Who wins, when the Left and Right Hemispheres of our brain duke it out?
In my STUDY, SAVOR, & SUPPORT Each Other CHAT☕️🍵, we’re doing a deep-dive into our Book Club selection! This week is Chapter 5 of BEYOND ANXIETY: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose by Martha Beck.
In Chapter 5: Activating Your Creative Side, MB takes us on her own Wild Toad Ride, filled to the brim with creativity. She decides to take an entire month to paint and ends up painting non-stop, to hilarious (and envy-inducing) effect.
⭐️ Wouldn’t you just love to take an entire month to focus on just your Creativity?
Sounds like luxury, right?
No wonder. We all know what it feels like to deny ourselves the time to be creative because we have “better” (often more left-brained) things to do, like MB did all those years focusing on her studies at school and work.
I saw myself in her.
In her years of suffering because she believed she had to do the sensible thing and meet expectations all of the time. I, too, have lived my life this way. And felt the immense joy when I finally carved time out of my schedule to dedicate myself to my Creativity, most of all when I started to write my creative writing series, THE OBSIDIAN CHRONICLES, and published Obsidian: Birth to Venus.
I’m finally going to publish the 2nd book soon. It’s taken me a while, so my inner Toad’s eager and excited to get it done!
💌 Send me a Direct Message if you want a FREE Advance Reader Copy of Book 2, ’cause I’m putting together a Launch Team now.
⭐️ What’s your Wild Toad’s Ride? Have you let yourself loose before?
⭐️ Or, are your days still dreary with endless, uncreative To Do’s?
What I love most about this Chapter is the realization that we are all “Creatively starved.”
It’s not something unique to me or to you. All of us are deprived — through our societal conditioning — of the ability to spend time creating, without feeling some level of guilt.
Like creativity is somehow less-than the “real work” we do to pay the bills.
As if spending time honoring our creativity is a “waste of time.”
When, in reality, creativity can be our Saving Grace.
In a world full of stress and strain and struggle, our creativity can activate the Right hemispheres of our brain, switching our Anxiety off.
As MB states, “Creativity is the opposite of anxiety.”
Literally. At the physiological level of the brain.
Like the Left hemisphere of our brain that tends to enter Anxiety Spirals when the left amygdala’s triggered, the Right hemisphere of our brain has the capacity to enter Creativity Spirals when the right amygdala’s triggered, too.
The best part?
It doesn’t need much to turn our Creativity Spiral on.
We don’t have to experience some magic strike of Creative Gold.
We needn’t write some magnum opus, compose a symphony, or craft a masterpiece in our minds to get the Creativity Spiral going.
Nope.
All we need is a small amount of curiosity to get our Creative juices flowing.
The ball’s not that hard to roll.
But the conditions do have to be right, for us to go on a Creative Journey or to learn anything.
As MB states, according to one view of the brain developed by education, our nervous systems are always asking three questions, in this order:
1) Am I safe?
2) Am I loved?
3) What can I learn?
Learning happens only when we can answer the first two questions with a “yes.”
No wonder she preceded this Chapter 5 with Chapter 4’s invitation for us to try Dr. Richard Schwartz’s IFS therapy.
If our Managers and Firefighters have run amok, 1 and 2 are likely a “no.”
Our Managers often scare our frightened Anxiety Creatures even more, or make us too disciplined and too rigid to create.
Likewise, our Firefighters’ usually maladaptive efforts to keep us safe don’t work. At least not in the long run. On some level, we know — deep down — that we aren’t at ease so, of course, we don’t feel safe.
And, it goes without saying, when you have Exiles, you don’t feel loved. You feel so unloved that you literally ostracize parts of who you are. You keep Exiles separate from the rest of yourself.
We can gain a greater sense of wholeness if we work to unify our separate IFS parts.
But, that isn’t the only way…
Diving Straight into Our Creativity Works & Has Extra Benefits.
Thinking has its place. But words have a downside too:
As we learned in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, the Left hemisphere can “show us only half the world [because it is] unable to see or acknowledge anything but its own perceptions….”
In contrast, MB says, the Right hemisphere sees everything: “It’s aware of all our perceptions, not only creative ideas but also the logical, analytical thinking that happens mainly in the left side of the brain.”
Let’s Put It to the Creative Test
MB invites us to think of an issue we’re facing, something that would normally cause us anxiety.
Then take out a piece of paper. Write our name, as we usually do, from left to right.
But instead of using our words to journal all the pros and cons using our Left hemisphere, we can activate the Right hemisphere of our brain by writing our name again — but, this time, write its mirror image horizontally.
And, if we really want to get fancy, we can write the entirety of that upside down, as if the whole thing’s being reflected vertically, in a mirror.
I tried it.
My Conclusion? The Creativity Spiral’s better.
When stressful thoughts entice me to engage in rumination or an hour-long CBT session, I can save myself the mental and emotional bandwidth, by just writing my name, a word, a picture. Even a scribble or doodle works.
It creates that space — however brief — between the anxiety-inducing stimulus (whatever F.E.A.R. that’s facing me) and my response.
After doing this a few times throughout the week, I notice my first response isn’t my go-to, knee-jerk, reaction to launch into my standard left-brained, wordy analysis anymore.
The Creative act gives me a momentary respite from my tendency to analyze, argue, solve, and make sense of absolutely any thought that passes through my mental landscape.
Instead, I can simply take a few moments to be. To create. To exist in the here and now — without the story.
The way I used to when I was a carefree kid.
It doesn’t last forever. But, could it?
MB goes so far as to say…
“Your whole life can be a happy childhood.”
Sounds hard to believe, but I know I’d love to live like that.
Now, take a Mindful Minute to reflect on your life:
⭐️ For our private Journaling, give the Creative Test above a try.
⭐️ Did it work like magic for you, too?
Are you as ready as I am to leave the F.E.A.R. Zone, and let our Creativity Spiral spin us free,
to live a much healthier & fun life,
full of childlike joy & creative flow?
👭 If you want to enlist the help of a Fellow Creative, to help you break free of anxiety by entering your own Creative Flow…
Our CHAT can be a safe place to tell safe people what you’d like to accomplish, so we can all support & cheer you on.
👭 If you’re comfortable doing so, feel free to tell us what Creative Practice you would like to try whenever one of your Anxiety Spirals starts to spin.
Let’s TRUST in our ability to create safety in ourselves by being the Creatives we are meant to be.
Together, we can support each other on our healing journeys.
Together, we can soothe, nurture, & love the Creative Self inside all of us.
The Happy, Creative Child in me honors & respects the Happy, Creative Child in each of you,
Marisa
⭐️ Remember, we don’t have to figure everything out, all alone. ⭐️
We can find solutions, together!
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