When creative expression vanishes

Writing class been a bit uninteresting lately. I did skip yesterday's class though.  I was not interested in Poetic Prose. The topic was uninteresting to me and not what I was looking for. I was looking for some talk on exercises with regard to creative writing. Oh well - So I looked online and found some interesting insights. Especially with regard to some deeper processes that happen and lead to a feeling of being seriously stuck. Often times I find myself moving through life entirely too unaware of how stuck I feel. 

The truth is that it has been difficult to sit with myself and these feelings. Until recently I had not even looked at some very important things. My thoughts go around in circles and eventually lead back to the same spot I had started. Worse yet a nagging feeling of loss surfaces when I start taking stock of the cumulative effects of working with a very tough population in a very tough work environment, and missing family and friends back home have had on me. Sometimes feelings become just too overwhelming and putting them down seems so difficult for me. Putting them down would mean having to face them and who wants to do that ?

In my quest for creative courage – I often find myself running into an acute sense of loneliness, isolation, disconnection and disjointedness. I would even say emptiness. When one repeatedly fails to connect their thoughts and feelings to creative and satisfying self-expression, it tends to create an inner vacuum which can become tricky to identify and navigate through. Feeling connected with one's inner experience is crucial to creativity.  After much thought I decided to take a look at my own inner experience and the difficulties I have had accepting it.

I used to be able to create artistically. I used to paint, sketch, and draw for days with no difficulty. Over the last few years I have found that a lack of self confidence, an inability to focus, harsh self judgment, negative thoughts and fear have taken over that once free flowing space within me. I had not realized how much of my once abundant self-confidence has eroded over time - it seems to have been replaced with unrelenting self-doubt, and self-pity.  

It is not depression as much as it is a state of flux. I am not quite sure where and why it exists, but I have a feeling that it has something to do with a constant feeling of vulnerability and an inability to plant my social roots.  I started walking on what felt like a definite road that led to somewhere, to feeling like a I took a wrong turn and continued walking into self oblivion without realizing it. Unable to move back nor forth was emotionally claustrophobic. I was stuck in an unintelligent, hostile, unfriendly, socially rejecting, and uninspiring work environment. My peers to me felt culturally closed, prickly, cold and entirely too judgmental. Having failed completely and entirely to socialize at my job, created the feeling of self doubt. For the first time in my life I felt like I had to make friends with unfamiliar feelings such as feeling awkward, out of place and feeling like a complete misfit in what was a normal environment for everyone else. Simply put this failure to connect with my peers has been excruciatingly difficult for me to deal with, as it is in my face every single day, and it only makes this sense of loneliness, a bit more lonelier. 

Serving folks who had led or are leading nightmarish lives and listening to the horrors they had witnessed, and been through slowly changed my belief about the outside world. Coming from a completely alien culture, sheltered and protected place, I was at first unable to connect to their experiences. I did not understand the language they spoke as it was unfathomable for me to even think that some of the things they were sharing were possible. So I purely relied on my skill for the first 2 years or so. I just listened and listened to 100s of client stories about what had happened to them and how they found themselves in a chair sitting opposite me. Their journey up to this point is almost always amazing to listen to. I hear about their pain, their hopes, their losses, their desires, what they love, and most importantly what they want from me. However, I cut it - the stories are rarely happy. They are mostly brimming with despair and suffering. Sometimes the suffering is caused by just life events, such as death, and sometimes by everything but external events. What was interesting to note was each client's attitude towards what they felt they had lost. I often felt immediately connected to ones who simply surrendered and embraced their powerlessness over their life circumstances. The ones who said "I have no power" or "well there is nothing much I can really do" were the ones I found easiest to engage with. I wonder what about that made me connect with them. There are no doubt that there are some very positive aspects of my job. It has taught me resilience, patience, compassion, and understanding. This life experience has been invaluable and actually quite beautiful. However, there is a flip side. There always is one.


For the purposes of trying to identify my creative block I have to face some negative effects of this job  - such as I had started to look at the world as hostile, unfriendly, and dangerous. This has been a very slow and insidious process. I started to think of life and the world as a hopelessly hostile place. I secretly developed a deeply cynical and negative outlook to the world and did not think much mattered anyway. My attitude to my own life had become negative and hopeless - so I thought to myself often - what is the point of everything. My relationships with my family were also affected over time as I was unable to connect with them the way I used to. They saw the change in me as they had known me differently before. They did express some concern, but stopped as I think they just gave up - and accepted me for who I turned into.


So that is the long and short of my experiences with the dark and the grey in my life. So what now ? Where to go from here ? that seems to be the million dollar question.