Accessing Creativity: How an IFS exercise can help you become more creative
Guest Blog by Justin Martin:
When we think about creativity, we often feel it’s an all or nothing subject. You either have it or you do not. What I have found in working with my clients and with myself is that we all have a creative nature to us. Creativity is inherent in everyone but is often not accessed. So how can we become more creative? It may be about acknowledging roadblocks instead of pushing through them.
Creativity doesn’t just apply to art, as it is a way of being. My opinion is that creativity is more of accessing a state where your imagination can run without rigidity or rules and that you can choose to express that or not. As a writer sometimes I think of times when I am most creative. It’s often when I’m connecting to a spontaneous emotion or have an idea that sparked into my head. I have found that the times when I am least creative is when I feel pressured to create. I have heard from many writers who chose to write about a subject they were deeply passionate about…one that flowed freely…only to submit to publication and stall in their writing as the weight of expectation hovered over their creative process. You may also see this in examples with sequels of movies, shows, or books as creators try to one-up the last piece of work they did.
Are these pressures from the external world or do we create them ourselves? The answer is yes.
What I have seen working as a therapist and just living as a human being is that creativity is not accessed because of how rigid we become as individuals. Think of a young child, and hand them any sort of shaped toy. They will figure out a billion words to call this toy and a billion different ways to play with said toy. I am often amazed watching home videos of myself as a child and how free-spirited I was. But we leave that child innocence at the door as painful things happen to us. Traumatic events, shame, and feelings of low self-worth normally imprint themselves on a lot of us as we navigate through our early years. We then go about life living with more rigidity as a way to cope with the unexpected and it hinders our creative process.
But what if this rigidity was actually trying to protect us? What if when you felt writer's block it was a sign for you to tune in to your emotions and embrace the blockage?
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a therapy modality that I use as a therapist to help clients understand their system and their mind. It takes the approach that we all have different aspects to our personality called parts. Most people understand the concept that we can have parts of us that feel different things. A part of me feels angry but another part of me feels guilty is an example of IFS. You can learn more about the different parts and IFS here.
One of the key components of IFS is working with protective parts of us. We all have protective parts who keep us safe and mitigate the pain we feel. When it comes to writer's block it’s normally a protective part that is signaling to us that it needs some attention. But we often bypass this feeling and just push through to get the work done. What would happen if we acknowledged the blockage itself?
Try this, whenever you feel stuck…externalize the stuckness, connect to it, and draw what it feels like or says to you. I am often amazed at what I can draw when I speak to this stuck part of myself. Sometimes it's just crazy doodles and other times it's meticulous artwork. The key to this activity is to let whatever you are feeling flow, there is no right way to do this. I have often found when I can acknowledge the stuckness and express the stuckness, my creativity can flow more easily.
IFS has taught me that all parts of us are welcome and that they each have something to teach us. Writer's block and lack of creativity doesn’t have to be something we push through, but rather acknowledge.
My name is Justin Martin and I’m a therapist in Orlando, FL. If you would like to learn more about IFS or work with me click here.