When Your Brain Mistakes Expansion for Danger

On learning that what felt like a creative rut was actually years of operating in survival mode.

Until recently, I was feeling the distinct frustration of treading water—using all of the effort I could muster, yet remaining maddeningly in the same place. Neither here nor there. Almost every creative has lived through this kind of period, and we all likely call it different things: coasting, drifting, languishing, low-power mode, feeling uninspired. Thoughts that are everywhere and nowhere. Pushing when you are perhaps meant to pull—or try another door entirely.

I see now that it wasn’t a rut at all, or not in the way that I had thought it was. It was an ingrained embodiment of survival mode that kept who I was hidden, only selectively seen. This understanding awoke in me all at once, but several things over several months culminated to make it possible.

First, I kept working even when I was feeling nothing but stickiness and friction. I felt pulled to tell different stories, but I didn’t know which or even how. After I finished the rote work that I had already assigned myself, I tried to also carve out time to just follow what felt good, even if it did not feel like what I was “supposed” to be doing. That reminded me that I still had passion and fresh ideas, even if what I was currently working on was not igniting them at the moment. Rather than lighting my current work on fire or heading for the door, I maintained a steady hearth while also allowing myself the space to dream of what else could be.

The next thing that I did was to bring in outside perspectives. In the not so distant past, I often forced isolation when I was feeling my most insecure, even though I knew my work was so much richer when I welcomed feedback. I started by asking friends, but I soon recognized that once I had broken the seal, I actually craved a consistent sounding board. And I wanted to be able to ask for feedback as often as I actually needed it, without feeling any guilt or worry over being the Carrie in my friendships. It took a lot to believe in myself enough to do that, to register I could even ask for that. Around the same time, I had the incredible luck of coming across a creative consultant in a rather roundabout way who was completely aligned with my values. I took it as a sign. I reached out to them about consulting and they have since proven to be one of the most masterful creative coaches I could have imagined. Having their support, which began with getting to a place where I could believe that I was worthy of the investment in the first place, almost immediately generated an unbelievable amount of momentum and clarity. I preserved this experience with a new mantra: I believe in myself enough to ask for help.

Resources

Here are some books that I’ve read in the last few years that support the themes discussed in this piece:

• Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead by Tara Mohr

• What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo

• The Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well by Amy Edmonson

• Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear

  By the way this list contains affiliate links. These books are also available at the library or via the Libby app :)

Around the same time, I received a diagnosis in therapy that dismantled so much old patterning and illuminated a very new way of interpreting the world. This diagnosis came with a therapeutic protocol that was very structured and so far from my comfort zone that I wanted to quit several times along the way—but I didn’t. By the end, I felt like I had climbed a mountain, and the view that awaited me was just incredible. It was like I had never seen the horizon before. And again, it was all because of believing in myself enough to ask for help.

But the big big biggest shift, the one that came right when I was absolutely able to receive it, and soldered all of these links together, was reading this piece: