Dealing With Our Anxieties and Stress To Be More Creative
Reframing challenges can help shift their negative impact
We can run into any number of stressors in living a creative life: auditioning for a movie role, presenting a book proposal, agreeing to do a book or music tour.
And just being a creative person, according to a number of studies, likely means being more susceptible to anxiety.
Creativity coach, author and psychologist Eric Maisel, PhD, notes about the stress challenges of artists:
“Some people become doctors, lawyers, accountants, or marketing executives. Some people stay at home and raise a family.
“But millions of people make another sort of choice, maybe only as part-time employment if you count the money they earn but as their full-time identity: they become artists. And they struggle.”
In one of the chapters (“The Stress Key”) of his book “Making Your Creative Mark,” he writes about how the creative life can be an ongoing source of stress – if we interpret or frame it as such.
He explains, “A stressor is anything, positive or negative, that makes a demand on us.
“Stress is our body’s physical and psychological reaction to those demands — on the physical level, it is a buildup of chemicals that keeps increasing as the stress persists.
“The stress buildup is the reaction, and the demand (or stressor) is the cause.”
But, he continues, it can be helpful to think about how we frame the demands.
“The demand can actually be positive. Imagine your editor calling you up and telling you that she wants a new book from you.
“That’s lovely — unless you can’t see how on earth you can fit writing it into your schedule. It is lovely to be wanted, but her call still creates a demand — and stress.”
Shifting how we respond can lead to experiencing stressors in another way.
“We can normalize or even reframe many demands as opportunities, and when we do, the associated stress vanishes.”
He cites an example:
“If you are holding it as lovely to make three calls today to gallery owners instead of as something dreadful that you wish you could avoid at all costs, you have changed the demand characteristic of the situation to one of opportunity.”
Continued in a much longer chapter excerpt: The Stress Key, by Eric Maisel – from his book Making Your Creative Mark: Nine Keys to Achieving Your Artistic Goals.
[Photo: ‘Tea worry’ – used in several of my articles including Dealing With Worry and Anxiety To Be More Creative.]
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Author and teacher Elizabeth Gilbert admits:
“The only reason I can speak so authoritatively about fear is that I know it so intimately. I know every inch of fear, from head to toe. I’ve been a frightened person my entire life.”
“You do not need your fear in the realm of creative expression. Seriously, you don’t.”
But, she adds:
“Just because you don’t need your fear when it comes to creativity, that doesn’t mean fear won’t show up.
“Trust me, your fear will always show up, especially when you’re trying to be inventive or innovative.
“Your fear will be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome.”
From her book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear.
See post with podcast: Fear and courage and being creative – What does Elizabeth Gilbert say?
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The power of joy as reframing
Maria Hill (Founder, Magic of Joy | Sensitive Evolution) writes:
“Since joy is a connecting energy, it is also a friendly one. It helps us to be friendly to ourselves and any wounds that need healing.
It helps us reframe and transform our choices, so they are truly friendly.
A great example is the issue of self-care. Self-care is often framed as self-indulgence or even irresponsible. However…you may notice that the better you take care of yourself, the more energy you have to create joy in the world which everyone benefits from.”
From her article 5 Ways Joy Challenges The Gravitational Pull Of Negativity.
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“Anxiety or high stress is actually pretty common for highly sensitive people. Much of it has to do with an overloaded sensitive nervous system.”
Psychotherapist and author Julie Bjelland writes about why creative, highly sensitive people may be vulnerable:
"Imagine there is a motor on the inside of you. Some people have a fast motor and some people a slow motor and then of course there is everything in between.
"Most people whose motor is too fast experience feelings of anxiety."
She lists some possible consequences:
Reactive emotionally
Overwhelmed
Irritable
More annoyed or agitated
Lose creativity
Might lack focus and feel all over the place...
From article How to Relieve Stress and Anxiety When You’re a Highly Sensitive Person - with a podcast episode, and link to her free class "Highly Sensitive People and Anxiety."