CEO of Creative Change Conferences

Six weeks ago I started an Artist’s Way online course on Facebook. The course is 12 weeks long and 85 people signed up in anticipation of the author, Julia Cameron, coming to Palm Springs.

To quote what is happening to these participants after only six weeks, I would like to share the gist of the posts:

“These exercises are accelerating my growth, warp speed ahead.”

“Guessing it is the faithfulness to Morning Pages that causes a feeling of openness to possibilities.”

“I find myself writing now without paying attention to my usual excuses.”

Morning Pages are three handwritten pages every morning first thing. Participants write without the editor in their head being in charge; they write whatever is in their minds, a brain-drain, so to speak. Getting out all the gibberish helps participants move into the day with clarity. Morning Pages as one continues to do them can also be a place to explore dreams, plan futures, set goals…or not. The people I know who do them faithfully have had many transitions in their lives.

How does this all work? Creativity is the natural order of Life. Life is energy, pure creative energy. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life — including us.

If one really looks at it, we ourselves are creations and we were meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves. ¹

There is evidence that engagement with artistic activities, either as an observer of the creative efforts of others or as an initiator of one’s own creative efforts can enhance one’s moods, emotions and other psychological states, as well as have a salient impact on important physiological parameters ²

Chronic diseases are a nationwide burden, with cardiovascular disease being the leading cause of death during the past century, and the incidence of diabetes increasing to now affect more than 20 million Americans. What’s more, these diseases are associated with psychosocial difficulties, such as depression and chronic stress. ^3.4

But engagement with creative activities has the potential to contribute toward reducing stress and depression and can serve as a vehicle for alleviating the burden of the chronic disease. In review of the research in the area of art and healing — and in this context, the word art means any expressive creative process — four primary therapies emerged: music engagement; visual art therapy; movement-based creative expression; and expressive writing. In these forms of expression, art therapy, arts modalities and creative processes are used during intentional interventions to foster health.⁵

Music

Music is the most accessible and most researched medium of art and healing. Music therapy has been shown to decrease anxiety. Music can help change moods, depending on the music that is played for the participant. Those in a sad mood listening to happy music, as in laughing yoga, helped the participants feel lighter, happier. It has been also shown that music can calm neural activity in the brain.

The Cleveland Clinic (2006) reached the conclusion that nurses can teach patients how to use music to enhance the effect of analgesics and decrease pain, depression and disability, and promote feelings of power. A listening group and a non-listening control group were evaluated on several accepted pain-measurement scales, and it was found that the music groups felt they had more power and less pain or depression than the control group.

In a study of patients admitted to a coronary care unit with acute myocardial infarction, Dr. Guzetta found that relaxation and music therapy were effective in reducing stress⁶, which, in turn, lowered the heart rate, promoting a sense of wellbeing. And studies show that active music therapy may be effective in improving mood.

Visual Arts

In 1990, a group of University of Florida physicians and Shands nurses from Shands at the University of Florida reached out to Gainesville community artists and began a collaboration that would have a lasting impact on patient care. What began as an investigation of how art might help reduce the stress of the hospitalization has grown into a philosophy of care for an entire institution. This philosophy centers on the belief that art is an integral component to healing.

Art helps people express experiences that are too difficult to put into words, such as the diagnosis of cancer. Some patients receiving this diagnosis explore the meanings of past, present and future during art therapy, thereby integrating cancer into their life story and giving it meaning. People in treatment for drugs and alcohol can use art therapy in the same way, doing a timeline of their use and trauma using art and writing as a way to own their story and see changes that can occur in the future. By doing a painting or drawing of a bridge, exploring where they are on the bridge, what was behind them and where they are walking to on the other side. Also, the placement of themselves on the bridge will tell their counselors how patients relate to their own healing process.

Movement-Based Creative Expression

Through the movement of the mind and the body in a creative way, stress and anxiety can be relieved; other health benefits can be achieved as well. A unique study involving the use of theater investigated the benefits of a short-term intervention for adults ages 60 to 86 that targeted cognitive functioning and quality of life issues important for independent living. After four weeks of instruction, those given theater training exhibited significantly greater gains than members of the no-treatment control group on both cognitive and psychological wellbeing measures, specifically word and listening recall, problem solving, self-esteem and psychological wellbeing. ⁷

Tai Chi has been gaining popularity. This ancient meditative form is now shown to help with balance, thus reducing falls in older adults. There is vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. ~Martha Graham

Expressive Writing

Imagination is more important than knowledge. ~Albert Einstein

We all relate to myths, stories and fairytales. Why is that? These stories tell our story; verbalizing our story may be difficult, but writing it down is often easier. Writing in longhand connects us to our heart, and our heart may be able to speak about our truth in ways our mouths cannot.

In the recent movie, The Help, the maids decide the only way to make a difference in the climate they were living in was to tell their stories to a writer who would write them down. Stories have existed since the beginning of time when our ancestors sat around the fire and told them. Stories get passed on from generation to generation. Studies have shown that, relative to control groups, those who wrote their story of a traumatic experience exhibited significant improvements. Writing increases health and wellness in varied ways.

Another form of expressive writing, poetry, has long played a role in the art of healing. Several authors have described the use of poetry to help people find their voices and gain access to the wisdom they already have but cannot express because they cannot find the words in ordinary language. Finding one’s voice through poetry can be a healing process because it opens up the opportunity for self-expression not otherwise felt through everyday words. ⁸

The poet lives and writes at the frontier between deep internal experience and the revelations of the outer world. There is no going back for the poet once this frontier has been reached: a new territory is visible and what has been said cannot be unsaid.

The discipline of poetry is in overhearing yourself say difficult truths from which it is impossible to retreat. ~David Whyte

Journaling

Journaling is the only way one can gain some objective insight, since journaling is another way to access the unconscious self. Journal writing has been linked to creativity, spiritual awareness and expansion of the self. In two studies, journal writing helped participants identify and work through feelings, improve relationships and learn new things about themselves. ⁷

In an in-depth study conducted at Boston University, Grossman, et al. explored how 16 resilient male survivors of childhood sexual abuse made meaning from their abuse experiences. Three main types of meaning-making styles were identified in the narratives: meaning making though actions included helping others and using creative expression to describe and process the abuse, use of cognitive strategies and spirituality. ⁹

References:

1. Cameron, Julia The Artist’s Way, 1992
2. Staricoff, R. Lopert, Integrating the arts into health care. The healing environment without and within. London, England: Royal College of physicians, 2003 63-80.

Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics 2008 Update, Dallas, Texas American Heart Association.

National Diabetes Fact Sheet 2005 Atlanta, Ga Centers for disease control 2005.

Camic, PM, Playing in the Mud psychology the arts and creative approaches to health care. J Health Psychol. 2008

1. Guzetta, CE Effects of relaxation and music therapy on patients in a coronary unit with presumptive acute myocardial infraction Heart Lung, 1989

1. Noice, H. A short -term intervention to enhance cognitive and affective functioning in older adults J. Aging Health 2004

1. Macduff, D. West B Arts in health care: developing the use of Poetry within healthcare culture. Br J Nursing 2002

1. Grossman, FK Sky H Journal writing a gale force wind: meaning making by male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. AM J. Orthopsychiatry 2006

1. Boys are under the assumption that they should be able to protect themselves. If someone takes advantage of them, they feel it is their own fault, that they should have been stronger.
2. Boys feel they won’t be believed, especially if a woman perpetrated the abuse.
3. Boys worry that if the perpetrator was male then he must be gay, or if he tells, people will think he was gay. To make it clear, we are not saying that gay men abuse boys.
4. Our current social belief is that victims are female and perpetrators are male, therefore males are not seen as abuse victims.

What Happens to These Boys?

1. There is an increase in addiction problems, emotional problems, and relational problems.
2. Reenactment of childhood victimization is the major cause of violence in our society.

Our society’s denial of the reality of child abuse and our collective need not to know should not be underestimated. The abuse of children is an ugly reality.

Since this project with Prevent Child Abuse began three years ago, we have been asked the question, “Why focus on men when more women are abused?” (By the age of 18, one in four women and one in six men will be abused.)

The answer is simple but not so obvious to the general public. The cost to our society is great when we don’t provide treatment for men who were abused as children.

Imagine having a secret burdened with shame, fear, and rage tucked away deep inside of you. Now try facing everyday problems, relationships, work, parenting, and finances in a healthy way. Anyone abused as a child carries scars inside that never quite heal, especially if that person has not been able to talk to about it. When survivors feel “emotionally triggered”, they often act out in rage or use drugs and alcohol to numb pain, while also falling prey to eating disorders, suicide, and other negative behaviors that affect us all as a society.

A high percentage of untreated abused men go on to abuse others — as the saying goes, “Hurt people hurt people.” But if we start the healing process at the core, we can prevent other girls and boys from being abused.

As part of our project, we started the “It Happens to Boys” men’s group for men who have been abused. We started with four men and now have 17. Many of the men in our program are in 12-step recovery groups, and we are finding that many men are not receiving the help they need for their abuse issues in recovery facilities. They mention that they participate in one trauma workshop and that they dealt with their abuse in their fourth step work and now they are done, only to be triggered by something later and to relapse. However, the men who actively work on their abuse issues, have a place to talk and feel safe, bond with other men, and help each other, are doing quite well in their recovery.

Survivors of sexual abuse have an increased risk of using alcohol and drugs as a coping mechanism. Survivors are 13 times more likely to use alcohol, and 26 times more likely to use drugs. But why? The New Britain Sexual Assault Crisis Service’s Counselor Advocate Training Manual states that “the abuse of alcohol and other drugs is a way some survivors choose to cope with their assault. The abused substance can temporarily help the survivor forget the assault and dull feelings of pain, fear, self-blame, and other emotions.” (1)

Clear recognition of the profound effects of early abusive experiences and the complex issues these survivors experience underscores the need for a sophisticated understanding of the treatment process for childhood abuse survivors. Too many of these survivors do not seek treatment because of the shame they experience or because they have locked their memories away. When these memories are locked away, the emotions in these memories can be triggered by anything in the environment and thus making the survivor act out or in, depending on their style.

If a person experiences a trauma and was unable to process it, the emotions tend to remain in the emotional part of the brain, the amygdala. The amygdala is specialized for reacting to stimuli and triggering a physiological response, a process that would be described as the emotion of fear. If the information and emotion does not transfer to the hippocampus, where it is rehearsed and remembered, it stays in the amygdala. The survivor’s emotions can then become triggered, rendering the survivor in an emotional state of fear, re-creating the emotions of the traumatic event.

For example; If you were abused by a male and he wore a certain brand of aftershave, you could be walking around a store not thinking about your abuse, but you smell that aftershave and feel that triggered emotion, and now you are raging at a salesperson because they did not give you the right change.

According to John Lee, author of The Anger Solution, “When we get triggered we tend to regress to an earlier stage of life and we rage”.

Emotional Responses

Both men and women can experience anger, shame, anxiety, numbness, fear, confusion, sadness, self-blame, helplessness, hopelessness, and suicidal feelings. However, the New Britain Sexual Assault Crisis Service’s Counselor Advocate Training Manual states that “Men may show more hostility and aggression rather than tearfulness and fear”. As a reaction to their feelings, male survivors may turn to alcohol or drugs, as well as other self-destructive behaviors. They may lash out at others around them. (2)

Many women and men who have been subjected to severe physical or sexual abuse during childhood suffer from long-term disturbances of the psyche. They may be invaded by nightmares and flashbacks — much like survivors of war with PTSD or, conversely, may freeze into benumbed calm in situations of extreme stress.

Eating Disorders

“Among both adolescent girls and boys, a history of sexual or physical abuse appears to increase the risk of disordered eating behaviors, such as self-induced vomiting or use of laxatives to avoid gaining weight. Among those at increased risk for disordered eating were respondents who had experienced sexual or physical abuse and those who gave low ratings to family communication, parental caring, and parental expectations.” (3)

What Can We Do?

1. Talk to your children, students, and family members. Teach boys and girls about healthy sexual boundaries and their right to set them about their own bodies. Encourage dialogue with safe adults. Reenactment of childhood victimization is the major cause of violence in our society.
2. Prevent Child Abuse: Riverside County is campaigning to educate the public to help the future men in our communities. Look for similar campaigns in your own community.

The men in our group are vigilant about their behavior; they never want to repeat what happened to them with their own children. They are helping themselves and reaching out to other men and boys to help in the education and healing process. They are working tirelessly, speaking wherever they are needed.

1. Elizabeth Stannard Gromish “Why Survivors turn to Alcohol and Drugs”
2. Elizabeth Stannard Gromish “Men can have emotional problems after an assault.”
3. Dr. Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, et al, University of Minneapolis, International Journal of Eating Disorders 2000;28:249-258.

In our culture, this is the time of life where so many women start to panic…and lately, so are men. “I am getting old”, I hear in my therapy room. “I am fat, my body is sagging and I need plastic surgery.”

Perhaps you have been getting a vague sense of something missing in your life, or maybe you feel as though you have something yet to offer the world, but you are not sure what it is, and you feel that time is getting short.

Maybe your life feels a bit shallow and you long for more depth.

Welcome to midlife. All these feelings are common at this stage of life, and the way to address them is through spiritual growth. This is a time for much soul searching and finding our life’s mission.

This is a time in life for women where a new psychic energy takes over and you just cannot do things in the same old way. Your psyche won’t let you. This is a time when women go back to school, begin a new job, take on a new project or turn to a creative outlet. This is a time of life where we can have a spiritual awakening.

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” - Joseph Campbell

The first half of our adult life is all about establishing ourselves in a career, getting married, having children and, in general, doing the things the world asks of us.

The midlife time, often called the Second Adulthood, is where we do our work — the inner work that our soul asks of us. Our souls do not grow in smooth waters; they grow when they encounter rough seas, and we often seek out difficult situations to learn our life’s lessons. Midlife is a time for us to offer up our individual gifts to the world, making a deeper, more meaningful contribution.

As Joseph Campbell said, “Midlife crisis is getting to the top of the ladder, only to discover that it was leaning against the wrong wall.”

This is a time when we feel more vulnerable, but this vulnerability is not to be turned away from, but embraced as we gain a new perception of life. As the poet David Whyte teaches us, “It is time to come into a new conversation with the world, discovering how to apprentice yourself to beauty and find a place of belonging where you can hold loss and grief, the challenges of change and the wonder of new discovery and adventure.”

Midlife transition is a spiritual event, and if you are not pondering the big questions of life, your soul might provide you with an awakening that would not be of your choosing. I tell clients that women at midlife have three choices: Do their inner work and find the greater meaning of their life, get sick or turn bitter. Too often, the awakening comes after a great loss or illness.

We can change this perception by supporting each other to find the joys of midlife, to accept the wisdom that comes with age, to allow our faces to age naturally and see the beauty in each other.

“Midlife is a time to listen deeply to your heart. Whether we plan for this or not, midlife can be a period of transition and reappraisal. More inner questioning can occur.” – Carl Jung

Little girls are comfortable with themselves; they don’t even pay attention to what others think. Then adolescence hits and girls care about what everyone thinks and usually become self-conscious. This lasts until we accept the Wise Woman stage of life, where we no longer care what others think and become comfortable with ourselves again.

The Opening of Eyes

by David Whyte

That day I saw beneath dark clouds
The passing light over the water.
And I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before.
Life is no passing memory of what has been
Nor the remaining pages in a great book
Waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed. It is the vision of far-off things seen for the silence
they hold. It is the heart, after years of secret conversing, speaking out loud in the clear
air.
It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees before the lit bush. It is the man throwing
away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last fallen
in love with solid ground.

Being on solid ground is the knowing of who you are and saying yes to what life has to offer you. So join your sisters, encourage them and celebrate them.

Rituals are very important in women’s lives. Women have been participating in rituals since the beginning of time. On my 50th birthday, my friends did a Wise Woman celebration for me, and it is something I will never forget. I was led to my friend’s garden, only to find a path of rose petals laid out for me leading to her pool. On the way to the pool each friend offering another gift met me. They sang to me; read me stories they had written about me. I never felt so special. As I think about turning 50, I think of that experience and I am filled with gratitude.

For each friend’s special birthday, we get together and do a ritual for them. This year, one friend turns 60, one 70 and one 80. These rituals are so beautiful that I have been asked to do them by other women for their special days.

Finding the joy of midlife is a collective journey.