Tenderness and Depression in Creative People

This is a second interview with Dr. Eric Maisel who was here at the Cafe yesterday. Today we're talking more about Eric's book The Van Gogh blues: the creative person's path through depression along with the notion that self-care and care for others - that is, love and tenderness - can help fight depression and anxiety in creative people.

Hi, Eric, and welcome. It's great to have you back. Let's talk more about this great book. In the introduction you say that virtually 100 percent of creative people will suffer from episodes of depression. In the book you describe the complete meaning-making process and vocabulary but can you describe a snapshot of how to handle a meaning-making crisis?

E: Love rekindles meaning: falling back in love with art or with your own art replenishes meaning. Having other meaning avenues available helps: possessing meaningful relationships and meaningful pursuits other than art-making are good things. Taking action helps: getting to the studio even if the blues have descended and working, even without enthusiasm, can help restore meaning, if not the first day then the second or the fifth or the eleventh. Having success helps: if you can’t find the wherewithal produce, it might be exactly the right moment to redouble your marketing efforts, so that success occurs, which success becomes a meaning boost. And accepting the rhythms of the creative process helps: knowing that the process comes with periods of time when you are lost, or not producing in your voice, or fulfilling commissions that don’t move you, and remembering that tomorrow or next week a sea change in meaning may come.

Q: You mention that intimacy and personal relationships are as important to alleviating depression as are individual accomplishments. What is the link between the two and are they forged in similar ways?

E: It is important that we create and it is also important that we relate. Many artists have discovered that even though their creating feels supremely meaningful to them, creating alone does not alleviate depression. If it did, we would predict that productive and prolific creators would be spared depression, but we know that they have not been spared. More than creating is needed to fend off depression, because we have other meaning needs as well as the need to actualize our potential via creating. We also have the meaning need for human warmth, love, and intimacy: we find loving meaningful. Therefore we work on treating our existential depression in at least these two ways: by reminding ourselves that our creating matters and that therefore we must actively create; and by reminding ourselves that our relationships also matters, and that therefore we must actively relate.

Q: In the chapter Sounding Silence you discuss Negative Self-Talk and it's role in meaning crises, do you think as creatives we sabotage ourselves and our abilities?

E: Yes, all the time. We are continually saying things to ourselves (though often just out of earshot) like “It’s too late for me” or “There’s too much competition” or “I don’t really have what it takes.” These negative thoughts need to be heard and disputed, and then more affirmative thoughts need to be substituted. More insidiously, as we are tricky creatures and because we don’t want to know to what extent we are disappointing ourselves by not creating, we couch our negativity in language that sounds true but that really isn’t. Today, the two most common phrases of this sort are “I’m too busy” and “I’m too tired.” We say these things because we know that they have enough grains of truth in them that we can believe them without examining them too closely. If we want to change this dynamic, we need to begin to say things to ourselves like “I’m very busy, but not too busy to spend twenty minutes on my novel.” In this way we honor the truth of our situation while at the same time not avoiding our existential responsibilities.

Q: Do you feel that it would be valuable to form a creative community to offer support to one another by following the principles in your book and talking out these disappointments that come along and working out how to get back on track when they happen?

E: It would be, if people could rise to the occasion and actually support each other. We are self-interested creatures and it is not so easy for us to provide genuine support for others of the species. What I think might be a first step is for people to speak about meaning more explicitly and clearly, using a vocabulary of meaning, and then they could see to whom they were drawn—that is, people who spoke the “same language” would begin to chat with one another, and that might form the basis of a supportive community. I think that would be an excellent first step on the road to actual mutual support.

Q: How can we cultivate an attitude of attention towards our creative dreams and goals? How do you suggest we focus love and attention on our creative work when there are so many other things completing for our attention?

E: One approach is to institute a regular, seven-day-a-week creativity practice, where we show up at the same time every day (at five in the morning, say), and create a habit that is so sturdy that distraction has no way in. I describe the details of such a creativity practice in The Creativity Book.

Q: Can you tell us more about the sense of commitment and your use of the word "force" in the sense that we can choose to make a commitment to force meaning on our lives? How can we think about this process in a way that helps us actualize our dreams and our best idea of ourselves?

E: I believe that it is very important that, as a species, we engage in a paradigm shift from seeking meaning to making meaning. “Forcing life to mean” is a phrase that the novelist Hermann Hesse used in his journals and it captures what I believe is our central existential task, to decide what cherished principles we want to uphold and how we want to represent ourselves in the world and then to act accordingly, whether or not what we have decided looks meaningful, proper, or appropriate to anyone else. The individual is the only arbiter of meaning in his or her life—there are no legitimate meaning police and we ought not allow there to be any meaning police of any sort. Rather than “looking for meaning in all the wrong places,” or even in the right places, we reflect on how we want to be and then live life that way, making our own meaning
as we passionately create ourselves.

Q: As creativity coaches we frequently hear from artists who need a "second job" to pay the bills and that the second job drains them of time, energy and spirit which they would otherwise devote to their creative lives and, worse yet, the second job drains meaning from their life, dragging down their hope and their spirit. Do you have any suggestions for restoring meaning?

E: As it happens I am working on a new book that is all about making meaning. To answer the question, there are only a handful of possible choices, none of them perfect. The first is to see if we can reinvest meaning in our current meaningless job by identifying any parts of the job that do feel meaningful and focusing our energy and attention there, insofar as we can. For instance, if you are a teacher and love your classes but hate faculty meetings, you reinvest meaning in your classes and plead a headache as often as you can and get out of as many meetings as possible—or spend the meetings dreaming of Tahiti or plotting your novel. The second is to see if, by investing meaning elsewhere (say, in a creative project), you can create enough meaning capital that you can stand the meaninglessness of your day job. The day feels different if you go off to work or if you write for an hour on your novel and then go off to work. In the latter case you may have built up enough meaning capital that the rest of the day can be endured. Third, you find your way out: you bite the bullet and announce to yourself that your meaning needs come before you financial needs and that you really must find another line of work. Reality bites; and we must meet its bite with our full endowment, which sometimes means getting the heck out.

Q: You note in the book that "Most creators feel miserable if few or none of their creative efforts succeed." What do you recommend to an artist facing this situation, struggling to find acceptance of their creative work and to make meaning in their life?

E: A lack of success and a lack of recognition are profound meaning crises that must be addressed just as any meaning crisis must be addressed, with all of our heart and all of our energy. We have the following options. We reinvest meaning in our art and reinvest meaning in our marketing efforts and make a new go at doing excellent work and also at becoming an excellent advocate for our work, in the hope that this time recognition and success will follow. That is, we try again, only harder and smarter. In addition, we invest meaning elsewhere, in other meaning avenues and other meaning containers, and especially in intimate relationships (Van Gogh was happy for one year, when he was in such an intimate relationship). There are no other existential answers: we try again (perhaps differently and hopefully with a better payoff) and/or we try something new.

Q: Do you think there's value in toughing it out through our anxiety and depression?

E: Many artists try. I believe that it serves us best to learn how to reduce or eliminate both depression and anxiety from our lives, as I do not hold them as useful in any way. I think that pain is overrated. That isn’t to say that the following might not happen: you work honorably and well on a creative project, you finish it, you are depleted and no new project wants to come forward, and after a certain amount of time the blues strike, since you aren’t making sufficient meaning and don’t feel quite up to making new meaning. This sort of depression can creep up on any working artist. The depression is not useful in and of itself but it is a clear signal that the time has come to see if new meaning can be made. It is the time to get back on the horse and back into the studio. Maybe there is nothing there yet and maybe you will experience days or weeks of nothing particularly generative happening. Be that as it may, the depression was not a gift; it was merely the warning sign that a meaning crisis was brewing or had erupted—and that action, even if futile at first, was now required.

Q: Let's visit the topic of addiction. In chapter 9 Disputing Happy Bondage you say, "Creators are prone to addictions because an addiction is an ineffective but tempting way to handle meaning crises" and "the pressures of meaning-making cause us to seek pleasurable meaning substitutes."

For many alcoholics and addicts the use of chemicals or behaviors or other forms of addiction are ways of lessening feelings of loneliness, sensitivity, lovelessness and other existential crises. Can there be some positive, meaning-enhancement uses for what you list as meaning substitutes?

E: In my vernacular, no, because a meaning substitute is just that—not meaningful. It is a “poor substitute” for making intentional meaning. That isn’t to say that it might not have tremendous blandishments and rewards, activating our pleasure center this way or numbing our pain that way. But, especially over time, the dangers are profoundly great, as witnessed by the number of creative and performing artists ruined by addiction. A drink is not a problem; turning to drink as a way to deal with meaning challenges is a problem. Shopping for a tie is not a problem; turning to acquisition as a way to deal with meaning challenges is a problem. To the extent that a creative person uses anything or does anything as a way to avoid the challenge of making sufficient meaning, that is a problem—maybe not the first time he does it, maybe not the second time, but certainly when it becomes habitual and a place of dependency.

I just finished writing a book on the subject (co-written with an addictions specialist, Dr. Susan Raeburn), in which she and I present what we think is the first addiction recovery program specifically geared to artists. Addiction is often a meaning substitute in a creative person’s life—it is a quick fix way to deal with existential depression but it ultimately becomes an additional source of depression as the artist loses control and begins to suffer large negative consequences of his addictive use, including often enough an inability to create regularly or well—or at all. Wish there was more room to chat about this!—but the book, Creative Recovery, comes out from Shambhala during the Fall of this year.

Q: In chapter 4 Sounding Silence you discuss Negative Self-Talk and it's role in meaning crises, do you think as creatives we sabotage ourselves and our abilities?

E: Yes, all the time. We are continually saying things to ourselves (though often just out of earshot) like “It’s too late for me” or “There’s too much competition” or “I don’t really have what it takes.” These negative thoughts need to be heard and disputed, and then more affirmative thoughts need to be substituted. More insidiously, as we are tricky creatures and because we don’t want to know to what extent we are disappointing ourselves by not creating, we couch our negativity in language that sounds true but that really isn’t. Today, the two most common phrases of this sort are “I’m too busy” and “I’m too tired.” We say these things because we know that they have enough grains of truth in them that we can believe them without examining them too closely. If we want to change this dynamic, we need to begin to say things to ourselves like “I’m very busy, but not too busy to spend twenty minutes on my novel.” In this way we honor the truth of our situation while at the same time not avoiding our existential responsibilities.

Q: Could you explain more about the importance of creating a life plan sentence/statement?

E: If you agree to commit to active meaning-making, you need to know where to make your meaning investments, both in the short-term sense of knowing what to do with the next hour and in the long-term sense of knowing which novel you are writing or which career you’re pursuing. Having a life purpose statement or life plan statement in place serves as an ongoing reminder of the sorts of meaning investments that you intend to make, both short-term and long-term, and helps you make the right “meaning decision” about where to spend your capital and how to realize your potential.

Q: In chapter 8 Nurturing Self-Support you say "you have to change your mind and heal your heart" and then what follows is a beautiful list of examples where you recommend whispering, "I am the beauty in life" as a way to heal shame, fight fears and mend sorrows and soothe all manner of human anguish.

Can you talk more about this?

E: Yes. Even before you can make meaning, you must nominate yourself as the meaning-maker in your own life and fashion a central connection with yourself, one that it more aware, active, and purposeful than the connection most people fashion with themselves. Having some ideas about purpose is not the same as standing in relationship to yourself in such a way that you turn your ideas about purpose into concrete actions. Self-connection—understanding that you are your own advocate, taskmaster, coach, best friend, and sole arbiter of meaning and that no one else can or will serve those functions for you—is crucial.

Eric, thank you so much for sharing your inspiring ideas and writing here today.

Dear visitors, that's all for now. Remember, if you decide to re-invest as the meaning-maker in your life The Van Gogh blues: the creative person's path through depression will gently and wisely walk you through the introspection and action steps to carry you to a new level of meaning-making in your life. To support you in that process and provide you with language for the journey there are "60 Terms for a Vocabulary of Meaning" at the back of the book to get you started, for meaningful self-talk and to communicate meaning-making with others.

Eric's book again is The Van Gogh blues: the creative person's path through depression just out in paperback by New World Library. You can learn more about Eric and his work from his web site at www.ericmaisel.com.

Good luck and enjoy the journey whenever you possibly can.