Something I have always felt, is that creativity can be a tool in recovery and healing.
"Scientific studies tell us that art heals by changing a person's physiology and attitude. The body's physiology changes from one of stress to one of deep relaxation, from one of fear to one of creativity and inspiration. Making art frees the body's healing mechanisms and unites body, mind and spirit. In art and healing, no interpretation or therapy is necessary. The creative process is the healer."
Michael Samuels Creative Healing
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his concept of "flow" was perhaps one of the first researchers to identify and qualify this function of creativity:
At the same time, the authors of Creative Recovery, Maisel and Raeburn, point out the potential pitfalls and vulnerabilities creative people have, when it comes to addiction and mental illness. This is something I hadn't considered before, although there exists a significant history or mythology in our culture correlating creativity with mental illness and addiction.
Their book, while covering many of the "basics" and new research regarding addiction, also present the additional challenges creative people may encounter and suggestions of how to cope.
The authors remind us:
The fact "...that you are in active recovery doesn't mean that you won't experience depression, anxiety, emotional ups and downs, relationship difficulties, and the reappearance with a vengeance of shadowy parts of your personality."
They recommend, "A softening to the limits of being human; a toughening in the direction of personal responsibility." And give us some tools to do so.
~~~
If there is one thing I'm beginning to "get" on my BPD Journey, it is that much of what I experience is simply the human condition. Amplified and magnified, perhaps, by my illness--but still, essentially, what it is to be human.
Something I haven't learned how to do well. I'm lacking a core identity. I haven't learned how to have healthy boundaries or to give things their proper weight. I've lacked perspective, or the ability to see alternative explanations. I've held myself and the world to impossible standards of perfection...the list could go on.
But something I know, as I continue in therapy, research and understanding, is that I can learn new ways of coping and new ways of being. I can become more aware. There is hope and possibility.
During overcast days, I keep reminding myself, the sun is still there, even though I can't see it.
"Scientific studies tell us that art heals by changing a person's physiology and attitude. The body's physiology changes from one of stress to one of deep relaxation, from one of fear to one of creativity and inspiration. Making art frees the body's healing mechanisms and unites body, mind and spirit. In art and healing, no interpretation or therapy is necessary. The creative process is the healer."
Michael Samuels Creative Healing
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his concept of "flow" was perhaps one of the first researchers to identify and qualify this function of creativity:
- intense and focused concentration on the present moment
- merging of action and awareness
- a loss of reflective self consciousness
- a sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity
- a distortion of temporal experience, one's subjective experience of time is altered
- experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as autotelic experience
At the same time, the authors of Creative Recovery, Maisel and Raeburn, point out the potential pitfalls and vulnerabilities creative people have, when it comes to addiction and mental illness. This is something I hadn't considered before, although there exists a significant history or mythology in our culture correlating creativity with mental illness and addiction.
Their book, while covering many of the "basics" and new research regarding addiction, also present the additional challenges creative people may encounter and suggestions of how to cope.
The authors remind us:
The fact "...that you are in active recovery doesn't mean that you won't experience depression, anxiety, emotional ups and downs, relationship difficulties, and the reappearance with a vengeance of shadowy parts of your personality."
They recommend, "A softening to the limits of being human; a toughening in the direction of personal responsibility." And give us some tools to do so.
~~~
If there is one thing I'm beginning to "get" on my BPD Journey, it is that much of what I experience is simply the human condition. Amplified and magnified, perhaps, by my illness--but still, essentially, what it is to be human.
Something I haven't learned how to do well. I'm lacking a core identity. I haven't learned how to have healthy boundaries or to give things their proper weight. I've lacked perspective, or the ability to see alternative explanations. I've held myself and the world to impossible standards of perfection...the list could go on.
But something I know, as I continue in therapy, research and understanding, is that I can learn new ways of coping and new ways of being. I can become more aware. There is hope and possibility.
During overcast days, I keep reminding myself, the sun is still there, even though I can't see it.
Reading your blog each day, will be one of my highlights. Your insight and indepth understanding of yourself will teach me the complexities of life, and that what you do have, many answers, to the neverending questions in our minds.
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