On meeting your creative needs without falling into overload.

Or: How much mango does one person need?

This week I received a request for help. There is someone in my life - let’s call her Susie - who finds buying clothes difficult so, when she is down to the clanking bare bones of a no longer functioning wardrobe, she will call and off to the shops we go. There she resists and worries and endlessly utters mutters about not actually needing anything: really, she could just wash her one pair of trousers out overnight. She sighs and huffs and tells me she really can’t be bothered while I bite my tongue (because I am willing to assist but am no angel). I just about manage not to tell her that’s absolutely fine, and I will happily go home and not waste my time on her anymore.

Then, there will be a glorious moment when she puts something on that fits her perfectly and meets her requirements for clothes with high collars, low sleeves, natural fabrics, no fuss, no floating bits, no dull or insipid colours and plenty of warmth and machine washability at the lowest possible cost. She will suddenly pull her shoulders back and stand straight and a smile will spread across her face as finally, there in the mirror in that cramped little cubicle she sees a vision of a woman who doesn’t just have to put up with a worn-out existence. A woman who looks renewed in her blouse with the bright fuchsia flowers. A pretty, adorned woman

Photo by Becca McHaffie on Unsplash. A woman sorts through a clothes rack.

The pretence is that I come because she cannot do colours, that she cannot match items together and it’s true that I have a facility with this and that it takes more work for her. Really though I am there to enable her to overcome a childhood characterised by the post-war rubble of a bombed-out city, the daily lack of luxury, the ingrained make do and mend mentality that has been taken to extremes and stretched beyond necessity into lifelong habit. I am there to model not what to buy but, as I casually pick out the odd cardigan, a fancied pair of shoes for myself - just because - I am there to model how to buy, how to bring pleasure and beauty, plenty and comfort into a life. I am there not just to facilitate but to permit.

In return, this week she unwittingly gifted me with an insight into how to manage my sometimes-burdensome creative practice. It’s an indirect exchange, one that happens mysteriously as do all understandings and ideas that ferment in sleep and bloom just as I pick up a pen or put fingers to keyboard. It’s one of those unexpected: oh! I see now!realisations.

I don’t have any problem allowing myself clothes. I’m not a lover of high fashion or particularly expensive items but I happily buy some new items each season and add to a looked after collection so eventually I have filled a whole dressing room. I buy for the pleasure of a beautiful fabric and for the practicality of having a choice for every possible combination of mood, occasion and weather. This fits in my budget and aligns with my personality - I can leave a suitcase un-unpacked in the hall for days on end. (Editor/ husband! Weeks on end!). I carry five different coats in a car boot for a day trip because who knows what the weather will be when I get to my destination? I like options.

On the face of it, I claim eagerly, this easy ability to meet my own needs both for appropriate covering for my body to protect from the elements and for sensory pleasure is a sign of a well-adjusted psychology. I say this because I once went on a week’s psychosynthesis training in London. One day they had us go into an empty room taking with us all our bags and coats. We were invited to sit on the floor and spread out in front of us all that we were carrying. (The psychological analogy was not subtle.)

To get to the class I had first eaten a hearty hotel breakfast then taken a Tube ride about twenty-five minutes to a building where each day we were welcomed with an array of biscuits, served cake for elevenses and near which was an array of cafes and bakeries for lunch. Despite that, I had caried with me on this arduous and lengthy journey, the slightly crushed packet of digestives that came with the hotel room, a wrapped Danish from the breakfast buffet, a packet of mango slices I had bought at the station that morning, an old scarred apple and  a KitKat which I had taken from the training venue the day before and brought all the way back again. Just in case I starved between Euston and Finchley, you understand. I surveyed the array of food in front of me and blurted out. “I have to make myself stop doing this don’t I?”

The psychologist leading the session looked horrified. “No, no,” he said gently. “The point of the exercise is not to make you punish yourself. The point is to help you understand yourself better, to learn what it is you really need and to make sure you are meeting your needs. If carrying a little bit of food against emergency makes you feel safe then just always deliberately make sure you have something in your bag. It’s never bad to meet your own needs. What is not in your bag is as interesting as what is. But maybe you don’t need all of that food. Perhaps you can start to trust a little more in your capacity to give yourself just what you need and no more.”

The exercise went a step further.  After we had arranged our belongings into groups, categorising what they meant to us personally, we were given capacious storage bags. The instructor told us to choose one item, the one that we most needed or that was so precious to us that we wouldn’t even trust it to a psychologist we all knew pretty well by now.  Everything else we owned was taken away from us and we proceeded to discuss what it felt like to be bereft/relieved/insert appropriate word of what we carried. It was not only about recognising our true needs and pleasures, but also about discerning what we carried that was unnecessary, worn out or even unrecognised (all those old train tickets, crinkled tissues and keys to doors we had forgotten). We were being invited to practice prioritising the most important need and to learn how to make room for ways of meeting it within the limited capacity of what we could carry on our own backs.

In this, a second half of my life, I have the time and access to resources to accumulate creative options just like I can clothes. If I want to browse online for calligraphy or how to make tapestry, or I decide to forego those boots and that jumper and go to a print making class instead, I can.  Many times I do so, going frolicking down another delightful avenue finding new vistas, learning new facts and and meeting new people.  In those moments I act from the abundant-mentality part of me that doesn’t choose, but who accumulates options, stacks up possibility and prioritises joy. If this part of me is in control for too long, I end up with confusion and overwhelm. I feel like I cannot find myself amidst the myriad of art forms out there. I get giddy from skipping in circles from one idea to the next, tired from trying on first one thing and then the other, never sure which is the ‘right’ choice. Because in my former job my abundant creativity was dampened down, this part of me is now rampant and eager to have her time in the limelight.

Yet, other times I put the brakes on, castigating myself for excess and afraid of future need  - see what happened to Susie! It could happen to you! Best be parsimonious, deny the self now and hoard against future lack. What if the train is delayed in a tunnel for eighteen hours? Its only sensible to carry mango with you everywhere you go! I take that same mentality and deny myself time and resources to play, to experiment to be creative just for myself in the moment, always asking: how will this play out in the future? Is it sensible? Would I be better saving my money for the future, better using time on something more certain now? I act from the scarcity- mentality part of me that is fixated on imagined disaster, the part that takes sensible provision for the future and makes it into inappropriate self-denial. I get dry, disbelieving that there is any point to anything, sure that the only outcome is waste of time and rejection. Because my previous professional choices turned out to be precarious, this security-loving part of me is on high alert when I consider my future.

When Susie and I go shopping and find a collaboration between our denying and allowing tendencies when it comes to clothes, the result is a perfect capsule wardrobe in which all that she buys works on a mix and match basis, extending the possibilities from a core set of items. Everything that is bought is reflective of Susie’s personality and meets a need related to what she values in life – something to wear to her faith community, something for the housework, something for the garden, something for days out in the countryside.  Everything is timely and for the now; by the end of our shopping trip this week she had been calmed enough to stop and admire a lacy dress, able both to know that it was a perfect design for her and also to be content to leave it there knowing that if she ever did need an outfit for a wedding she knew this shop could be returned to.

This is the work I am doing creatively and psychologically  at the moment. Marrying the shopping-spree creator inside me with the parsimonious accountant-studio-manager. Both are well intentioned towards me, both have their role. But left to act in isolation they each tend to harmful extremes. Some teamwork is needed, directed by the wise leader part of me whose skill is discernment.  I am working on identifying and then prioritising needs - the work I must do to thrive - and also on learning to get comfortable with giving up options that are comforting or familiar, exciting and alluring but ultimately burdensome and unnecessary. I only have so much time and whilst I love that the world offers so many options, I am not a creative pack horse. I cannot go on pulling behind me a sled on which I cart a self-imposed expectation that one day I will get to every possible art form, every possible theme or idea and do justice to them in a deep way.

I must learn to acknowledge my need to be stimulated by novelty and the expression of other people’s creativity and feed that only up to the point just before I tip into carrying unnecessary creative food that becomes a burden. It is time to meet my need for choice as well as my need for a bit of security, whilst recognising that carrying what is unneeded, what does not belong to me, what is outdated or unintentionally acquired wears down my skeleton and saps my strength.

That day in the psychology training, when the assistant with the storage bag hovered over me and I had to reach for that one item, the one thing that represented my core, I didn’t hesitate for a moment. I relinquished the fruit and the pastry, my book and my phone. I handed over the keys to my hotel room and my house, my train ticket home, my work ID card, my credit cards.

The one thing I kept?

My fountain pen.  

To write with.

So often it’s not knowing what we need that is difficult, it’s elevating it amongst the tempting options that crowd it out.

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An invitation for you:

Why not try doing the bag exercise for yourself or adapting it to suit you.

You might want to empty the contents of your bookcase if you are interested in narrowing down a focus topic for your creativity. Ask yourself: where did this book come from? What was I thinking / interested in at the time? How did it serve me then and does it still serve me now? Put it in a bag to go to a charity donation pont. How does that feel?

Or you could go bigger and aim to touch all the contest of your studio! Or smaller and look at the contents of a notebook in which you record your wishes and ideas and in which you load yourself with expectations for what you will achieve in the future. What pages can be ripped out, what text can be obliterated, and your core still be represented?

Make a note to do this again in a few months time. What crept back in? What new things came in? How have you changed since the last time you did this exercise? How would you like to change?

Why not share your insights in the comments?

Shalom,

Helen.