I have digestive problems. I’m one of those creative people some call an empath, others consider highly sensitive, and my family deemed, “Oh, why do you have to be so sensitive?”
Nevertheless my creativity runs on sensitivity so despite its inconvenience, despite it being a pain in the ass when my feelings get easily hurt and I get irritable from the noise other people tolerate, I’m grateful for my sensitivity.
Sensitivity not only gives me profound spiritual experiences in nature, helps me design creative work for my audience, it also feeds the intuition that wakes up when it senses an overheard conversation could be the first line of a poem or when an image wants to be painted in my whimsical style.
The highly sensitive nature of being creative finds that clouds are more than dry air mixed with water drops. Joni Mitchell recalls that they are angel air and ice cream castles, Paul Simon’s thoughts are cloudy -- “They echo and they swell from Tolstoy to Tinker Bell”, and they’re in Carly Simon’s coffee.
So why do I have digestive problems? One of my theories is that what is happening in the world, our country – our sweet land of liberty – is disturbing and hard to digest. It’s worse than a bad burrito.
When you’re a sensitive creative person you may find yourself experiencing metaphors literally. You may have a hard time digesting the news therefore your turkey club sandwich just sits in your belly and fatigues you. You may have a leaky gut because you have a hard time setting boundaries with yourself and the world's consternation.
Creativity is also my go-to for almost all my maladies because I’ve immersed myself in writing and art for many years and the resourcefulness, tenacity, and flexibility required to endure the ebb and flow of the creative process are also available for confronting what life throws at me. It throws a lot.
On Facebook today I posted one of those feel-good posts about our need to love everyone not just the people that love us. A friend asked this:
"Nice sentiment. How do you love the neighbors and countrymen who elected Donald Trump for their leader and the congress who is dismantling every progressive, cultural, financial, gender based, environmental, and educational achievements we've made in the last few decades? I’m trying but it’s hard to keep an open heart. Pointers appreciated from anyone out there. It hurts to be a hater."
Excellent question.
As a recovering perfectionist, I know I can’t go from disgust to love. But I know now that unlike a perfectionist’s thinking, the world is not either black or white. It’s not either disgust or love. There are others ways to process love. Being in disgust all the time is not loving myself, it gave me have an allergy to rice, night shades and waffles.
Expectations can psych us out. We simply avoid, dismiss, or give-up when expecting ourselves to love a president we feel is destroying our country. I will probably never love President Trump and those who refuse to save us from his infantile bullying and narcissism. I have some empathy for the lost and discouraged who believe in him, but not the government officials who know he’s not good for our country and do nothing. But if I continually condemn him in my mind because I can’t fathom how he got in office or why he is still there, I’m in a world of condemnation and can’t eat anything but a blended spinach, blueberry, and collagen powder shake.
Everything we think and say affects the way we feel. If you’re highly sensitive, how you feel affects your health. We are wandering around in disgust and getting sick. Curiosity not only feels better, it also opens our centers of creativity for EVERYTHING.
Questions move me from toxic thoughts and feelings to curious ones. Creative thoughts and feelings not only are healing, they are either neutral or enjoyable. The questions don’t even need answers. The simple asking of them shift your internal landscape.
Question Medicine:
Which one of these questions are you willing to use to replace your disgust?
- What would it feel like to be kinder to my body right now by choosing kinder thoughts?
- What would it feel like to love people who do things I don't like?
You don't have to love them, just wonder about the question.
At the very least asking these questions feel better and do more for my health than the things my smaller mind obsesses about when I'm not able to digest the weirdness happening.
If if that doesn't work, I seek the healing sphere of painting clouds in bowls or writing words about imaginary worlds.
Lunch break.
Join me in a Journey of Creative Spirituality this January 2018.
Finding Uber Bliss: A Wildly Creative Journey to the Present Moment