Recovering a Sense of Identity

Where does your time go? List your five major activities this week. How much time did you give to each one? Which were what you wanted to do and which were shoulds? How much of your time is spent helping others and ignoring your own desires? Have any of your blocked friends triggered doubts in you? Draw a circle below. Inside this circle, place topics you need to protect. Place the names of those you find to be supportive. Outside the circle, place the names of those you must be self-protective around just now. Use this map to support your autonomy. Add names to the inner and outer spheres as appropriate: “Oh! Derek is somebody I shouldn’t talk to about this right now. List twenty things you enjoy doing (rock climbing, roller-skating, baking pies, making soup, making love, making love again, riding a bike, riding a horse, playing catch, shooting baskets, going for a run, reading poetry, and so forth). When was the last time you let yourself do these things? Next to each entry, place a date. Don’t be surprised if it’s been years for some of your favorites. That will change. This list is an excellent resource for artist’s dates From the preceding list, write down two favorite things that you’ve avoided that could be this week’s goals. These goals can be small: buy one roll of film and shoot it. Remember, we are trying to win you some autonomy with your time. Look for windows of time just for you, and use them in small creative acts. Get to the record store at lunch hour, even if only for fifteen minutes. Stop looking for big blocks of time when you will be free. Find small bits of time instead. Record below what you did and how you managed to fit it into Your schedule. Return to the list of imaginary lives from last week. List five more lives below. Now write down plans for doing bits and pieces of these lives in the one you are living now. If you have listed a dancer’s life, do you let yourself go dancing? If you have listed a monk’s life, are you ever allowed to go on a retreat? If you are a scuba diver, is there an aquarium shop you can visit? A day at the lake you could schedule Life Pie: Draw a circle below. Divide it into six pieces of pie. Label one piece “spirituality,” another “exercise,” another “play,” and so on with “work,” “friends,” and “romance/adventure.” Place a dot in each slice at the degree to which you are fulfilled in that area (outer rim indicates great; inner circle, not so great). Connect the dots. This will show you where you are lopsided. As you begin the course, it is not uncommon for your life pie to look like a tarantula. As recovery progresses, your tarantula may become a mandala. Working with this tool, you will notice that there are areas of your life that feel impoverished and on which you spend little or no time. Use the time tidbits you are finding to alter this. If your spiritual life is minimal, even a five-minute pit stop into a synagogue or cathedral can restore a sense of wonder. Many of us find that five minutes of drum music can put us in touch with our spiritual core. For others, it’s a trip to a greenhouse. The point is that even the slightest attention to our impoverished areas can nurture them. List three ways to make your circle less lopsided. Ten Tiny Changes: List ten changes you’d like to make for yourself, from the significant to the small or vice versa (“get new sheets so I have another set, go to China, paint my kitchen, dump my bitchy friend Alice”). Do it this way: As the morning pages nudge us increasingly into the present, where we pay attention to our current lives, a small shift like a newly painted kitchen can yield a luxuriously large sense of self-care. Select one small item from the list of ten changes and make it a goal for this week. At week’s end, describe your results below.

1. How many days this week did you do your morning pages? (We’re hoping seven, remember.) How was the experience for you? How did the morning pages work for you? Describe them (for example, “They felt so stupid. I’d write all these itty-bitty disconnected things that didn’t seem to have anything to do with one another or with anything”). Remember, if you are writing morning pages, they are working for you. What were you surprised to find yourself writing about? Answer this question in full on your check-in page. This will be a weekly self-scan of your moods, not your progress. Don’t worry if your pages are whiny and trite. Sometimes that’s the very best thing for you.
2. Did you do your artist’s date this week? Remember that artist’s dates are a necessary frivolity. What did you do? How did it feel?
3. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them. Check-In Theresa Breeden -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#8): https://groups.io/g/creativejourney/message/8 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/89195174/6737026 Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/creativejourney/leave/11063485/6737026/872607470/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Monsters & Cheerleaders

Week one: Set your alarm to wake up a half-hour earlier than usual every morning; get up and do three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness morning writing. Do not reread these pages or allow anyone else to read them. Ideally, stick them in a large manila envelope, or hide them somewhere. Welcome to the morning pages. They will change you. List below a few creative affirmations from Week One that have particular significance for you. Also below, copy any “blurts” from your morning pages —those negative statements about yourself and your life that tend to crop up in each day’s morning pages. Convert these blurts into positive affirmations. Take yourself on an artist’s date. You will do this every week for the duration of the course. A sample artist’s date: Take five dollars and go to your local dollar store. Buy silly things like gold stick-on stars, tiny dinosaurs, some postcards, sparkly sequins, glue, kid’s scissors, crayons. You might give yourself a gold star on your envelope each day you write. Just for fun. Record your experiences below. Time Travel: Describe below three old enemies of your creative self-worth. Please be as specific as possible in doing this exercise. Your historic monsters are the building blocks of your core negative beliefs. (Yes, rotten Sister Ann Rita from fifth grade does count, and the rotten thing she said to you does matter. Put her in.) This is your monster hall of fame. More monsters will come to you as you work through your recovery. It is always necessary to acknowledge creative injuries and grieve them. Otherwise, they become creative scar tissue and block your growth. Time Travel: Select and write out one horror story from your monster hall of fame. You do not need to write long or much, but do jot down whatever details come back to you—the room you were in, the way people looked at you, the way you felt, what people said or didn’t say when you told about it. Include whatever rankles you about the incident: “And then I remember she gave me this real fakey smile and patted my head... .” Below, write a letter to the editor in your defense. Write this letter in the voice of your wounded artist child: “To whom it may concern: Sister Ann Rita is a jerk and has pig eyes and I can too spell!” For added fun, copy this letter onto nice stationery and mail it to yourself Time Travel: Below, list three old champions of your creative self-worth. This is your hall of champions, those who wish you and your creativity well. Also record (be specific) encouraging words they’ve said to you. Even if you disbelieve a compliment, record it. It may well be true. If you are stuck for compliments, go back through your time-travel log and look for positive memories. When, where, and why did you feel good about yourself ? Who gave you affirmation? Additionally, you may wish to write the compliment out and decorate it. Post it near where you do your morning pages or on the dashboard of your car. I put mine on the chassis of my computer to cheer me as I write Time Travel: Select and write out one happy piece of encouragement below. Describe why this vote of confidence meant so much to you. Once you are done, write a thank-you letter to the person who gave you this encouragement —even if it was you. Mail it to yourself or to the long-lost mentor In working with affirmations and blurts, very often injuries and monsters swim back to us. Write about them below as they occur to you. Next, work with each blurt individually. Turn each negative into an affirmative positive. Take your artist for a walk, just the two of you. A brisk twenty-minute walk can dramatically alter consciousness. Below, record reflections you made on this walk. 1.How many days this week did you do your morning pages? Seven out of seven, we always hope. How was the experience for you?

1. Did you do your artist’s date this week? Yes, of course, we always hope. And yet artist’s dates can be remarkably difficult to allow yourself. What did you do? How did it feel?
2. Were there any other issues this week that you consider significant for your recovery? Describe them. Check-In Theresa Breeden -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#7): https://groups.io/g/creativejourney/message/7 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/89194956/6737026 Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/creativejourney/leave/11063485/6737026/872607470/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Creative Journey is a podcast where we explore creativity and mindfulness. We believe everyone is creative, and we want to help you discover and nurture your creativity. We also believe mindfulness is essential for the creative process, and we want to help you cultivate a more mindful approach to your work and life. Let’s grow and expand together. E-mail us at [email protected]. Join the list serve by sending a blank e-mail to creative–[email protected]. To join us each week on zoom, send an e-mail to [email protected].