Self-Soothing, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love the Moment.

A lot of times people say you need to let go. Yesterday I finally understood it. I discovered something that helped me. Hopefully it will help others.

I am not a psychologist, a psychiatrist , or a psychic. But it struck me with a particular pop profundity.

Depression causes me to hold on tightly to negative experiences instead of positive ones.

Experiences are how we build self-identity. What we experience informs who we are. In self-soothing, we are asked to experience, in a positive way, a moment in our day.  We are to focus on the five senses. they say, for ease of remembering, this mnemonic: 5 sights, 4 sounds, 3 touches, 2 smells, 1 taste.

For example:

After my workout, I sat in McDonald's and watched a breeze play over a pink dogwood. The leaves rippled and swayed, I imagined, in an extemporaneous and improvised dance. As I watched, a woman leaned urgently over an envelope in a table to my left. She would carefully write in small letters, then look up at me tersely. Her arms warded off onlookers.
I sipped my ice water. Condensation collected on the outside in spite of the the air conditioning. I lifted the cup to my lips, and I was struck by how heavy and leaden it felt in my hands.My knee pressed into the half-wall near me. I felt grave. I moved my knee away and suddenly felt as if I might fly away. I turned and set it again to the wall.

In therapy we discussed some moments in our past that were pleasant. As we relived them, even the most unhappy of us smiled wistfully. It was then that the thought struck me that for the briefest instant that telling these stories, these details, made us seem like people without depression.  When "normies" talk, they share positive experiences. In sharing them they relive them. Most often they share humorous, happy, and pleasant stories. Let me emphasize: They are routinely connecting with levity.

I hold tightly to negative experiences and ignore positive ones. So my self-identity is made up of a remarkable number of sadness.
 And in pandering to this depression caused me to avoid positive experiences. I often suffered bouts of depression that kept me from engaging in and enjoying positive experiences. Parties, concerts, dinners with friends.

I see it a lot in my father. He will have a bad day if he has a single bad experience in a day. If I attempt to argue that his day went well, he will refuse to acknowledge it.

Depression is described as a black hole. I can't argue. i use positive emotions to try and fill that hole, but can't seem to. And while I won't discount biology (Well, I will for me), I will say that depression has trained me to connect with negativity. I feel intimately tied to it. It's cliche to say, but I wrapped myself in it.I gave unhappy moment s more gravity than they deserve.And I've spent years practicing this.

People without depression seem to have a much easier time letting go of  sadness. They have an easier time finding pleasant experiences that connect them to happiness. they, in fact, have a long history of practicing self-soothing.

Self-soothing is connecting with positive experiences. Pleasant experiences. As trite as it sounds, self-soothing trains people with depression to look on the bright side. Something we often dislike being told to do.

This module has convinced me further that dialectical behavioral therapy simply trains you to think and act like a normal person. 

The Keys to Creativity

Today I was blessed to get some peace and quiet. It was surprising to me what a difference having some quiet time - actual quiet time- made in creativity. It inspired me, frankly, to was polemic on the subject.

I haven't posted anything substantial in a while, and my environment is why. Creativity needs several things to grow. Luckily these things can be cultivated and fostered. The most creative have adroitly done so. Creativity is a skill, then, and not a talent. Everybody is a "Creative", some people have simply spent longer learning the skill

So here's the 3 things necessary for a creative mind. 

1) Environment
This may seem obvious, but it's easy to forget. Creatives need a place to work without distraction.

 My friend DuWayne hasn't updated his blog in quite a while. "I have no topics" he confesses. He ios trying to write a song and record it, but the song was slow in coming. He has plenty of topics, and he found a solution to the puzzle of his song.  That solution came when he was able to remove distractions. Likewise, he has topics buried inside, but anytime he has a moment to think, he's being tasked with some duty from the outside world.

I found similarly. Whenever I am trying to work, I find my environment not conducive to it at all. Beggars can't be choosers, my friends, but I have to admit that my housemates cannot do anything at a low volume. Between the low frequency mumbling, rattling, and stomping of one, and the loud helter-skelter of the television watched by the other,  it's difficult. 
I imagine every Creative needs a place free of the chaos of the world.  A study or studio that they can work in.

Perhaps I am just projecting.
The environment need not be empty. My thought room would be very sparse - chair and desk and perhaps a picture. However,  a professor of mine has books stacked upon books, and a my dad's study is a maze of shelves, desks, and tight spaces.  The idea here is the environment must not distract the Creative.


2) Peace
This sort of dovetails nicely with the first. A creative environment starts with peace - but it is different. Peace is basically a private space without distraction plus time.

About 6 years (almost exactly - January 2008), I worked at The Franz Group and had nothing to do for a week. We had no sales calls to make (and I was not a hustler). So I listened to self help tapes and read.
One of the Gurus - I can't remember which one, mentioned that in order to work properly he needed to rest for 30 minutes. He would mediate - he called it sitting in a chair, but it was meditation.  He would sit in his chair and let his mind wander.

Many Creatives take walks with alarming regularity. Kant walked with so regularity that they named his path "The Philosophers Walk".  Kyoto also has a Philosopher Walk. Many artists walked.

Just as you have your best ideas in the shower, flow comes when you are able to relax. Ideas will flow easily when your mind is at peace.

Peace is Environment + Time. And Solitude is Peace + Environment.

3) Play

This one is often forgotten by most Adults.  Kids seem to get this. It's the only thing that I will give kids. Otherwise they need to get off my lawn.

Creatives need to understand affordance. Creativity is blessing. We see a book, or we see an artist, or we see a dancer and we say they are creative. The truth is, the written page is a technique. The brush stroke is a technique. the step a technique. A skill. Most people may grudging accept this while saying "I can't do it." What they think they can't do is be creative. To compose.

Creativity is a skill, however.

A writer revises to practice writing. An artist will sketch to practice shape and proportion. A dancer  or an actor will rehearse to practice the technique.

With me so far? Awesome.

Play is the skill of composition and creativity.  It's about putting things together than don't normally do so.

A colander becomes a hat. A splash of water on paper becomes the image of a dragon or a beast. A pile of leaves becomes a crown. 

Affordance is defined as a quality of an object or an environment. A chair's most obvious use is to be sat on.  When children in church (as I was, occasionally) they are told to sit silently. If they tried to stand, they might  be told "We sit in chairs."

Church is serious business folks. It is not play.

But do we sit in chairs? A chair to a child can be a table, a step. It can be a cliff from which toy soldiers leap. To a teen it can be an statement, turned around and leaned on in casual rebellion.

When we play we create affordance and break away from what we see. We deny the obvious and ordinary in trade for the subtle, the lateral, the vertical, the possible, impossible. We turn trees into Treants and we re-card the discarded.

Play allows us to take things that don't belong together and make them fit. It is the practice of creativity. When we play - or dream, or let your mind wander - a form of mental play,  we discover connections that we may never have thought to use.

Long post, I am afraid. But there you have it. You want to be a Creative (ha, silly, you already are!), then the answer is simple. Find a place to be alone, take some time to relax, and maybe make a few "vroom vroom" noises.

Cheers, my kittens.  Stay dreamy. :D