How to heal an Art Wound
Look your Shadow in the eye, recover your innate creativity, and pursue joy.
What is an art wound?
An “art wound” is a colloquialism for psychological trauma surrounding the creation or enjoyment of art, inflicted via shame from an outside source.
Read Part 1 of exploring Art Wounds here.
When we are shamed for creating or enjoying art, we sometimes make internal ‘rules’ for ourselves to prevent being shamed again. This is very normal, and a survival technique for humans that used to (and sometimes still does) require the approval of others in order to literally stay alive. Well done, brain! You used millennia of evolutionarily-learned survival lessons to keep us alive as best you know how. Thanks for functioning properly!
But these unconscious rules aren’t true, and are rarely actually helpful in your modern life. It’s okay to gently explore and dismantle them in order to reclaim your freedom and well-being.
Here’s how:
Detect your art wound
Maybe you already know what your wound is. Maybe, like me or Andrea, you can pinpoint a specific traumatic incident. Or maybe you have a generalized oppression hovering over your creative self.
The trick to figuring out your art wound is to detect the unconscious rules you’ve built for yourself. If you’re very good at observing your thoughts this might be easy, but for the rest of us it’s a somewhat murky and bewildering process.
My best advice would be to monitor your thoughts for any instances of the word ‘should’.
I should:
Act in a particular way that is difficult for me, unnatural to me (even if you think it “shouldn’t” be!), or makes me miserable
Sacrifice my well-being to support others (even if it feels imperative!)
Perform in a specific way that seems natural or normal to others
Etc.
I shouldn’t:
Do things that would bring me pleasure
Do things that would make others uncomfortable
Do things that might cause me to feel shame or discomfort
Etc.
Once you’ve located some ‘should’ thoughts, or even if you haven’t yet, another way to brainstorm or helpfully define your unconscious rules is the following:
Fill in the blank
The formulas for these unhelpful unconscious rules look like this:
or
This could look like:
I can’t ever dance because my middle school bully said I look silly when I dance and then people will make fun of me in private and I will feel ashamed
I can’t write romance stories because then I wouldn’t be a real, serious writer and everyone will think I’m a hack
If I take a pottery class then I’ll be a bad mother for not spending all my time serving my family and they’ll resent me
I’m not allowed to pursue stand up comedy because my mother would be embarrassed, and my childhood taught me to avoid embarrassing my mother all costs
I can’t be a fan of this character because my friend is a super fan already and there’s no room for me to enjoy something unless I enjoy it The Most
If I admit I like sewing, society will think I’m not manly and I’ll lose value in the eyes of my peers
I can’t learn to play this instrument because if I’m not good at something immediately then I’ll feel bad about myself
I can’t dress as outrageously as that other person because everyone, from strangers to intimate partners, might be silently sneering at me for daring to be so wacky
Here are a few of mine:
I can’t take inspiration from any external sources because then I would be cheating and copying, and that would make me a bad artist and person
I can’t take leisure time to myself because if I’m not constantly working on advancing my writing then I’m not serious about it, and I’m undeserving of calling myself a writer or being published
Along the same vein: I can’t listen to podcasts that entertain and relax me because I should be using otherwise unproductive car time to advance my learning or craft through technical and educational podcasts ONLY
I can’t ask other writers or friends to help me with a developing plot because real writers do it all on their own because they’re innately super creative unlike me, and getting help from others is cheating
I can’t pursue photography as a hobby because I only use my smartphone camera, and that makes me a shallow hack
Do you see the common theme in all these rules? SHAME! We shame ourselves — here’s the important part — so that others won’t.
It’s a pre-emptive shaming, a shaming of a desire so it doesn’t become an action we paranoidly believe we might suffer social ostracization for.
If I bare my soul, others will disparage me.
If I try and fail, others will make fun of me.
If I make a mess, others will berate me.
If I do something for ME, others will resent me.
Ultimately, it all boils down to this:
It is not okay to be my true self.
Dissect and dismantle
Obviously, when you read something like It is not okay to be my true self, the conscious mind immediately scoffs. Of course it’s okay to be your true self! Didn’t we watch all those TV shows and movies that communicated that same syrupy message? Being true to your heart saves the day!
But the reality is complicated.
Once you understand your wounds and the internal ‘rules’ that guide them, it’s time to dissect the rules and dismantle the toxic conclusions therein. Here’s an example:
I can’t take leisure time to myself because if I’m not constantly working on advancing my writing then I’m not serious about it, and I’m undeserving of calling myself a writer or being published
This thought comes from a culture that values productivity over wellness, and I no longer agree
Constant work is not healthy or helpful for humans in general, and me in particular
Killing myself to ‘prove’ I’m passionate about writing doesn’t help me or anyone else, or solve any of my problems
I can call myself a writer if I want to, even if I haven’t written in years. If I’m thinking about characters and plots, then I give myself permission to consider myself a writer (your definition may be different from mine, and that’s okay!)
Some writers write in ‘seasons’, not every day, and it works for them!
If I don’t fill up my energy cup with leisure then there’s none left for actually writing when I want to
Leisure is a way to benefit my writing, because I’m out here living a life, and that gives me insights about life in general
Ultimately, if I try to engage in word counts and grinding words again, I’m going to burn out. There is no healthy way for me to push myself in the ways I used to. Maybe some day I can challenge myself, or work to meet a professional deadline, but flogging myself needlessly is only making things worse.
Doing the work
Knowing is easy. Knowing is hard.
Conclusions are easy. Practice is hard.
Revelations are easy. Integration is hard.
Mapping a path is easy. Walking it is hard.
Healing takes time. And there’s nothing you can do about that. What you CAN do is be gentle with yourself, go slow, and don’t fall into the temptation of using your progress on the path to recovery to flog yourself again.
To heal some of my wounds, I had to:
Give myself permission to stop trying, and not feel guilty about it. Only when I fully rested, and gave up fixating on how long I would need to rest before producing again, did I actually start to heal.
It will take longer than you think. That’s okay. Go have some fun for the sake of having fun.
Train myself to recognize ‘should’ thoughts and dismantle them in the moment.
Enlisting trusted people to identify when I’m ‘shoulding’ helped!
Allow myself to prioritize having fun over making something ‘good’ or ‘respectable’
Do artful activities that aren’t a part of your identity and that you don’t care about being good at
Allow myself to experiment, with no expectation of creating a finished product (God, this was so hard. I automatically attempt to monetize every thing that I do. Capitalism boooooo).
Instead of making one art, I made many at a time, so they all had less value to me
Make an art with the intention of completely destroying it after. This thought is TERRIFYING to me and I’m not good at it. But apparently if you practice creating for the sake of creating with no expectation of accomplishment or sale, your whole process gets better.
Re-discover what makes me tick
Through trial and error, it turns out that reading entertaining fiction (not interesting/educational non-fiction or books I’m ‘supposed’ to read) makes me feel more like myself than anything else. Reading was my first creative love, after all. It nourishes my heart and mind. It reminds me why I create, and gets me excited to go back into that space.
Journaling also helps clear out all the muck and negativity in my brain. Handwriting especially! Accept no substitutions!
Address your mental health
Turns out aside from depression I also have ADHD. Who knew?! Medication has been a GAME CHANGER SERIOUSLY GET THEE TO A PSYCHIATRIST POST HASTE!
Most of all, do NOT use these new practices as more sticks to hit yourself with. If you fail at a practice, well that’s what they call it practice for! Try again next time. Start over as many times as you want. It’s okay, really.
Something my BFF Cade taught me is this:
Think of someone you love and respect. Would you treat this person the way you’ve been treating yourself? Would you talk to them the way you talk to yourself?
What about judging them? Would you expect the things of them that you expect of yourself, even if they were tired, or busy, or disinterested, or overwhelmed, or giving all their creative energy to a required task?
No, right? So remember that YOU are the loved and respected one in someone’s life (even if you aren’t in your own yet), and treat yourself the way they would want you to be treated.
What else?
What’s your art wound equation? How did you figure it out?
What has helped you heal from an art wound?
What practices have you learned in order to stay well?
What do you want to start doing? I highly recommend the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert as an inspiration and guide to finding your joy.
Until next time,
Savannah
PS: I am in Seattle this week visiting family and my BFF Cade! I’m writing a little on an adult fantasy about a necromancer priestess (waiting to work on Nameless until I can review the plot outline with my hopefully future-agent). Also rereading/reading the entire vampire series by Anne Rice, on book 9!