When the world feels heavy, when our hearts hurt, creativity can help alleviate some of that heaviness. Creating isn’t an escape from the world - even if it feels that way temporarily - it is a way of being connected to it that gives us an opening to process what we feel.
Creativity won’t fix everything but it can help us express our humanity, share our stories, let us know we aren’t alone in this pain and confusion, and find meaningful ways to connect.
When we need to understand and process pain, creativity can offer us a place to pause, breathe, explore our emotions, and reconnect with ourselves.
Some feelings are difficult to put into words - whether we are talking to someone or writing in our journal. How do we put into words to express how we feel about the suffering in the world, the things we cannot change, the uncertain future, or the complicated emotions in each of us. These feelings reside within us, influence our thoughts, our energy, and how we move through our days.
Creative expression gives us a way to engage with those feelings. Being creative helps us to shift our attention toward an activity that engages those feelings as we work to understand them. With creative expression, we find a way to explain our feelings not logically but more simply with a color, a shape, a word, a single mark on a page.
Create Without Having to Explain
We create so we can communicate without having to find the right words. There are layers of emotions within us. They are complicated, contradictory, and difficult to name. A creative activity can give these feelings space to unfold. What may feel like only sadness may unfold to reveal anger, fear, love, or longing. Like our multi-layered emotions, collage can offer a way to express ourselves in layers. With various mediums and papers we can dig deep and work through our layers.
“What does it feel like when I use these mediums to give my emotions this space?” Self-expression may feel less like a problem to solve and more like an opportunity to listen to ourselves.
Finding Calm in the Creative Process
When the world feels noisy and demanding, creativity can provide moments of calm. At its noisest, the world my be pushing your mind to an overwhelming state. This is when I turn to watercolor. I may joke and say I’m playing with water and color, but watercolor is loose and doesn’t want to be controlled. Playing with it - simply painting circles - lets our minds release the hold that noise has on us.
As we paint we begin to breathe. Slower and deeper. With each breath our mind calms and thoughts come slower and we begin to understand.
Feeling Isolated and Disconnected
Suffering or feeling empathetic for those who are suffering can make us feel alone and separated from others who experiences seem to differ from ours. The scale of our problems and feelings may seem too large, too complex for any one person to understand. Feeling alone and overwhelmed is hard. I’ve been there and when you don’t know how to even begin with words or who to talk with, you may feel even more alone.
Turning to creative self-expression saved me. Over time it can help to heal, to understand, and to move forward. In your creative self-expression you begin to recognize the emotional expression of others and that reconnects you with their creativity. You may see that you aren’t alone.
Making Space for Grief, Anger, and Uncertainty
Bright colors. Playful ideas. Inspiring projects. Maybe that’s our first thought when we think of creativity. But creativity has room for the full range of human experience.
We can create when we are happy, grieving, angry, hopeful, or doubtful. We can use our creativity to ask questions, challenge assumptions, express anger, or acknowledge the uncertainty of living in a complicated world.
Our creative lives don’t need to be all sunshine and rainbows all the time.
It’s okay to sit down and fill an entire page with angry marks. Express what you are genuinely experiencing.
You don’t need to share it.
You don’t need to explain it.
You don’t even need to understand it.
Simply give your inner world a place to go.
Creating Beauty in a World of Hurt
Being aware of the suffering in the world may make you question if it’s okay to create something beautiful when others are hurting. Enjoying ordinary pleasures don’t need to make you feel guilty. Experiencing joy doesn’t mean we are indifferent to suffering.
We can care deeply about the world and still appreciate a beautiful sunset. We can recognize injustice and still enjoy making something with our hands. We can be with the people who are suffering and still allow ourselves moments of rest, laughter, and connection.
Our capacity to care doesn’t require us to remain in a constant state of distress. Otherwise humans would become emotionally depleted. Exhausted mentally and emotionally makes it harder to listen, to think clearly, to help others, or to help make changes you want to see.
The human experience include both beauty and suffering. We see it in the flower growing through the crack in the pavement. We see it in a child’s smile despite being sick. We see it in feeling the warmth of the sunshine even while we are grieving. Beauty reminds us of what is worth protecting, nurturing, preserving, and fighting for. Joy can strengthen our ability to care.
Using Creativity to Build Connection
When the world feels divided, it can be easy to focus on the differences between people. We encounter different beliefs, backgrounds, experiences, and interpretations of what’s happening around us.
Beneath our differences, we share many fundamental human experiences. We love, worry, grieve, hope, remember, imagine, and search for meaning. We want our loved ones to be safe. We want to feel that our lives matter. We want to be understood.
Creativity helps us explore those shared experiences. We can choose to approach one another with honesty, humility, and compassion. Every person has a story that we may not know. Creative self-expression allows us to tell the truth of our own experiences while remaining curious about the experiences of others.
It reminds us that being human means more than surviving our circumstances. It also means imaginging, expressing, connecting, questioning, building, and caring. We don’t have to pretend everything is beautiful. We don’t have to force ourselves to feel inspired or turn every painful experience into a meaningful creation. We can find ourselves and one another in our personal self-expression. The world simply needs people who are willing to see clearly, care deeply, and respond in ways that reflect their values. Creativity supports that. Creativity connects us.
Creative Check-In with Compassion
We don’t always need to explain our feelings. We just need to give them somewhere to go. Creative expression can be a supportive part of caring for ourselves - along with connection with others, rest, support, and professional help when needed.
Check in with yourself. Take a moment to see how you’re feeling. Create freely with a color that connects with your emotions. Use a word or an image. Reflect gently to see what you notice. And give yourself compassion to see the experience of expressing your inner world is what matters. The act of creative self-expression helps us understand and care for ourselves.