Creativity as a coping strategy

Things we can do when we don't know what to do

May 31, 2024

Hey friends,

I wanted to start today’s post with one of my favourite poems, Wild Geese by Mary Oliver.

Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

As I write this, the sun has just emerged from behind the clouds. The rains have finally come, bringing much-needed relief to the lands and my soul alike. I can hear birdsong and the pitter-patter of the drops on the tin roof.

I just made a fresh pot of coffee and a cup of herbal tea, which feels decadent. They’re here, steaming away next to me, and the flame of my candle is flickering, even though there’s no wind. I’m cosy and warm inside my house, and I’m wearing my dressing gown and slippers because I can, even though it’s 11.26 am on a Wednesday.

I spoke last week about romanticising our lives, and this week I wanted to explore that a little further by talking about all the ways we can lean on our creativity as a regenerative coping strategy when things get hard.

Never-before-seen photo of me trying to romanticise my life by wearing a dress and going out in search of wildflowers. Funnily enough, I hated every single photo at at the time but I actually kind of like this one now.

Maladaptive coping strategies

I’ve touched on it before, but these past few weeks have been tough. Scratch that, these last few years have been tough. Not just because of this Alzheimer’s journey and everything else that’s going on in the world, but also because I’m in the process of trying to actively rewrite a lot of my childhood coping mechanisms.

As children, many of us learn maladaptive coping strategies. These include things like procrastination, perfectionism, people-pleasing, escapism, suppressing our emotions, avoiding confrontation, shutting down when things get hard, holding onto guilt, self-sabotage, and even self-resentment.

As adults, we may start to notice all the ways these behaviours aren’t serving us, but often they’re so deeply ingrained that we have to actively work to override them. It takes time and practice. A bit like trying to reprogram ourselves to use our non-dominant hand.

In my case, these last few years have forced me to confront and examine a lot of these ingrained behaviours and the ways they’ve been holding me back. I’ve been doing my best, but when things get sticky and the cracks appear, I often fall back into the default self-sabotaging patterns.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've received a bunch of shitty news from my family, who live on the other side of the world. So much of it is out of my control, but I hate knowing my loved ones are suffering.

As a result, I’ve found myself slipping right back into my old ways. I've become a perfectionist fiend with my work. I’ve been overly self-critical, pushed anything pleasure-inducing or cup-filling to the back burner, and carried guilt around like a comfort blanket.

It sucks, but at least by noticing it I can change it.

Historically, my coping mechanisms were very different.

At 15, I escaped life by going into it; lying about my age to get my tongue pierced and getting drunk in the park. Dying my hair, sneaking into nightclubs with borrowed IDs and scandalous clothes.

At 18, I was fearless; crowdsurfing at festivals, cliff-jumping into the ocean, hitchhiking through Europe.

At 23, after one of my best friends died, I started flipping coins and flying to the other side of the world on a whim; chucking on a safety hat and getting stuck into disaster relief work, all just to feel alive. To feel worthy of feeling alive.

And then, at 29, I arrived here and my mum was diagnosed with young-onset Alzheimer’s and none of that worked anymore.

Instead, I felt like I had to be a dutiful daughter and worker to make up for all the guilt of being here and not there. Like I had to pay my dues and walk on my knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting for all the years of fun and wonder and adventure I’d had. To make up for all the ways my mum felt like I'd let her down.

Me aged 16, going to get yet another piercing at my favourite tattoo studio in Brighton. It was called Penetration, which says it all really.

It felt as if this was my comeuppance; the collapsed ceiling that people - who’d never even been in my shoes - told me was coming. Things like: “It won't last. Make the most of it while you can because real life will catch up with you, eventually”.

I don’t think I'll ever truly understand why people feel the need to put others down to make themselves feel better. But I also wish I hadn’t taken their words to heart quite so literally.

My self-martyring didn’t actually help anyone. Not my mum, not my family, not my partner, and definitely not me.

After years of struggling, I realised that being down in the dumps all the time, an utter perfectionist about everything, and rarely doing anything for me because my loves ones were suffering and I didn't think I deserved anything nice, only meant I had nothing to give those who were actually reliant on me. And that wasn't good for anyone.

Instead, I needed to do the opposite. I needed to actively do things to fill my cup so I could help others without bleeding myself dry.

I realised that when everything feels like it's gone to shit, one of the best things we can do is seek out and double down on joy. Find ways to make lemonade and give the soft animal of our body what it needs so we can keep going - both for ourselves and for all the other people who need us.

The Great Molasses Flood of 1919

This week, I ended up down another curiosity wormhole, reading about the Great Molasses Flood of 1919.

Following a cold snap in January 1919, a massive 15-meter-by-27-meter tank of molasses burst. A wave of molasses - eight metres high at its peak - rolled through the streets of Boston at an estimated 35mph (56 km/hr). It took out houses, cars, horses, dogs, and people. And then it hardened up and went super sticky, making it all but impossible to clean up.

Months after the event - in which 21 people died - Boston was still sticky. Public transport, pavements, payphones, people’s houses; the molasses had managed to eke its way into every possible crack.

Years later, the city still smelled like molasses on hot summer days.

Without Warning, Molasses Surged Over Boston 100 Years Ago — The *Boston Daily Globe* on January 16, 1919. *Boston Daily Globe*, Boston Public Library

I don’t know about you, but right now it feels a bit like we’re all caught up in that same kind of stickiness. Like it’s hard to avoid it. Everything feels heavy and weird and a bit icky.

As a society, we’re being exposed to horrors beyond our comprehension, and so much of it is out of our control. Our psyches are trying to process all of the shit going on in the world, but then we’re still having to show up for work and life every day.

We still have to go to the shop and buy groceries, brush our teeth, walk our dogs, and go through the silly little motions of being human. People are still getting married, bringing children into the world, falling in love, celebrating, and having the best days of their lives, while we're watching others have their worst, livestreamed into our living rooms.

It all feels like such a ridiculous paradox. But I guess that is being human, too.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us back to this poem. And the creative coping mechanisms I alluded to before.

Creativity as a coping mechanism

What do we do when we don't know what to do?

When something actively happens and our worlds as we know them fall apart and things get really challenging, we have to go back to the basics, like focusing on the initial clean-up.

Things like physical rest and food come first. Then work and other things we need to survive, and exercise, maybe. But things like creativity - things that are seen as novelties or “nice-to-haves” rather than essentials - fall through the cracks.

This is also often the case when something doesn't actively happen, but we don't have much energy and feel overwhelmed, exhausted, and apathetic, or feel like we don't deserve to do nice things. Like everything is just… sticky and we can't seem to move past it.

Which is exactly where I was, just a few years ago.

Slowly, though, in the same way Mary Oliver talks about the world offering itself to our imaginations, I opened back up to the world.

I let my curiosity take over. I let myself look out the window again. I switched off my judgement and watched the leaves of the trees rustling in the wind; the birds flying through the sky; the rotation of the earth bringing sunsets and stars and sunrises.

Day by day, I let myself fall back in love with the magic of it all. And, in the process realised, no matter what else was going on in my 3D reality, being here on this beautiful planet surrounded by nature was as big a part of the human experience as all the suffering and the struggles.

Creative coping strategies can be as simple as going out and watching the sunset

Creative rest

Recently, neuroscientists have deemed that creativity is just as important as rest. It’s actually now seen as one of the seven types of rest, along with physical, mental, sensory, emotional, social, and spiritual.

All of these are regenerative - ie helping us to fill our cups so that we have more to give the world. However, the word rest is a bit of a misnomer, given our action-obsessed society. These types of rest include exercise and social activities that fill our cups, as well as creative practice.

It’s more about leaning into the things that rejuvenate us rather than drain us.

When things are hard, we almost forget about the limitless capacity we have for awe and wonder - the part that says “Hey look, it’s a rainbow!” or gets distracted by the reflections inside a raindrop.

At its most basic element, creative rest about finding those things that we love and lift us up. The things that reminds us that there’s a whole world full of beauty and wonder right in front of us; from the sun and the moon to the plants that grow in the cracks of the pavement.

Filling our creative cups

The next step in the creative cup-filling journey is to take creative action - although you’ll want to start small.

Think of it like exercise. Just like you can’t walk out the door and run a marathon or lift the heaviest weights at the gym without any training, you can’t expect to run straight into massive creative projects.

And if your work, like mine, is classed as creative, then you probably need something outside of that that can be your creative rest.

Creative activities like doodling, knitting, nature journalling, filling in a page of a colouring book, creating a mandala or a sculpture out of leaves, twigs, and other found objects, building a sand castle, or getting arty with your camera and taking photos for fun, rather than documentation, can all be a great first step.

You want something that helps you tap into that fun state of play - like the beginner’s mindset I wrote about before. You want it to be engaging enough to keep you entertained, even just for five minutes, but not enough for the critical part of your mind to kick in.

It’s a fine line to walk, but when you get it right, you’ll feel the difference; like lemonade and water.

In this case, though, lemonade is five minutes worth of creative play and water is five minutes worth of scrolling on your phone or scanning through Netflix.

Have a go. Just find something so simple and so easy that you want to do it. And then, the more you do it, the more you'll see that awe and magic and wonder everywhere, and the more your cup will be filled and ready to give back to this beautiful, magical, wonderful world.

Taking photos of flowers also can counts as creative rest

Questions to ponder

What does your soft animal body want right now?
Are you trying to be good when you don’t need to be?
Are you trying to repent for something you don’t need to repent for?
What is your imagination most intrigued by at the moment?
Is there a creative practice that is calling you? Is there something you can do right now with what you have available to you and to hand to kickstart this creative practice?

And now, many, many hours and multiple iterations since I started this, I’m going to call it. I could try cutting it down and killing more darlings, like taking out the Boston Molasses Flood, but honestly, I don’t really want to.

It’s enough. I’m enough.

What a week. Be kind to yourselves, my loves. This life isn’t easy.

Thinking of you,

PS: If this has brought up some stuff in you and you’d like to explore it further, then I offer creative mentoring sessions where we can do just that. I offer discounts for all my Substack subscribers and free 15-minute discovery calls where we can get to know each other to see if we’ll be a good fit. Feel free to drop me a line or check out my website for more info.

PPS: I very recently took the huge step and turned on paid subscriptions. For now, I’m keeping everything in front of the paywall, however, I have big dreams for this space, including sharing more personal posts about the ins and outs of building a creative business and hosting community creative hours. If you’re feeling called to and able to support me and would like to be part of this growing community, I’d love to have you.

Alternatively, you can buy me a coffee as a token of your support. I don’t take any of this for granted and massively appreciate it and all of you! Writing these isn’t always easy - and usually takes a lot longer than I envisaged - but it is still one of the main highlights of my week. I'm so grateful you're all here.