Living In The Grey

 

My husband and I set aside a weekend this January to get away for a few days. December is always full; we carve out time early in the New Year to connect and decompress. I anticipated long walks, good food, individual time doing whatever felt good and right, and a social media siesta. I was looking forward to a few glorious, uninterrupted hours to write. We travelled far enough to dissuade the delightful drop in visits from kids and grandkids. I committed to resisting the temptation to answer work emails, and the perfect stage was set.

 

I prepped the scene with everything I love: strong tea, the fireplace on, a snack, and ambient music softly filling the room. I settled in, the computer on my lap, ready to download thoughts as they emerged. Hoping I could start writing freely without much form, I waited for something inspiring to land. From the get-go, it didn’t feel easy — my thoughts were entangled, rigid, and tied down. Everything I wrote felt a bit strange to me. I wondered if this was the leftover weight from December?

 

My writing thoughts were fragments- some connections to spiritual bypassing and harmful practices in church communities. There were pieces around cognitive dissonance among political issues and manipulation/ control through workplace power imbalances. They were all over the place, dark & twisty, depressive meanderings on matters out of my control and filled with fear — an unusual form of writing for me. 

 

Making an attempt to self-correct, and maybe get on a better track, I paused. I wondered if I was overtired from all the events of December or if I was feeling the uncertainty on the horizon with major political leadership changes in Canada and the US. Either way, something notable interfered with my process, leaving me percolating with unease.

 

And it was this uneasy feeling that was disrupting my creativity. No matter how hard I tried to focus the intensity, my mind could not stay on one track. 

 

In retrospect, stepping back from that moment, unease is a familiar place for my nervous system — rooted in vigilance. Being vigilant served me well in childhood when the world seemed uncertain or scary. I had all sorts of plans in place if I spotted chaos coming through the door of my childhood home. My little mind could scatter in multiple directions if I needed to find more safety in a scary, uncertain environment. 

 

As an adult, this familiar vigilance hijacked my creative process; my thoughts were a compilation of all the threats around me- they were scattered. I know nothing good, innovative or imaginative comes from a frozen and afraid vessel.

 

I am not as quickly at the whim of this impulse to read the room at all costs as I was when I was younger, but this early attachment trauma is wound quite tight. It can swoop in and be quite destabilizing. I am more self-compassionate and more acquainted with this internal vigilance when it fires up on the inside.

 

But I assumed the overwhelming feeling was related to a busy December, which always requires special emotional gymnastics. I overlooked the intensity of emotional depletion and heaviness. I was not caring for myself well. I was avoiding, pushing through and running on fumes. The moment I stopped and tried to write, what spilled over was the overwhelm, not anything cohesive or clear.

 

Because I missed the activation, I could not quieten the panic. And I had not noticed how terrible I was feeling — with mind-racing, worst-case scenarios, and irritation.

 

For weeks leading to the weekend, I had been soaking in the disturbing horror in the world, and my nervous system was overloaded. I was writing from my fear and my thoughts were not lucid.

 

No wonder I had nothing when I paused to assess my writing progress, hoping to see something that would link and launch me into focus. It was complete garbage. The thoughts were clunky, depressive-like tangents branching off in every direction. Nothing inspiring emerged.

 

It read more like a purge; word vomit — sentence after sentence of my unresolved emotionality — all across the screen. While I tried to make my writing more cohesive, find a flow, or connect the thoughts, I felt stuck, and I didn’t like where my writing was going.

 

So, I slept on it instead of continuing to wrestle with it.

 

I woke up grateful (and a bit surprised) for the sound sleep, and my first thought was, “Why are you writing what you are writing about? “

 

Asking this question, unlocked something inside me. I connected it to being afraid. 

 

While the things I had noted in my purge were true for me- in my work as a therapist and my heart for vulnerable people- I found no joy in making all the pieces fit into something palatable.

 

What had inadvertently been helpful was getting it out — even though it was just fragmented, disjointed, disturbing thoughts I would never publish. The experience came with a gentle and jarring reminder to take good care of myself. 

 

Even though I had disconnected from social media and the highway of misinformation scurrying across the internet, my body was overloaded. And the destabilization on the inside came through my words on the page. My nervous system tells me that a social media fast is in order sooner rather than later.

 

My heart is to write with curiosity and reflection, sharing stories of growth and embracing the unknown, so the stuck, dark place I found myself musing in didn’t align with how I wanted to show up in this space.

 

I had set up a lovely container to do some creative work, but I had not tended to some of the author’s needs. I was the tired, overwhelmed, overstimulated writer. With overwhelm dominating my emotional world, there would not be a pathway for creativity, no matter how lovely the space was around me.

 

We set aside this weekend specifically to reconnect, write, and be renewed. What became most evident was how my protective strategy of vigilance and emotional overwhelm inhibited my creativity. Tending to my overwhelm was the priority.