Creativity is Medicine.

Part 1 of a 3-part series.

I love creativity. Always have. So I certainly didn’t need another reason to fangirl on originality.

Yet I’m now convinced that creativity is more than just yummy. It’s healthy. It cures things that plague us and our planet.

This idea came to me in layers. Rather than cram them all into a single post, I’m gonna give them some breathing room and do a 3-part series. Let you chew on one piece for a bit before I feed you another.

To start, I want to tell you about a book that just blew my mind.

Martha Beck’s “Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose” is a must-read for anyone who suffers from anxiety. According to the latest global health stats, that would be ALL OF US.

If I had to summarize the book’s message it would be that the antidote to anxiety is not calm, but creativity. By engaging different parts of our nervous system, we can activate the creativity spiral, which not only quiets anxiety, but unlocks innovation, purpose, and joyful connection with others.

As someone who centers creativity in almost every facet of my life, this is cause for celebration. To know that cooking, painting or writing is a path into a healthier mood state means that (hopefully) people will make more time for creative pursuits. It may even be doctor’s orders.

Author Martha Beck, a Harvard-educated social scientist, explains it this way:

“When we step away from our anxiety and begin using both sides of our brains to shape our thoughts and perceptions, we counter something I call the ‘creativity spiral.’ Just like the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere can form its own spiraling feedback system, from the inner almond to the upper layers of the brain and back. This pattern is the mirror image of the anxiety spiral. But in the right hemisphere, the effects of the spiral are about as far away as you can get from anxiety. Where the brain’s left-side spiral sparks fear and makes us want to control things, its right-side spiral sparks curiosity and makes us want to create things.”

Beck reminds us that our ancient ancestors balanced their brain hemispheres by interacting with nature, tracking animals and through storytelling and music making. What changed? Many “advancements” in culture surrendered right-brain activities to “jobs that cater to the preferences of the left hemisphere, dampening our creative sparks so we can turn ourselves into cogs in the machine of material production.”

Boo hiss.

She points out that capitalism means we follow our left hemisphere’s most materialistic, frightened and controlling tendencies to make a very few people very rich. And the rest of us miserable. Given that this isn’t natural law, but a misalignment of our own worst impulses, we can reimagine a new path forward.

Soothe your creature self – activate your creative self.

Beck paints a beautiful picture of what it looks like when we comfort our inner creature (lizard brain self) by gently guiding it towards positive connection. And she cites herself as perhaps the best case study. After suffering from crippling anxiety, Beck became convinced that there really was something to the localization of anxiety in the left hemisphere. So she created a mini experiment of devoting herself to behaviors that revved up her right hemisphere. For Beck, that was painting. Obsessive, delightful, all-consuming painting. And by engaging in this task that called up her right brain, she pulled herself out of her left brain’s anxiety spirals. Plus she had some gorgeous artwork to hang on her walls.

This alone is glorious. But there’s more. Not only does creativity edge us away from anxiety towards a state of inner peace, but there’s a bonus upgrade. When we’re in a green-light state, “our nervous systems automatically move towards positive connection and ingenious problem-solving. Inner peace isn’t passive; it responds to hurt or harm calmly and intelligently. And acts of love are the only way out of the problems anxious humans have created.”

This final piece dovetails with a knowing I’ve been absorbing that I’ll share in part 3 of this series. About how belonging and connection enable courageous creativity.

But for now, just take in the idea that our epidemic of anxiety may be soothed and solved by surrendering to our most creative impulses.

Until next time, remember that creativity knows no bounds.