What follows is A Tiny Guide For Big Creative Feels. Things that you can do if you find yourself in the midst of emotion when making and creating that threatens to derail you, or perhaps even stops you showing up in the first place. And we can’t be having that. Not with how fabulous you are. To think of you not creating is a travesty.
Let’s dive in.
Get curious, not spooked about your insides
If you find yourself in the midst of a big feeling, become a curiosity sleuth of your own insides. Is what you are experiencing a familiar pattern?
It might have started with a thought or with a feeling, but if the cycle your observing always plays out the same way, or if you can predict that ‘this will happen when I do this’ with a certain degree of regularity, what you’ve identified is a fight–flight response. A reflex pattern that’s historic, but might not be anything to do with this here moment.
So, it’s starts by giving yourself grace. These patterns are persuasive and they can feel absolutely “right” but the moment you bring awareness in, you create space for choice, a space where new possibilities of experience can arise.
Choosing your next action isn’t a denial of the feeling. It’s an acknowledgement of what’s real for right now (and what’s not), and an intentional decision of how you would like to move forward.
It could equally be that the experience of creating has woken your body up. Remember, creativity begins with novelty, and we can label that novelty as an idea, a spark, a possibility. Novelty is activating and expansive; it has it’s own energy. If you equate a feeling of safety with a neutral feeling body this can set off all of your alarms.
But more often than not, nothing’s wrong. This is what it means to live in a body that’s creating. All our tendrils feeling out into the world, deciding what to make next, deciding how to fuse our ideas into the creative matrix and send the result back into the creative matrix.
To feel that is your body coming to the party. This is your body being informed. It’s really quite delightful.
You are the driver of this creative showboat and you get to stop at any point. But if that’s the case, stop because you want to, not because you feel like you have no choice.
Shake it out. Move the energy through.
If the feeling your experiencing comes with a lot of energy, that energy needs to move. You can’t think your way out of a physical experience. You’re not abandoning your creative work you’re simply clearing out the chemical cocktail of fight–flight hormones that aren’t conducive to creativity.
It doesn’t have to be dramatic: a quick walk, shaking out your arms, jumping up and down, rolling yourself out. Anything that helps move the charge through so your system doesn’t short circuit and your brain can start to think straight again.
Come back to your body
It’s easy to lose your edges in the midst of big emotion. Patting or squeezing all over- from head to toe, side to side, back to front- helps consolidate your insides and ground you back inside the edges of your skin. Applying pressure to the body always wakes up your sensory receptors that help place you in the here and now, interrupting old patterns that pull you into unhelpful places and re-positioning you in the present moment.
Grow your capacity for feeling bit by bit
Capacity isn’t a heroic leap; it’s a slow widening that happens over time. Two minutes here, three minutes there, staying with the experience just a little longer each time.
This is how you expand your creative capacity; not by forcing calm, or a requiring specific state of being to get things done, but by gently increasing your ability to stay with the emotions and feelings that arise as part of the creative process.
Treat feeling as information, not instruction
Feeling will always arrive. That’s the nature of a body sensing their way through the world. Your job is to decide whether it’s something to pay attention to or just your body shifting gears.
If you can create a little wiggle room for choice, you can to decide how to move into the next moment.
Let humour and play interrupt the cycle
I know that the second I lose my jokes and my smile disappears the situation has become dire. And even if nothing about my circumstances has changed, if I can laugh about it, something in me has lightened. A situation that once felt immovable opens up the smallest crack. A tiny space where joy can leak back in. And where I’ve opened just enough myself to let it find me.
We have to figure out a way to take the situation seriously whilst holding ourselves lightly.
What’s more, if you want to re-find your creative brain, humour is the way back.
By the way, how do you make a tissue dance?
Put a little boogie in it.
You’re welcome.
Happy creating,
xx Jane