Shame, trauma and creativity

I was out walking in the river valley this morning. Trying to find my church. My head has been full to bursting the last few days with internal noise, and I’ve been using social media to try and drown it out. The truth is, it wasn’t just “internal noise quote. I’ve been in a shame spiral for the past three or four days and all the things the experts say about shame are true. Shame is pain and our bodies don’t recognize the difference between emotional and physical pain. The other thing is that she is so debilitating, people will do almost anything to avoid it. I use social media which in the end was relatively harmless, but it does put me in mind of people that use other substances to them out all that noise and pain. I can see how easy that would be to do when the noise inside is so loud and so painful that will do almost anything to make it stop. Things that seem like decisions are actually sometimes responses that are deeply embedded in our nervous systems.

After a very well-timed conversation with my therapist yesterday, I realized that my coping strategy (such as it was) was not really helping me. I was in spin, trying to problem solve when my nervous system was still in a dysregulated state. I was completely in overdrive, and reason does not live in a just regulated system. We need to be regulated first. (Starts to make people in the world around us make a little more sense, right?) So I made the decision this morning to not look at my phone, and instead, I took one of my dogs out for a very quiet introspective walk in the river valley.

I got to thinking about how I like to take photographs of them out walking, and seem able to capture some beautiful images quite easily. I think there’s a few factors involved there. One, I don’t put pressure on myself. I do it because it’s joyful for me. Two, my nervous system is in a calm and regulated state, so it comes so naturally to me. This is a state I would like to be in when I’m writing, but seem to find elusive.

I’ve read the books by all the male authors on creative process who say things like just sit down at 9 AM every morning and you’ll find inspiration, but I don’t think that’s true. At least not for me. Because the writing that I want to do doesn’t come out of my head, it comes from somewhere much deeper. It’s a deep well that is regulated, calm, and connected. A place that isn’t accessible to me in every moment. Yet.

As I continue to navigate the transitions in my life, I am learning to sit with the mystery. What the hell does that mean? Well, for me it means to be intentional with what’s actually happening to me. Instead of pushing experiences away, I’m learning to embrace and accept them. Even the shitty ones. That’s the hard part. I cannot emphasize this enough. It really sucks ass.

In the end, I don’t know how my life is going to unfold. What I do know, is that when I go into spin mode, it doesn’t help. When I try to control and push, it doesn’t help. And I know that I’m not going to get where I want to go by choking the life out of what’s happening to me now.