An Abundance Of Thinking - Creativity, Anxiety And Over-Thinking
This is a very over-thought piece of writing about over-thinking. Yep, I know. My first draft was 4386 words. I can’t help it. I am an overthinker and I would like to invite you into my mind and to a look at overthinking. I want to share some thinking I’ve had about mental health, mental ill health, creativity and the connection that they may or may not have. Again, I can’t help it. Mental health is my jam.
Some quick clarifications before we dive in: I will be writing about my experience of mental ill health, that reaches the criteria of a diagnosable anxiety disorder, as Anxiety with a big A to distinguish it from anxiety with a little a which is a normal, healthy and helpful emotion.
Also, I’d like to say I’m loath to keep on talking about myself and my Anxiety, but I’m not. As long as it’s useful for other people, as long as my example can open things up and start a conversation, I will be happy to reflect and write about my mental health and artistic process. Hopefully, I'm side-stepping self-indulgence. This has proven a really useful exercise into understanding my own mind, which helps propel my recovery and I like to share what I've found, in case it can help someone else.
I am a very creative person and I have been since I was little. At times I have been a very anxious person and I have been since I was little. I was creative before my initial diagnosis and, writing this now in 2020, I don’t believe having Anxiety necessarily makes me more of a creative person – although I have often wondered whether it has. Anxiety and mental health have also been a driving force to my work and I'm sure it will always interest me or take some sort of place in my work. There have been a lot of learning opportunities and perspectives Anxiety has offered me (in its own way) but it often feels that it is despite the challenges my Anxiety presents to me that I am still a creative person.
These two aspects will always be key to who I am as a person.
Creativity and Anxiety are 2 sides to the same coin – overthinking
I have often wondered why the two strongest influences in my life have been Creativity and Anxiety. Especially when they seem to be so counterintuitive to each other. How can I be playful, open and reach 'flow' while also being self-doubtful and constantly second-guessing myself? I’ve come to realise that they aren’t actually all that different to each other but are two sides to the same coin.
And that coin is over-thinking
Over-think vs Abundance of Thinking
So I need to stop here first. Because I hate the word over-thinking! The word “over-“ when whacked in front of a word – over-thinking, over-achieving, over-dramatic, over-reacting - is just full of judgement. It puts limits on peoples behaviour and it strictly defines what is normal. When you start applying it to yourself, you’re setting those same standards.
Over the past year, I’ve been working with a really lovely therapist who has had to stop me in the middle of sessions to ask “Why do you say you over-think?” and “Why is that a bad thing?”
It’s a word that I have been described with, but it’s also how I will often describe myself. By saying "I over-think", I am telling myself and others there is something wrong and excessive with how I think.
For years, I have considered over-thinking as a symptom of my Anxiety - one that I have had cope with, work against or get rid of.
However, at the same time, I have been praised for my focused Creativity and my best pieces have come from mulling an idea over for hours until finally finding a vivid way to show it.
Aren't they actually both the products of over-thinking?
And after all, there is no other way I can think. It’s just the way I think and I can’t stop myself thinking! It would be like trying to hold the ocean back using just my hands. To describe myself as an over-thinker was setting a standard I will always go beyond.
Yes, my over-thinking can be annoying – I’ll often repeat myself when trying to describe something, I’ll go over the same points in an argument, it takes a while for me to figure out what I want to say and I’m not very concise (I’m already 762 words into this essay without getting even close to my main point!).
Despite that, I came to the realisation, with a bit of guidance from my therapist, that I am not an over-thinker - I have an abundance of thinking. I am an abundant thinker. No judgement, no limiting, no trying to find what’s an acceptable amount of thinking, no policing of my thoughts. I’m owning this part of myself, celebrating it as a part of me and a part of my brain.
So, now we have THAT out of the way...
Creativity and Anxiety and Neutral Zone
I believe Creativity and Anxiety are two different products of an abundant thinking process. Creativity has been an overwhelmingly positive and beautiful force in my life that I have encouraged. Anxiety has been a more difficult and often negative force that I feel I need to overcome.
It’s not always that black and white of course. There’s a lot of grey area. I think my Creativity can sometimes have a negative effect, particularly if I’m working on a piece and get distracted by a new, shiny idea or I use it as a way to procrastinate. At the same time, Anxiety is there to keep me safe from danger, to make me think twice about a situation and reminds me when something is important to me or where I need to be more caring towards myself.
But for now, I’m going to paint Creativity as having a more positive impact on my life and Anxiety as having a more negative impact.
Between these two is, of course, a neutral space of abundant thinking where I think mostly about what I’m making for dinner, whether I’ve paid a bill, a text to my husband asking when he wants to be picked up etcetc Neither negative nor positive.
Okay now we know what makes up this coin, let's do a deep dive on what I see as my abundant thinking process and how it can help me as an artist and hinder me as a human being.
How abundance of thinking manifests itself
What is behind the process of my abundant thinking? Well, I’m often trying to find the most concise, most understandable way of relating to something or understanding something or communicating something. This will manifest itself in repeating myself, talking my thoughts allowed, looking at all the different angles and seeing the many perspectives of a topic or subject before I can settle on a conclusion, my opinion or a final idea. Or 'waffling' if I'm being concise. It is a way of trying to communicate how I am thinking, how I’m feeling and what my opinions and values truly are.
It’s probably why therapy, having a weekly non-judgemental 50 minutes just for me to talk, was vital for my recovery.
The pattern I see with my abundant thinking is this:
Tangential thinking, making connections and then solving the problem
Tangential thinking – creativity
I often think in tangents. I will travel the road less travelled, I will visit different ideas, I will walk in a lot of other people’s shoes, I will go off the beaten track to eventually end up at a conclusion someone else may have gotten to a lot sooner but maybe without the same journey and consideration.
This can be very useful when I am being Creative. Thinking abundantly and tangentially helps when generating ideas or text or images. I can dream pretty big when my Creativity is let loose. I will more often than not find myself at a different subject to the one that I started with and I’m better off for it.
I quite enjoy gaining knowledge from a lot of different sources. I love non-fiction books. I have a lot of interests and odd collections of information from various subjects.
This can be great for the first stages of a new project, in a meeting or the rehearsal room and it creates a lot of excitement for me. There’s a lot of “What ifs” to ask and answer, which can start a beautiful stream of creative making.
(My favourite part of theatre-making, and I think I’ve heard it in every rehearsal I have been apart of is the phrase “Not this, not this, this is shit, but –“ and then an idea is given. I wish I knew the origin of this phrase and who said it first. It’s a beautiful start to a sentence because it's acknowledging that the thing you're about to say isn't the best or most relevant idea. But you say it, in the hope that by saying it out loud that someone else will be inspired by it and start a chain of more excellent ideas.)
It’s a way of thinking that sometimes I don’t even know I’m doing until an image or an idea pops fully formed into the forefront of my mind. It usually happens without consciously trying to make it happen. It will be a happy surprise in the middle of a walk. The only way I can purposely set it in motion is if I’m in a devising space, if I’m reading a book or if I go for a walk. I get all my best ideas when I’m walking the dog.
(In fact, I made the notes for this blog post over the course of two walks)
I often describe it as letting ideas ferment allowing them to become something new and better. I can trust to put a few ideas into my brain at the start of a walk and let my Creativity run gently in the background. Suddenly a good idea will appear vividly. I’ll take notice because I can’t ignore it! I’ll get a big rush! An “oh yes! Of course, that would work really well, that would be cool!” sort of rush. And that will create a domino effect for other good ideas.
There has to be a lot of ideas and thoughts for this to work, so an abundance of thinking is so vital, even if a lot of ideas won’t go much further then just being stepping stones to a greater idea. My walks with my dog have become sacred and it feels like something very magical is happening.
Anxiety - Tangential thinking
It took me a while to discover that this is a very similar way that my Anxious thinking will bubble away. Again, it's not a conscious thing. I can go on a walk, come home and wonder why I’m in such an irritable, Anxious, self-deprecating mood, only to suddenly notice my thoughts had been wholly negative throughout, without me being aware of them or what triggered them.
The same “What if” thinking that can become the seeds of a new creative project can be the starting questions of self-doubt, uncertainty and fear. “What if this happens, what if that happens, what am I going to do about work, what am I going to do about this relationship, when am I going to have time to do this?” From this, an idea might pop into my head (so similar to a beautiful Creative idea) a blunt message, a summary of all my thoughts. Often it is a damming report of myself as a person, the mistakes I have made, the things I have said, the things I have lost. I will be overwhelmed by the idea that I am shit, that I am not liked or loved or a friend or respected. The fact I have, out of nowhere, generated all these negative ideas about myself seems to be more than enough proof that they are a true representation of who I am.
This isn’t magical but destructive, crude and demeaning. My stomach will plummet, my heart will ache. I will respond physically as well as emotionally. It is a churning of thoughts that can be very difficult to stop or let pass. It has taken years of therapy and mindfulness to be more aware of them and to get a bit of distance from them.
Abundant Creative thoughts can nurture a positive view of myself, one that is proud of my thoughts, my experiences and my art. Abundant Anxious thinking can breed and exacerbate a negative view of myself, one that believes wholeheartedly that I am worthless, that I do not matter and that no one likes me.
The next step to this abundant thinking, that often quickly follows that spark of inspiration or shock of criticism, is to start making connections and meaning.
Making Connections
Creativity
When a good idea has popped into my head, it’s vivid, it's colourful, if it’s an idea for a theatre project or a puppet it’s usually moving and flowing as if I am already seeing it on stage.
It is a more active process then just letting the ideas ferment. I’ll eagerly start working backwards, retracing my steps, trying to find tracks of the idea, revisiting past ideas that I have only touched upon during my tangential thinking, all to see if there is any new connection that could be made.
I’ll keep moving backwards, maybe remembering past walks I’ve been on, or pieces of work I’ve already started, memories of inspirational theatre, or a page of non-fiction I read, to find the things that work, the parallels and connections.
This is a very beautiful place to be in. I can feel my neurons making new paths, I am light up inside, I am energised, I am quite blissfully happy. I am the audience watching a performance unfold and bloom in front of me.
In university, we would call these moments of inspiration ‘show-gasams’.
It's euphoric, somewhat divine. It’s my brain working at its best and it’s working quickly. I wouldn’t be able it keep up with the cascade of ideas if I was writing them down. And that’s all I want to do, get home and keep track of the idea or tell someone about it.
Anxiety
If Creativity is the gathering of ideas, Anxiety is the gathering of evidence.
When I am faced with a stark idea of who I am, when I see myself reflected in an Anxious, distorted mirror, I will find myself retracing my steps, trying to find more reasons, more examples of why I am shit, unloved, unworthy. Time travelling sometimes even decades, throwing up memories just as intense as when I first experienced them. It’s like my Anxiety is a detective and they are combing my long term memory to find any shred of damning, specific evidence it can to present to me. It works just as fast, I’m hurtling through memories and past negative thoughts and I can’t keep up. Patterns of behaviour are pointed out and seem pre-ordained in my future too. If it happened again, my Anxiety warns me, it will keep on happening. It’s easy to see Anxiety as a monster, as an abuser but really it’s the terrified part of me. It’s not trying to harm me, it’s trying to help me, trying to make me look at my mistakes, at myself, finding reasons, so something can change. “Look what’s happened! How can this keep on happening? What can we do? What’s wrong with you? You haven’t changed and you never will. but you have to do something!”
If Creativity is producing something new, something never seen before, Anxiety is re-treading old muddy, ground and sticking to old ways, sticking to what seems safe, trying to change what has already happened.
Once I've made those connections, I will move onto problem-solving and to the conclusion of my abundant thinking.
I believe that, amongst many other things, Creativity is essentially problem-solving – even if the problem is, "I want to make a theatre piece that people will like and I am starting with nothing."
(Maybe less of a problem and more of a puzzle?)
Anxiety is the same. At the heart of it, it is a problem-solving process. Sometimes it's a problem that hasn’t presented itself yet, sometimes it’s the fear that there maybe will be a problem, one that could appear unexpectedly in the future (unless I expect it first!).
Anxiety is about asking what can I do to solve it now, what can I do to stop it from happening or what can I do if it does happen? (As I said, Anxiety isn’t trying to harm me but is desperately trying to avoid the harm.)
Problem Solving
Anxiety
I’m going to mix things up a bit and start with Anxiety first. This will hopefully make sense in a little bit.
When my Anxiety starts problem-solving it’s often setting me up for failure. The problems it wants to solve are often the problems that are too big, problems that I can’t solve on my own, problems that might not even be problems or the problem is something that happened 6 years ago and isn’t something I can solve anymore. It’s already happened and no amount of “if only I did this” can change that fact. Nevertheless, that won’t stop me from trying to solve it. I will ruminate on what I should have done, how that would have changed things, how that would have changed the way that I think of myself now in the present, rather than thinking how I can relate to that memory now and move forward. I will blame myself, I will feel ashamed and guilty. I will be caught up in wanting to change things and not being able to. I will end up back home, feeling worried, threatened and hopeless. If it’s something in the possible future, I will be stuck trying to find the solutions for every eventuality and there will be so many futures to prepare for I will get stuck and fearful, feeling a visceral danger no matter how I think.
It's trying to solve a puzzle with a missing piece and I'm desperately trying to fill that missing piece with thoughts.
Creative Problem Solving
We return to the more pleasant creative walk, the one with sunshine, wild-life, a spring in my step and magic. I’m probably almost home by now, ready to start working on the problem. It is about creating solutions, a way for my ideas to dissolve into each other and to become one bigger idea. I have all of these ideas, how can I make them all into one beautiful show, or picture, or puppet?
Often it will start with editing the ideas down and asking a lot of questions. What can I work on now, what was maybe a nice idea at the time but may not work in the greater piece, is this an idea for another time is it something for another show?
It is about being concise, clear, making choices, setting other ideas aside and really developing the sparkling ones.
It’s both my favourite point of my creative process and also the most difficult. It’s when we are heading away from abundant thinking to abundant doing. I have to be selective, start to put things into place and, when I am not in the right headspace, this is where I can sometimes fall on my arse. And this is where, recently, I’ve found myself more often than not.
Sometimes I won’t write down the ideas or start to put them into action. I can look back and see that this is the moment I am most vulnerable to self-doubt or depressive outlooks. Anxiety might jump in, trying to keep me safe for critique and failure. ("This will never work, who am I to think I can make this, I’m not good enough") I might be working on something else at the time and can be liable to procrastinate by following the new ideas rather than seeing the already developed ones through to an end. I’m still getting this right, getting the best balance between getting creative work done and honouring new ideas.
…. Technically this bit of writing it a bit of a divergence away from a book I am making because I couldn’t resist the allure of a new enticing idea. I can’t get enough of the high of the abundant, tangential thinking and the connection making sometimes…
Maybe it is because, when my abundant thinking can turn negative and Anxious it can feel so catastrophic, I only want the wonderful euphoric feeling of creating ideas before my Anxious thinking can start to bleed into my Creative process
Maybe because such a big part of the Creative process is about trial and error it reminds me too much of Anxious thinking. The repetitive nature of trying to find the solution that sometimes feels very out of reach and takes time to figure out or is met by things not working out. It quickly becomes something I can’t solve and joins the list of other things I cannot change or solve.
When I started with the idea for this blog post, when I was walking in the woods and talking into my phone to capture my abundant thoughts, I thought I would end up just writing something about the two products of my ‘over-thinking’. I thought the problem-solving part would come with the writing and keeping myself motivated enough to finish it off, edit down and eventually post it. (And reassuring my Anxious thoughts that it wasn't utter rubbish!)
But what I find interesting is, through this Creative act of writing, of wanting to produce something new, I have discovered an underlying problem that has really stunted my Creative process.
I haven't recognised that my Creative abundant thinking and connection making would often slip into Anxious problem-solving rather than Creative problem-solving. I would find reasons why an idea wouldn't work (usually because of me) rather than find ways for it to develop.
They aren't two points on a binary spectrum and they aren’t two individual separate processes. They are two different products of the same sort of thinking and they can easily intermingle
So there are two things I can glean from this:
One, by being aware how my Creative thinking can slip into Anxious thinking, I can try and find a way to gently coax my thinking back to Creativity (while still allowing a bit of healthy anxiety to help identify problems I might have in the future without derailing the whole process).
Two, can I respond to Anxious abundant thinking and connection making with Creative problem-solving?
The more I think about it (because of course I will think about it and I think I need to think a bit more about it too!) the more I feel this is the role that therapy takes. Therapy takes this Anxious thinking and asks how we can find better ways of coping. What can we learn about ourselves through this sort of thinking? Is there a new and better way of thinking? Can we be curious about our emotions? Can we be innovative and Creative and give up on control and fear of change that often comes with Anxiety?
Can we find better, more Creative ways to think about ourselves and our less desirable traits? Instead of thinking of yourself as an over-thinker, can you think yourself as someone with an abundance of thoughts?
In the past couple of years, I thought I had lost my Creativity. I could generate the ideas but couldn’t always get to the connection making, and I definitely could not put those thoughts into action. I felt bereft without my Creativity. I felt lost, fatigued and without a spark.
I started therapy again and committed to going through the process, no matter how hard, no matter what it brought up because I hoped that I would find my Creativity somewhere within it.
After a year, I feel like I’m finally at the point where my Creativity is flowing better. This has come by accepting and becoming more aware and curious about my Anxiety. It has also come from accepting, being aware and more curious of my over-thinking, something I had associated purely as a symptom of Anxiety. I had been trying to quell and eliminate over-thinking not realising that it is actually the fuel to my Creativity too. That it is not a bad thing, that is is just me and there is so much power and joy to find in it too. There’s still much more to learn and habits to unlearn.
To see these two ways abundant thoughts will manifest themselves brings me a step or two closer to accepting myself as a whole. To not be in a battle with myself, constantly trying to fight to overcome Anxiety. To see them as both being in balance, a Ying and a Yang, not adversaries to each other. To see my mental health as much more complex than a diagnosis but also much more simple. That my mental health isn’t just the ‘bad’ part, the part that can get ill, can struggle, can feel debilitating. It is also the bit that uplifts me, that makes me curious and sees beauty and connection in the world around me. They can both exist inside my mind and quite frankly, they have to. So I need to be much more gentler to both. They both deserve to be there and accepted and loved. Because they are both me and just products of my beautiful abundant thinking.