Health & Illness

I’m a highly creative person. That manifests in many ways, but obviously, it’s the clearest in my writing. That’s why I’m an author and poet.

I’m also mentally and chronically ill. Both mental and chronic illness come with their own unique set of challenges. Earlier today, I made a post on social media discussing chronic illness and mental illness and the ways that they feed off of each other.

Chronic pain and illness are their own traumas, but they are also trauma triggers. For that reason, they are extremely emotionally dysregulating. Emotional dysregulation worsens mental health.

Chronic pain and illness isolate us both emotionally and physically from those around us far too often. Emotionally because very few people who do not live with it themselves can understand how difficult it is to live with, and physically because we are often too unwell to go out and socialize or do other activities where we may interact with people. This isolation can feed depression and feelings of loneliness, which worsens mental health.

Chronic pain and illness also prevent us from doing things that we enjoy doing far too frequently and stop us from doing things that we need (or feel that we need) to do for ourselves and our space. This can worsen feelings of worthlessness, a sense of hopelessness, increase anxiety, feed depression, and worsen overall mental health.

Additionally, people living with chronic pain and illness face challenges with mental health treatment that others may not. For example, few therapists are trained in techniques that can help us cope with things like pain and medical trauma from things like medical gaslighting and repeated invasive tests and procedures.

The problems that we face with our mental health also worsen our physical health. Depression and anxiety have both been linked to increased chronic pain responses. Stress has been definitively linked to chronic pain and illness symptom flare-ups, and feeling isolated and overwhelmed constantly is very stressful. Complex post-traumatic stress disorder has been linked to an increased pain response. Hopelessness can be worsened by the fact that proper care for these coinciding conditions is hard to come by, if not impossible to come by for some.

Having mental illness and chronic illness means that we are locked in a cycle where our worsening mental health is worsening our physical health, and our worsening physical health is worsening our mental health. It just goes on loop unless we can find a way to disrupt the cycle.

I don’t have all the answers on how to do that just yet. I just wanted to raise some awareness around that issue and also remind everyone out there who struggles with both while trying to be a creative human being that actually writes books, makes art, or does anything of the sort, that you are not alone if you struggle with creativity or productivity because of this cycle.

Creativity & Illness

I don’t know if this is true for everyone, but it is true for me- my imagination and my ability to escape into my head is part of what makes me good at writing and also a key part of how I survive some of my most intense pain and illness days. If I can slip into my mind and think about my story, or begin composing a poem, I can slip out of awareness of everything that is going wrong with my body or mind when they are a dumpster fire.

In that sense, illness does not actually impede my creativity, it fuels it. It gives me plenty of time to think about things that only make my writing better. It helps me come up with new ideas and concepts for digital art, for traditional art, for awesome products that I can offer on my ko-fi.

For others, the symptoms are too distressing and distracting. They cannot focus on their creative projects or ideas because all of their attention is constantly being called back to their discomfort. That is also extremely valid. Not everyone can separate themselves from what is happening enough to get into that creative mindset, and that is completely fair. It is a lot to cope with.

Perhaps they have other hobbies like reading, watching standup, bingeing TV shows, or scouring their services for interesting movies to watch. Perhaps they prefer music. Perhaps they just need to rest in the dark until the worst has passed. All of that is okay.

People living with chronic or mental illness, and especially people living with both, will likely have a lot of ups and downs with our ability to feel and be creative. Self-compassion is so important.

Productivity & Illness

Here’s where things become sticky for me. Productivity.

See, disappearing into my head to imagine the things that I want to create is a great skill for coping with my symptoms and for giving me an abundance of fuel for actually creating things, but my illnesses are a barrier to actually producing the things that I imagined.

Joint and muscle pain can make doing pretty much anything difficult. Migraines incapacitate me. It’s also hard to make anything experiencing symptoms like vertigo or while dry heaving. Depression and anxiety are paralytics when it comes to me trying to create. My other symptoms from mental illness pose unique challenges as well.

The first step to creation may be in my head, but the second step, the creating, is a task that I am not up to nearly as often as I would like to be.

I imagine that I am not the only one in this situation. Again, self-compassion is very important. We also need understanding and compassion from those around us, which can be hard to come by at times.

Finishing Thoughts

There are certainly people out there with chronic illness, mental illness, and even a combination of the two that still find ways to tap into their creativity and produce amazing work.

In my opinion, they have discovered their why. As a former social worker, I talked a lot to people in recovery about finding their why, their reason for staying sober and wanting a better life for themselves even when things are incredibly difficult and the temptation to lapse or relapse is growing steadily by the day, if not the minute.

Why do I want to create?

I have always felt a drive to do so without a clear concept of why. Without knowing my why, it will be hard to find sustainable motivation to do so even when quitting or taking a prolonged break seems like the much more tempting offer.

Today, I was reminded of the fact that many of us are living our lives with a plethora of self-limiting beliefs that are keeping us from what we want. I am going to do an exercise today to start digging into those self-limiting beliefs of mine. What are they? Where did they come from? How can I challenge them or kick them to the curb?

I’m thinking that I do have a why that I simply cannot see because I am encumbered by what author and meditation expert Tara Brach calls the trance of unworthiness. You can find her books Radical Acceptance and Radical Self-Compassion online or listen to her masterclass in radical self-compassion on Calm if you’re interested in learning more about her perspective on this subject.

I think that when it comes to what we love, and what really matters, we always know what our why is on some level. We just can’t feel it the way that we need to until we feel that we deserve to live our dream, that we are worthy of good things, that we are good enough to achieve our goals.

So that’s where I’m starting, and I’m starting today.