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It’s time to make it official: I am closing my creativity coaching practice, which means I’m no longer working with one-on-one clients or leading groups.

I’m sad that this chapter of my life is over, at least for now. I’ve found coaching to be incredibly rewarding work, and I miss connecting personally with writers and artists, accompanying them amid challenges and breakthroughs.

I’m also heartened to see mentors and contemporaries carrying on this important work through life’s changes and the world’s cataclysms: 

My first writing coach, Cynthia Morris, recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of her coaching practice, Original Impulse, and continues to offer new programs and services.

Sarah Selecky’s writing course, which I took in its very first incarnation in 2011, is thriving and expanding in its 10th year of operation.

My friend Rhonda Douglas opened the Writer’s Flow Studio to host an active community of writers at all stages, and she also runs the First Book Finish program to help people do just that.

As a lover of commitment and a wrestler of angels, I thrill to see people persevering, building and maintaining their coaching and teaching practices, even as mine comes to an end.

The short, everyday reason I’m closing my practice is that I now work full-time as a content marketing writer

I hope to delve into the longer, more existential reasons over the coming weeks and months. The purpose of this blog has long been to support my coaching practice and attract clients, and now that it no longer needs to serve that purpose, I’m free to turn it into something else. What will that be? I look forward to finding out. 

To all my past clients: it’s been a tremendous honour to work with you. Thank you for your openness, vulnerability, and hope.

To my teachers and fellow coaches: I appreciate every hour you invested in my development. None of it will ever be wasted.

To those looking for a creativity coach: I can personally recommend Cynthia, Sarah, and Rhonda, or you can check the listings at the Creativity Coaching Association.

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A BC hiking challenge for 2021

I’ve picked up hiking as my new pandemic pastime. It started in July when I climbed the stairs at Tower Beach with a friend for a virtual Amazing Race challenge, and it led to more stair workouts to build stamina, new running and hiking shoes, and seven completed trails ranging from the charming and accessible Deas Island to the spectacular and challenging Stawamus Chief.

A panoramic view from Stawamus Chief First Peak

I want to keep hiking this year, because hiking is good to me. The exercise, the scenery, the quiet, the long conversations with my husband, and the sense of accomplishment all lift me up. When my depression was hammering me last summer and fall, hiking had my back. Having so many amazing trails available here in BC makes me feel rich and lucky, even when we’re under lockdown and staying close to Vancouver, so I want to indulge even more this year.

From Bear Creek Loop above Kelowna

I enjoy planning and tracking my hikes in AllTrails (follow me here!), which records distance, time, and elevation, among other things. So, to add some structure to my general desire to “keep hiking,” I’ve chosen a couple of measurable results to support it.

  1. Distance

I wanted a distance goal that would be ambitious but doable, so I looked at how far I hiked in 2020, which was about 80 km. Considering I only started tracking in July, I figured I could do double that distance easily. So, I rounded up and landed on 200 km as my year’s distance goal.

2. Elevation

To balance the distance goal and help me get a good balance of easy, moderate, and hard hikes, I’m adding an elevation goal. The Grouse Grind is about 800 m, so if I do the equivalent of one Grind per month, I should be able to hike the elevation of Mount Everest in a year, which is 8,849 m.

3. Key trails

Finally, I’m choosing a few “crown jewel” hikes to add pizzazz and inspiration. Some of these will depend on travel regulations this year, but I’m hoping to do some dazzlers like the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail and Kain Hut in Bugaboo. I’m tracking this highlight list in AllTrails too.

As lockdown allows, I would love to hike with friends and family too, so I’ll be planning some excursions ahead of time and inviting others to join me.

Me at Norvan Falls!

I’d love to hear your hiking goals and challenges too. What have you done to keep getting yourself outdoors? Any suggestions for my crown jewel hikes this year?

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I have creator’s depression. So do a lot of the coaching clients I work with. What exactly does that mean?

Creator’s depression is a term that comes from psychotherapist and creativity coach Dr. Eric Maisel. In his book The Van Gogh Blues, he says, “the depression that creative people face is fundamentally caused by their upsetness with the facts of existence and their difficulties in making and maintaining meaning.”

The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person’s Path Through Depression was my introduction to Eric Maisel’s work, to the concept of creator’s depression, and to the work of creativity coaching. It is probably the one book that has had the biggest impact on my life (no, I’m not counting the Bible!). The Van Gogh Blues helped me understand the nature of my depression, and how it connected to my work and identity as a writer, and what I needed to be mentally healthy. It also led me to the profession of creativity coaching, which has led to good things for me and the clients I coach.

As part of my certification with the Creativity Coaching Association, I re-read The Van Gogh Blues in 2015 and wrote a response to it. The questions were written by the CCA. The answers are mine. I hope they help you understand more about creator’s depression and how creativity coaching can help.

In the “gestalt” of this book, what new ideas or added value did this book teach you about creativity as applied to yourself?

I first read The Van Gogh Blues in 2005, at the tail end of my recovery from a clinical depression diagnosed in 2002. The book confirmed my instinct that the medication I took and the therapy I did were only part of the solution for ending my depression – I also needed to write in order to feel like my life had meaning. And I needed to make changes to my life (quit my job for freelancing and reduce my volunteering, for example) and stop putting others ahead of myself so that I had the time and energy I needed to write.

The most profound idea that I gleaned from this book the first time around was that I alone was responsible for making my life feel meaningful. Meaning was not out there somewhere in a holy book or external trappings like possessions, status, or lifestyle. Meaning came from within, from my decisions about what mattered to me and my experiences of doing what felt meaningful. This was a scary but liberating realization, and after ten years I still haven’t reached the limits of its implications.

My second reading of the book in 2015 came right after a recurrence of depression. I had just published a memoir that I had been working on for three years, which marked the end of a phase of my life with travel and young children. I also went into a long stretch of unemployment. The loss of these two meaningful activities, writing my memoir and doing copywriting, was a big blow to my mental health.

Revisiting Maisel’s book reminded me how impossible it is to separate depression into biological and psychological experiences, because they are so intertwined. This recent episode of depression was triggered by circumstances and the meaning I was ascribing to them, but it quickly became a very physical experience, with loss of focus and energy and increased anxiety. I returned to medication to help treat the biological side, and I returned to therapy and coaching to help me respond to the meaning crisis that caused the depression in the first place.

It’s humbling to be reminded that knowledge doesn’t always translate into practice, and that meaning is something that must be constantly attended to throughout our lives.

 

How do the author’s ideas and concepts impact you as a creativity coach? What influence might this book have on your creativity coaching style?

Maisel’s theories about “creator’s depression” have shaped my entire approach and focus as a creativity coach. Working from my personal experiences of depression, I have positioned my coaching practice to specialize in working with writers and artists who are prone to depression. My tagline, Wrestling the Angel, is an allusion to the existential struggle to create meaning. I have also written a memoir, Pilgrimage of Desire, telling the story of my recovery from depression and how I’ve tried to create a meaningful life.

I have always been drawn more to working with the issues of psychology and mental health around creating, rather than teaching craft itself. I think there is a pervasive presumption that if you want to do something, you should just be able to learn it and do it, and if you can’t then there’s something wrong with you. If you invest a lot of identity and meaning into creating, and then that desire to create is thwarted, it can lead to a depressive state that no productivity technique or pep talk can overcome.

I appreciate the way that Maisel integrates a compassionate understanding of the existential challenges of creating with a pragmatic and optimistic approach to dispatching them. I try to model that approach by listening, empathizing, and affirming the difficulties of creating while also staying steadfast in my belief that these difficulties can be addressed and offering specific techniques and practices to do so.

Dealing with depression, doubt, and despair comes up often with the clients I work with. I appreciate having Maisel’s concepts to start from, getting the client grounded in an understanding of how meaning crises can manifest as depression and how to choose and align with their own life purpose to create meaning. It feels like work I’m especially suited for and find satisfying.

One of my clients was a bestselling novelist who had fallen into depression and hadn’t written in a year, although she had another book contracted that was overdue. She was treating her depression with medication and therapy but still struggling with procrastination and overwhelm. Some of the things we worked on together were: 1) helping her reconnect with her love of writing, outside of the career pressures, 2) looking at her tendency to overcommit to others’ requests, and practicing saying no, and 3) revising her self-talk so that she wasn’t making herself feel ashamed and guilty for the need to rest, take her time with the book, and follow her own process.

Another client has chronic depression and anxiety and other health issues that she is working on with a therapist and physician. One of my important jobs as her coach is to help her hold fast to the meaning of her writing, affirming her persistence and her abilities, helping her recognize her own self-sabotage and make choices related to her projects, her writing process, and her support network.

 

What new vocabulary/terminology/phraseology about creativity did you learn from this book that you might teach to a client or use while coaching?

I appreciate the terms “creator’s depression” and “existential depression” for describing this particular affliction. Unlike depression that is more biological in origin, which “comes out of nowhere” or “for no reason,” this type of depression has a particular cause and strikes a particular demographic. The fact that it can morph into a physical illness makes it no less formidable.

I do also find it helpful to have the word “meaning” and all of its various compounds to talk about existential issues. A “meaning crisis” is good shorthand for the state of questioning the purpose or significance of one’s work, asking that question, “What’s the point? Why bother?”

A “meaning practice” as a habit of checking in with yourself and identifying the parts of your day that feel most meaningful or purposeful is also a useful term.

I also talk about “meaning containers” that can help collect or concentrate meaning, and I help clients develop dreams or projects that provide the structure they need.

“Meaning shifts” happen often as life circumstances change, projects move from beginning to end, and priorities or experience evolve. I encourage clients to notice these meaning shifts (often indicated by feelings of depression or doubt) and make new decisions about where to make meaning investments of time, energy, and identity.

In using this book with clients, I’ve encountered some pushback around the term meaning, which people feel is used as a catch-all or even, ironically, a meaningless term that Maisel throws around indiscriminately. With these clients, I try talking about “story” — the narrative that we develop around our lives and efforts, and the fact that we can change the story we’re telling if it’s not serving us. Stories are, in essence, a way of capturing what characters and settings and actions mean, so this approach often works well with writers, and also dovetails with the cognitive approach to managing one’s thoughts that Maisel advocates.

 

Are there any exercises that you can develop from this book to use with your clients? Or did the book contain any exercises from the author that you would like to use with clients?

The Van Gogh Blues is more conceptual than Rethinking Depression: How to Shed Mental Health Labels and Create Personal Meaning, Maisel’s follow-up book, which offers a step-by-step plan for depression-proofing. However, some of the concepts do lead into exercises that I use.

One of my client intake questions is, “Do you have words to describe the purpose of your life?” If clients aren’t able to answer that question, I encourage them to work with it and come up with some statement that guides their efforts.

In dealing with anxiety, I have clients tell me or write down the thoughts and excuses that are keeping them from their creative work. Then we explore together what the underlying anxieties might be that prompt them to use these excuses. Difficulty choosing a project, for example, often masks worries that a project will fail or be a waste of time. So we question the definition of failure or come to grips with the real risks and rewards of committing to an idea.

I also have clients get specific about their goals or desired outcomes for a project, or even their creative career as a whole. This exercise helps us see where their meaning goals are short-term or long-term, goals that can be met in the creative process or only after completion, goals that are within their control or not. Then we can recalibrate to make sure that their needs for meaning are being met immediately, daily, in ways they can influence, so they can sustain their creative efforts.

 

Would you recommend this book to a client to read? Can you think of a situation when a client might benefit from this book?

The Van Gogh Blues is a book I recommend often to clients in conjunction with Rethinking Depression, which includes practical steps for creating a meaning practice. I recommend it specifically if a client mentions a history or symptoms of depression such as anhedonia (lack of enjoyment), sadness, or doubt about the significance of their life and work.

In September/October 2015, I ran an online book club for The Van Gogh Blues. We had 20 participants, and it was illuminating to see how they responded to reading the book and answering questions about each chapter over the course of six weeks.

Most of all, people appreciated having a safe environment where they could talk about their experience of depression openly, without worrying about stigma or judgment. We used Maisel’s ideas as a jumping-off point to share stories, encouragement, and helpful ways of dealing with depression. People appreciated being able to read in a group and think more deeply about the content.

Participants were also up-front about the limits of Maisel’s work, ranging from difficulty with his terminology (the vagueness of “meaning”) to some frustration with his ideas around “forcing” life to mean. Not everyone felt compelled by the book, but it gave us something to react to and work with.

My online article Ten Signs of Walking Depression has attracted a lot of traffic and has been valuable in helping people recognize low-grade depression in themselves and connect it to their thwarted creative drive. Maisel’s book provides a portrait and diagnosis of creator’s depression that points people in the direction of the remedy they need.

 

What are your 3-5 favourite sentences or paragraphs from this book that you would like to remember for all time and quote to your clients?

I used two quotations from The Van Gogh Blues in my memoir, Pilgrimage of Desire, and they are some of the most frequently highlighted passages in that book, according to Amazon.

“Creators have trouble maintaining meaning. Creating is one of the ways they endeavour to maintain meaning. In the act of creation, they lay a veneer of meaning over meaninglessness and sometimes produce work that helps others maintain meaning. This is why creating is such a crucial activity in the life of a creator: It is one of the ways, and often the most important way, that she manages to make life feel meaningful. Not creating is depressing because she is not making meaning when she is not creating. Creating but falling short in her efforts is also depressing because only insufficient meaning is produced if her products strike her as weak or shallow. Even creating well can be depressing because of the lingering sense that what she is doing is only veneering meaninglessness.” p. 5-6

“‘What is my right path?’ ‘All paths are the same; they end up in the same place. What is important is to ask yourself, ‘Does this path have a heart?’ If the answer is ‘yes,’ then that is the right path for you.” p. 185

I also appreciate these quotations:

“I believe that depression in creative individuals is best thought of as a meaning crisis caused by chronic, persistent uneasiness, irritation, anger, and sadness about the facts of existence and life’s apparent lack of meaning.” p. 19

“If they can overcome the emotional blocks to this examination, if they can come up with a personal creed that they find believable, and if they can learn to recognize how every second either supports or endangers the meaning they intend to make, they have a decent chance of living a life that feels meaningful to them.” p. 35

“This is the conversation about meaning that contemporary people fear they will have and expect they will have once they admit that meaning is a problem. They recognize that, like Ionesco, they are victims of the righteous demise of blind faith, the installation of materialism as the world’s reigning philosophy, and the widespread meta-analysis of belief that casts all belief into doubt. They recognize they are victims of increased knowledge, increased awareness, and a paucity of meaning options. To the question, ‘Why not have a little conversation about meaning?’ they are inclined to answer, ‘No, thanks! I know where I’ll end up, which is more depressed than I am right now.’” p. 42

“How many creators feel like parasites? Like untouchables? If you are one of these creators, you have to change your mind and heal your heart. You have to tell yourself, ‘I am the beauty in life. It took a whole universe to create me and here I stand, fully human.’ The song you write may be beautiful, the research you conceive may be beautiful, but you are the real beauty in life. Your sense of your own beauty will colour everything and bring you a measure of peace, even as your trials continue.” p. 120-121

 

I’m wondering: what do you think of creator’s depression? Is it a helpful concept? How have you dealt with creator’s depression yourself? 

If creativity coaching sounds like a good thing, you can find out more about how to Work with Me.

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