Getting Creative

Therapy, art and Glass Blowing

In therapy this week, we talked a lot about art and creativity and how vital it has been for me in terms of my ability to grow and change. The conversation started because I was talking about the glass blowing course I had been on at the weekend and how much I had learned.

I have been in therapy on and off since I was sixteen. What I have noticed this time around is that I am experiencing huge, positive shifts that are changing me in ways I never thought would be possible for someone like me. It’s not just me that’s noticing it either. Other people have commented on the differences. It’s genuinely remarkable.

I have been thinking about what the difference is this time. Of course, I have a brilliant therapist who totally gets me, which helps. The therapeutic process is much more collaborative, rather than me being ‘fixed’, which is a hugely important part of it. There is no suggestion of me being broken or beyond saving either.

I am also on a low dose of anti-depressant which gives me a stable, emotional platform from which to build rather than having to excavate up to a given level of normal from the basement of despair. I think of my meds as stabilisers. I’m still riding the bike, I’m just far less likely to wobble off into a ditch before I get where I want to go.

I also made a commitment to myself to use the time and resources I had been given to work past a baseline level of wellness, which is where I usually have to stop. I wanted to see if I could make significant inroads into achieving better mental health than ‘that’ll do until the wheels drop off again.’

The main difference though, is that I am using my creative life to support my mental and emotional life in a way that I never have before and that’s allowing me to connect to my body in ways I never have before. Always in the past, any therapeutic work has been about the state of what’s in my head rather than about me as a whole person. Mind but not body. Body but not mind.

I had tried. I had flogged away at all the usual recommendations; fresh air, exercise, diet, nature, gardening - always bloody gardening. I had found all these things unbelievably frustrating. Ultimately I always managed to turn these activities into some kind of sophisticated self harm that simply ended up making things worse and activated a deeper wellspring of frustration and self loathing. There was always the moment of giving up in despair and trying to make something positive out of my existence as a brain in a jar because there didn’t seem to be any other way.

I’ve written before about the revelation of moving onto a boat and finally realising that I had never needed to ground myself, despite what everyone said. I’m a water person. I just needed to learn to float. Floating is a far calmer experience than grounding. Floating is much less effort. I don’t need to work hard when I’m floating. The water is doing the heavy lifting. I’m just letting it. And the thing about surrendering to the water is that it doesn’t matter what the weather outside is doing, I’m always going to rise to the surface.

Just like I needed to stop digging myself into holes, I also needed to stop getting busy doing things that might well be good for other people, but were patently not good for me. Instead, I needed to find things to do that connected me to my body in ways that made me happy, rather than ways that made me want to forget any parts of me from the neck down. That’s where art and creativity come in. When I make things, it connects me back to my body in ways I enjoy. It allows me to take the things inside my head and find ways to express them in the world through the actions of my hands. It allows me to think and then act on the things I think. I can manifest change by making things for myself to express and please myself. It feels genuinely radical, and it’s so bloody simple. It’s literally and metaphorically magical.

It’s also beginning to help me think about my physical body in a different way. Always in the past, my body has been a source of shame or illness, or both. I’ve written about trying to come to terms with my newly upholstered post menopausal body and my frustrations with it. I think that making friends with my body because of what it allows me to create, may be the way in I was looking for. It’s certainly more fun than a diet or some taupe Spanx.

I started making art a few years ago and it felt right in a way that it didn’t when I gave it up in my teens. Coming back to it, I learned that the process of making was so much more pleasurable than the brilliance (or otherwise) of the outcome. I still hadn’t learned the most important thing though, which was to make things for myself. For a long, long time, I just made things for other people. I was still in the mindset that the only value I had was in relation to how useful I was to others. All the painstaking months of therapy have been shifting that belief and a big part of that change has using my creativity to make what I needed for myself.

As I make, I am learning all kinds of things. I am learning to be patient and go slowly, to give myself the gift of time. I am learning to do things my way and listen to the voice inside me that knows when things are right or what needs to happen next to make things right. I am learning to make mistakes and not give up. I am learning to give myself the time and space to figure out how to do things better. I am also learning when to stop and that it is ok to give up when something isn’t working for me. I am learning to tell people what I really want and need in the moment that I want and need it. I am learning how to nurture myself through moments of anxiety and stress and not just run away screaming. I am learning not to accept ‘that’ll do,’ and to go for and commit to the things I really want.

Like I said, what I come out with at the end is largely irrelevant, the things I am learning through the process of making are the real gifts. They are the process of making myself.

Having said all that, sometimes it is really wonderful to learn all those things and also come out with something wonderful at the end. I made this at the weekend.

It is what I call a witch ball. Technically it isn’t, because witch balls have things called stringers inside. I tried to make stringers and they didn’t work, but I don’t care. I’m a witch and it’s my ball, so it qualifies. This is possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever made. It looks like bits of sky and bits of Monet’s waterlilies scooped up together in a bubble.

I did a day course, here. They were great teachers. Super patient, really skilled and all round lovely people. Therapeutically speaking it was alchemical and elemental. You wouldn’t think fire and water would go well together, but you’d be surprised. I was.