In my job in a mental
health service, I am regularly struck by the number of service users
discovering the therapeutic power of creativity. During times of emotional crisis, we have the opportunity to define the essential and optimal components of our individualised self-care. I have noticed that for a great many people, this requires ring-fencing time for personally fulfilling activities, too numerous to name. But one key theme seems to stand out : creativity.
Mental health charities advise us not to neglect the things we enjoy and are good at, emphasising the value of creative interests. It is no surprise that research is highlighting the link between creativity and better health, with articles telling us that “a creative life is a healthy life”. (There is even a published study on the relationship between quilting and wellbeing!*)
The message is clear that in its many forms, creativity plays an important role in promoting wellbeing, whatever this means to each one of us.
For many of us, this is just ‘common sense’ as we find we are naturally drawn to areas of creativity that inspire and engage us, whether in the form of art, writing, photography, design, craft, music, sculpture, web-design, textiles, film…and thankfully, the list goes on. I think this is one of the incredible beauties of creativity, that it can be so unique to each person.
When an inspiring idea pops into your mind, when you feel the glow of satisfaction from completing a step of your project, the thrill of mastering a technique, isn’t there something fundamental yet indefinably transcendent going on?
I am increasingly convinced that this has something to do with being made in the image of God.
As people we are inherently and intuitively creative by our very nature. It’s in our wiring. It’s the way we are because it’s who He is.
As someone with a background in psychology, I tend to notice the iconic and resonant statements made by giants of the field about the human mind and its development.
Maybe the mysterious power of creativity is part of what Maslow meant when he first imagined the concept of ‘Self-actualisation’. Donald Hebb, a pioneering thinker in the subject on human memory, wrote “every normal human being is creative all the time...it is not something that occurs only in outstanding individuals".
Psychology and theology seem to agree that “to be human is to be creative”. Perhaps this is why I am drawn to creativity when I feel life squishing me. And perhaps its essential nature underpins its ability to restore us when, in whatever way or for whatever reason, we have drifted away from the core of who we really are.
*Burt and Atkinson (2011). http://jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/06/05/pubmed.fdr041.abstract?sid=73c94a33-ddd2-4569-8645-6bda4606ad03
