Originally posted by Zelda Poem on her Substack, Tomorrow’s Ancestors.
Creative blocks are disguised inner conflicts. You’re telling yourself that you just don’t know where to start, what to talk about, or how to say it well.
Truth is, you’re at war with yourself. An inner conflict doesn’t have to be an existential crisis: you might just wish to be speaking about something other than what’s inhabiting your mind. Or you might want more time to perfect your craft. Or you wish you had a broader audience to react to what you put out. Maybe you’re just exhausted and need a damn nap.
Write it down: what’s getting in your way? It might take pages to figure it out, but in the end it can surely be summed up in one sentence.
Once you have boiled it down, a common reaction then would be to judge yourself for thinking this way. What if instead you got curious about the purpose of your pattern? Internal Family Systems teaches that every part of you, even the ones that are blocking you from experiencing love, creativity or peace, are just doing the job of protecting yourself.
Once you bring awareness to it all, you have agency to lovingly re-organize the story you’re telling yourself about what you can and can’t do. You can better see what’s available out there in your reality, and what pleasant perspectives exist for you to flow into. Remember to keep writing yourself through it.
Creativity is, as Sherry Ning puts it, “A fingerprint of who you are.” What shapes of your self have you yet to embrace?
This note was inspired by my recent workshop, Discover Your Creative Potential By Crafting “Tomorrow’s School”, and by Isabel, Sherry and Kasra’s salon: Creative Blocks: Overcoming Your Resistance.
Photo by Ida Lissner