About six years ago, I suffered from a mental illness. I felt burned out a lot, and actually a bit depressed from time to time. Anxiety was constant, and interacting with other people felt hard. But instead of surrendering to those feelings, I decided to not give up. I tried things that would make me feel better. Walking, going for a run and exercise all became part of that. While those things really helped me with my recovery, what gave the most meaning to my life again was doing creative work. That was the start of my own bridge between mental health and creativity.
Why Mental Health and Creativity Are Connected
There is something about creative work that changes a bad day. It requires you to focus for a longer time. At that moment you are in a flow state, and you forget about everything, including time. Not only do you improve your mood, you sharpen your attention span and your cognitive capabilities. And the best part is that it does not have to be painting. Making music, writing, photography — there are a lot of creative activities that do the same thing.
You Do Not Have to Be a Professional
You do not have to be a professional for this to work, and you do not have to make money with it either. Doing it for the joy of it is enough, and for what it gives back to your mental health. Being creative gives you a reason to get up from the couch, stop scrolling and actually start building something. It is visible, rewarding work, and you might discover you are good at something you never tried before.
Getting Started When You Do Not Feel Like It
I have had a lot of days when I did not feel like doing anything at all. When I just wanted to sit down and watch tv all day long. These are the moments where you feel inspired to do something right before reality kicks in and you feel completely tired, demotivated or unhappy. But every time this happens, there is an internal clock telling me to get up and start doing something, because otherwise it will affect my mood and my mental health. If that pattern sounds familiar, I wrote about breaking it in my post on how to take a hard reset on your life.
What usually starts that clock is other people. Sometimes I watch someone on YouTube who plays guitar, or someone who creates a really cool abstract painting. Consumption that ends with me making something is fuel. The kind that replaces making is what got me here in the first place. Having an open mind and allowing yourself to be inspired by other people has a vital role in getting back up again.
Why Creative Work Quiets Rumination
The reason creative work is so effective is that you forget about all of your problematic thinking and focus all of your attention on the thing right in front of you. For me, the worst of it was rumination. It happened when I neglected to take action and got lost in a train of thought. Depression makes you a spectator of your own thoughts. Creative work makes you a participant in something outside of them. There is more about that period in my post about how I overcame psychosis.
The Day a Painting Changed My Mind
I remember about two years ago, I felt depressed. We were just moving to the farm we live in now, and we had some stressful days. I noticed I was very sensitive to that stress. Talking about it with my parents did not make it any better. Then my mother, who is an artist, said: “let’s go make a painting, that might help.” And the moment I sat down, set up my palette and filled the canvas with colour, my mind became colourful as well. That was when I realized that the way I felt was temporary, and that there would be brighter days again.
Building Mental Health and Creativity Into Your Life
You do not need a plan or a studio to start. Pick up the thing you already own and make something small today. The link between mental health and creativity is not a theory for me. It is the reason I keep making things. If you want to see how I combine writing, music and photography without burning out, have a look at The Creative Asset Map.
