Sometimes the things in our hearts cannot be spoken aloud, and creating lets us express what we cannot stop thinking about. Creating doesn't only reflect the reality we see; it can also reveal what we cannot see. Day to day, we find a meeting of minds through novels, films, music and other media, and we connect emotionally with all kinds of people in society. "Mightily, mightily, a new century arrives…" — even strangers can form an invisible bond through a single song, quietly sharing the same ideals. I wonder whether you have a habit of creating? Whether or not your work is ever shown to the public, it carries no end of meaning for our lives. In psychology, why does creating matter to us? Read on to find out!
Mental Health
A great deal of psychological research has found that creating brings benefits for mental health — for example, increasing positive emotions and reducing stress, depression and anxiety, and even strengthening the immune system (Stuckey & Nobel, 2010). Some scholars note that taking part in a creative activity during the day can lift that day's positive feelings, such as a heightened sense of enthusiasm and a more optimistic state of mind (Conner et al., 2016). Beyond improving our mood, creating can help us know ourselves and understand the thoughts and feelings within us more deeply (Malchiodi, 2015). For people who are more introverted, creating is a fine channel for expressing the inner voice they usually keep to themselves. There are many ways to create — painting, writing, pottery, composing music, and so on. Is there one that interests you more than the rest? Perhaps you feel that creating is simply too difficult for you. In fact, there are plenty of art jamming and craft workshops in the neighbourhood lately, and beginners are welcome to give them a try on a day off. If you want something more relaxed and simple, you could also try making an art journal — doodling freely on the page and recording each day's thoughts. If you are more of a spectator who enjoys experiencing art — visiting exhibitions and attending concerts, for instance — that is good for mental health too, though psychologists believe that actively taking part in creating always brings us more benefits (Bolwerk et al, 2014).
Facing Trauma
What's more, creating is of great help in healing psychological trauma, particularly through the art therapy that scholars have promoted in recent years (Legg, 2019). Today, many art therapists specialise in helping patients with post-traumatic stress disorder work through memories and emotions connected to their trauma. For a patient, telling someone their experience directly can be too heavy and too painful. Artistic creation is a more indirect and safer way to express oneself, letting patients put some distance between themselves and a painful experience and helping them observe their thoughts and feelings (Legg, 2019). In recent years, events large and small in society have left Hong Kongers facing a lot of stress and trauma — the ravages of COVID-19, for instance, leaving us anxious and sorrowful. We carry a lot of pain we cannot put into words: we don't know how to say it, or we don't dare. Perhaps artistic creation can give us a space to let it out, to express the unspeakable we have held for so long. Perhaps you are not yet ready to show your work to others, or perhaps you fear facing certain social pressures — that is entirely understandable and acceptable. Even if we cannot communicate with others through our work, we can still communicate with ourselves and put our own hearts at ease. Today's mood is anger — paint a patch of red! Today's mood is grief — paint a patch of black… Creating has no right or wrong; it can simply be a mirror to one side of our inner world. The strokes we scribble down today may, in time, become the momentum for growth and transformation.
Flow
Psychologists point out that creating can bring us into flow (Flow), a state of intense concentration and absorption in which we pour all our mental energy into a single activity, bringing us a high degree of enjoyment and satisfaction (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Brenner, 2019). In Soul, which came out a while ago, the protagonist Joe seems to enter the "Zone" when he is absorbed in playing the piano — that is flow in action. Like meditation, this state can relax our mood and let us observe our own experience more closely. When we sing, for instance, we can focus on our own voice; when we paint, we can focus on the strokes of the brush. Flow is closely tied to intrinsic motivation (Instrinsic Motivation) (Rheinberg & Engeser, 2018) — that is, when we take up an activity purely out of interest or fondness, we more easily enter a state of intense concentration. Perhaps many people care a great deal about others' judgement when they create, fearing that others will think them uncreative, or unskilled, and so on, and lose their interest in creating along the way. In fact, we can treat creating as part of our growth — learning to accept imperfection, applauding our own bold attempts, pouring our concentration into the process of creating, and slowly savouring the joy it brings of its own accord.
Social Connection
Creating can connect us with the people around us and build social bonding (Bungay, 2018). Whether it is showing our own paintings or composing music alongside others, we can share what we feel. By expressing our thoughts about a piece of work, we can exchange views with different people and foster mutual understanding. We might find resonance in the same film, or have differing readings of the same novel; these points of agreement or difference are all openings to connect with others. Some works even record the memories of an era and the collective experience of the public, stringing one life after another together, letting an isolated person realise they are part of a community. Creating does not stop at the instant the author sets down the pen; creating is a recurring, cyclical process, and the way an audience reads and passes on a work is, in fact, part of the creating too. Just as different people see different Hamlets, we can draw on our own perception and imagination to fill in the blanks the author left, or pare away the surplus words and colours, or let the work transform into another form of consciousness entirely… Creating is subjective: we can voice what the author meant to say, and we can also voice what the author did not. Even if a work vanishes from the world from this day on, so long as we still remember how it felt at the time and our minds have not died, the work lives on.
Creating Together
We need not be great creators, but every small act of creating in life can be a great undertaking too. Perhaps creating helped you discover your own insight without realising it, opened up another person's heart unintentionally, or proclaimed a plea the public could not voice in silence… Whether the purpose of your creating is to understand yourself, to move others, or simply to experience the process, it all has its meaning. Perhaps creating is the key to finding our strength again amid powerlessness. Whether you are writing in a room or singing aloud in the street, I hope you can treasure the feeling of the present moment.
References
Bolwerk, A., Mack-Andrick, J., Lang, F. R., Dörfler, A., & Maihöfner, C. (2014). How art changes your brain: Differential effects of visual art production and cognitive art evaluation on functional brain connectivity. PloS one, 9(7), e101035.
Brenner, B. (2019, September 16). Creativity is your secret advantage for mental health and well-being. Retrieved from https://nyctherapy.com/therapists-nyc-blog/creativity-is-your-secret-advantage-for-mental-health-and-well-being/
Bungay, H. (2018, April 5). How prescription creativity can improve mental and physical health. Retrieved from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-04-prescription-creativity-mental-physical-health.html
Conner, T. S., DeYoung, C. G., & Silvia, P. J. (2018). Everyday creative activity as a path to flourishing. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 13(2), 181-189.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper-Perennial.
Legg, T. J. (2019, August, 12). Healing invisible wounds: Art therapy and PTSD. Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/health/art-therapy-for-ptsd
Malchiodi, C. (2015, December 31). Creativity as a wellness practice. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/arts-and-health/201512/creativity-wellness-practice
Rheinberg, F., & Engeser, S. (2018). Intrinsic motivation and flow. In Motivation and action (pp. 579-622). Springer, Cham.
Stuckey, H. L., & Nobel, J. (2010). The connection between art, healing, and public health: A review of current literature. American journal of public health, 100(2), 254-263.
Comments
No comments yet — share your thoughts.