Why Making Art Is Good Medicine
I have coached people going through traumatic transitions like divorce or the death of a spouse for years. After they have moved through the initial shock and grief, resentment, and anger, some of their energy begins to return. At this point, I often ask them, “What are you curious about exploring next in your life?” Most of the answers fall in one of three camps:
1. To explore dating and relationships
2. To travel
3. To start a creative project, usually something that had been in the back of their minds for years.
I heard many desires spoken from accountants to aspiring artists: Working with metal, making a garden, writing poetry, taking up a musical instrument, learning watercolors or oils, dancing the tango, starting a business, inventing an app, or writing that book they always felt was in them. The project possibilities were endless.
Those who began to work on their creative projects regularly experienced a surge of energy and confidence that surprised me. I would go as far as to say:
The most consistently profound shifts occurred when clients connected to that unfulfilled creative desire they have been carrying around for years, sometimes decades, and finally, committed to express it.
With these folks, I observed surges of confidence, restored nervous systems, a willingness to start things they never thought possible before. I witnessed new projects energetically taken on, new business ventures begun, or just overall increased happiness — this, from people who have marched through some of the worst trauma fires of their lives.
Why would creativity provide the most potent healing for my clients going through profound transitions, opposed to finally traveling or starting a new relationship?
From my experience, this healing occurs because creativity connects us to our most authentic being and allows our body to speak, often settling down our nervous system.
CREATIVITY CONNECTS YOU TO YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF
When making with your hands and your heart, you often lose track of time. Losing track of time is a symptom of getting in the Zone, the state where alpha brain waves increase our insight, creativity, and more profound relaxation. Being in the alpha state also means you are not in the future or the past (anxiety or depression). You are simply BEING. Similar to the benefits regular meditation provides, this is a state of healing.
When you are focused on a creative activity, you can let life express itself through you. You probably have stopped listening to those naggy thoughts, arguing for its limitations. Creativity can provide that experience of expression without censorship and possible judgment.
In the container of a safe space, with only expression and exploration as its intention, something deeper arises.
CREATIVITY ALLOWS YOUR BODY TO SPEAK
Because loss and trauma always run deep in our bodies, linear thought and concepts expressed in words are often inadequate to express such emotionally charged, unknown territory. We usually don’t “know” what we don’t know, but our bodies do. Art is a powerful tool to reach those places that are locked down deep. People can say with color, sound, or intuitive writing things they have no words for.
After my divorce, feeling like emotional roadkill, I had difficulty expressing myself through the shock and grief period. I found myself writing poems. I wrote poems that expressed raw emotional pain and something deeper in me that I was trying to make sense of this time in my life. This set of poems illuminated deeper truths about my life, trying to get into my conscious attention. I know I moved through my grief easier because the poetry showed me how. These symbols, images, or words were not coming from my conscious mind, because I could not have articulated what came out of me. It seemed to be my unconscious mind coughing up the material in symbols and phrases. Finally, I just gave in and let them have their way with me. I became accustomed to the ways a poem would nag at me to write it during that time. The experience taught me that when I get a flash of an image or hear some language that surprises me, I know it is a poem asking to be born. I rush to the page, knowing it will harangue me until I get it out.
All things need a voice.
Your creativity enables the healing of past wounds and trauma held in your nervous system. Through the making of something with your body, you are often healing subconscious aspects of yourself.
In a safe environment, where there is no judgment (and no need to edit to be accepted by society), creating is an opportunity to express oneself spontaneously and authentically.
Like uncorking a plug stopping the flow of water, finding a safe, healthy outlet for those cellular memories, begins to get your life force flowing again.
Creativity has a unique way of soothing and settling down the nervous system.
Florence had been the sole caregiver to her husband with Alzheimer’s for ten years. After he died, her children encouraged her to go to a grief counselor or join a healing group, but she steadfastly refused. Instead, Florence started coloring. She bought adult coloring books and colored pencils and pens and sat for hours filling in the pictures. While never thinking of herself as creative, Florence told me that sitting and doing nothing but putting those colors on a page was what healed her body and soul after her husband’s long illness. She was bemused and embarrassed when she told me about it, but she did nothing but live inside those colors and designs for six months. She knew what her body needed. This kind of coloring’s repetitive movement creates oxytocin, known as the “feel-good hormone.” Both oxytocin and the stillness quieted Florence’s nervous system after the trauma. She showed up every day to color and to grieve. She didn’t realize that her body was urging her to get in the Zone and be still for six months. Now, she designs her own coloring books because, she says, “Coloring healed me, and I believed it could help others as well.”
Expressing your creativity is like a gateway drug for healing, empowerment, and wholeness. Creativity connects us to our most authentic being and allows our body to speak, often settling down our nervous system.
While the FDA may not officially approve it, creativity may be one of the most potent healing agents there is. I recommend taking two tablespoons a day.