Reclaiming Authenticity

The Overwhelm of Bottled Up Feelings

Often we can fill our lives with so much busyness we lose touch with our deeper selves. When I created my expressive art workshops and creative counselling services I wanted to speak to the part of ourselves that is heroically out front in our lives, feeling overwhelmed and too busy for self-reflection and self-discovery. I know when I do too much in my outer world, my inner well starts to feel barren and empty and I can feel increasingly depressed and uncreative. Often we do not realize how bottled up we are inside. When we do not attend to our inner life we can feel overwhelmed and exhausted.

 

Spontaneous Art is a Path to Wisdom

What sustains me through my busy life are my expressive journals because they give me pause to express the feelings below my everyday thinking. There is such wisdom in spontaneous art making. It reveals things that are true that we might not realize about ourselves. It is amazing what a simple doodle, a brief poem, or a quick collage can express. Sometimes my drawings haunt me with mystery and I do not know how to read them. Sooner or later however I fully experience the feeling they convey I go back into my journal with gratitude to my unconscious mind for expressing my inner wisdom so clearly.

The Gift of Vulnerability

There are many of us who regulary crash into depression even as we are highly functioning on our lives. Vulnerability is not encouraged in our society yet if we do not allow periods in our day to feel our feelings we can become plauged with depression and a lack of meaning in our lives. We are a working, survival oriented culture. Who wants to admit that parts of ourselves feel frightened or in pain? We are conditioned to march on and to push down difficult feelings. We fear if we let ourselves be vulnerable we will be taken over by emotion and will never climb out of it. The truth is when we let ourselves be vulnerable the inner stored pain does intensify and peak almost like a volcano erupting but it is the only way to release it and get to the other side to insight and inspiration. 

Our Social Mask Hides Our Feelings

We all have a social mask we present to the world and we need to have a functional personality to get our work done and function in the world. But if this practical side, is the only part we live in we can easily feel hollow inside, empty of depth and meaning. We all have a vulnerable, creative self that lives very close to the core of our souls. Our sensitive, vulnerable parts of self are right there below the surface concerns and survival activities of life and often they will express themselves through spontaneous imagery. Our competent survival masks miss out on true connection to our souls because they are designed to protect us from our fears, insecurities and discomforting feelings, but when we move through these feelings, we can access profound intuition, sensitivity and creative insight into life that in the end, helps us to live our practical lives with more passion and a greater depth of contribution.

Full Expression Brings Clarity and Energy

Allowing each dimension of ourselves full expression reveals that there is far more to us that meets the eye. We are not empty inside or uncreative at all. We have a vast inner world to discover. Expressive creativity invites us into profound self-acceptance allows every part of ourselves a voice. When we express all of ourselves we free up inner blockages and can more easily access our natural vitality and intuition. Overwhelm ceases when feelings are expressed and released. Once we feel clear inside we can get back to creating a life of meaning and unique purpose. When we attend to the creative, more feminine side of our nature, we actually function better in our practical life with more juice, more life energy and more love and joy. I invite you to discover yourself here in your own spontaneous creativity.