t need to be creative to fight or flight, we only need to be instinctual and reactive to remediate the threat as quickly as possible.
After the threat of the HSC was over, I didn’t go back to normal. I didn’t enjoy writing again, really up until now, 14 years later. It has taken me a long time to re-adapt, as an adult, to move out of survival mode, making space for my creative-mode. It’s a joy to have access to this beautiful space within me again. It feels so expansive, so alive.
Would you like help getting out of fight/flight so you can access your innate creativity? Use the booking button for a 1:1 appointment! 🙂
