Creativity and the Battle Against Anxiety
“When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves,” advises French author Francois de La Rouchefoucauld, “it is useless to seek it elsewhere.” More than three hundred years later, I agree with this prescient advice. The seeds to inner-tranquility are planted within every individual, and it’s up to each of us to cultivate and nourish them.
However, how can we maintain tranquility when we’re constantly tempted to look outward, beyond ourselves? As a culture, we’ve become addicted to news. We refresh our feeds, waiting for the next big story to drop. Compound this by the stress caused by social media. From these networks an insidious form of anxiety has evolved: FOMO. The Fear Of Missing Out.
Social media grants us admittance to the interior lives of our friends and acquaintances, which can be a great source of community and entertainment. We witness our friends’ vacations, their pets in adorable Halloween costumes, their perfectly plated meals! FOMO arises when we worry our own lives aren’t as exciting or as interesting as those we observe online. It’s the sense that we’re just a Tweet away from feeling like we don’t belong, or from missing what “everyone’s talking about.” In one way, social networks facilitate a crucial connectedness; in another, they perpetuate loneliness. From time to time, it’s healthy to unplug from the network.
Easier said than done! We live in a world that values certainty over surprise, a world of constant data flow, statistics, and news. FOMO’s low-level anxiety, after all, is about the impossibility of knowing it all, seeing it all, or doing it all. Nuance flies out the window, and in its place remains a desire for an easily categorized world. Ones or zeroes. Right or wrong. Left or Right. With us or against us. For many people, especially young adults, ambiguity breeds discomfort.
It’s no surprise that anxiety is now the number one reason college students seek campus counseling services. As founder and president of Savannah College of Art and Design, I’ve watched this problem escalate firsthand, particularly in young artists.
An artist’s output is intricately linked to her vision of herself and the world around her. SCAD alumna Tori Gonzalez, who now works for Marzipan, an interior design firm in West Palm Beach, knows this well. “In a creative field there are no set formulas or parameters for our work,” she says. “At the end of the day, there’s less to hide behind. What you create is a reflection of yourself.” After graduation, as she sought a career in the field of furniture design, she came to terms with her post-collegiate reality. “Career-wise, there’s an anxiety with keeping up,” she reports. “As a student, I was surrounded by the newest, innovative ideas. Now, there’s more pressure to stay on top of current trends.”
Ms. Gonzalez’s feelings aren’t unusual. Chene Walz, a counselor with SCAD counseling services, specializes in the needs of young artists. She understands that this elite group has “a more deeply felt experience (and freer expression) of emotions” which makes them more susceptible to disruptions in their meaning-making process. The result: Anxiety.
It’s important to note that having an anxiety disorder and feeling anxiety are two different things. Yet, can some level of anxiety be useful to the artist?
I believe so. So does Jeff Tweedy, the Grammy-winning poet/auteur behind the band Wilco. He contends that the notion of the “tortured artist” can be wrong; his music is part of his path to health, the path away from depression and anxiety, his guiding light. So what are some steps young artists can take to fight FOMO and channel anxiety into art?
First: Get moving.
Artists and designers can often be found in studios, sitting for hours. Creative output frequently requires an active mind and a still body! Here at SCAD, the first art and design university located in Savannah, Georgia to offer an intercollegiate athletics program, we’ve long understood the positive correlation between sports and the arts. That’s why we also developed SCADfit, a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to helping students personalize their paths to health and wellness.
Physical activity has a double-whammy positive upshot. Studies find that exercise can be as effective as antidepressants in combatting anxiety and depression, which is good news for everyone. For artists, however, physical movement has an even deeper impact on creative inspiration. A recent Stanford University study has shown that the simple act of walking can boost creativity by 60%. So, get moving!
Next: Miss out.
The first rule in the art of improvisation is to say, “Yes, and,” a concept that has extended to the creative and business worlds. An improv artist must accept what his partner has said onstage and then add to it. I agree that the “Yes, and” principle plays a vital role in creative professions and opens doors to innovative ideas. I’ve built my own career in the spirit of “Yes, and.”
However, sometimes it’s just as important to say No. SCAD grad Rachel Hornay figured this out the hard way. In addition to classes and studio time, she took on multiple side projects and held down a job. Like a lot of students, she wanted to do it all. “I had to learn what worked for me, and more importantly, what to give up.”
While there’s opportunity in saying yes, there’s also power in saying no. Seem simple? It’s not. Our brain is hardwired to avoid painful stimuli, and saying no, despite our best intentions, hurts. Try making a list of your priorities and interests, and if a potential commitment pulls you away from these, politely decline. Protecting your art can be as simple as protecting your time. Say NO to FOMO!
Finally: Harness ambiguity.
“Fear is always triggered by creativity,” Elizabeth Gilbert writes, “because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome.” We’re surrounded by uncertainty, in life and in art, but this can be a good thing. Remember, Gilbert told us to “Eat, Pray, Love,” not “Eat, Pray, Check Your Phone.”
In a recent study, one’s enjoyment of art was directly linked to higher reported levels of ambiguity. In fact, participants took real pleasure in the flashes of insights triggered by the openness of a given piece. In accepting ambiguity — and holding off the categories, boxes, and blinking signals of the digital networks — one accepts a world of surprises. In this realm, an artist can dwell in the thoughtful persistence of the moment, in the beauty of the ordinary, and in the power of everyday human experience. In short, they can meditate upon the world.
FOMO taps into our desire to belong, and good art, at its core, is a mode of communion. To connect to the world in a meaningful way, look inward. Look to your art.
