4 Insights into Why You Are Afraid of Creating
The illusion of unsafety starts breaking as we start giving in to stepping out.
As creatives, as people who have a burning instinct and drive to create, we probably also know all too well the pitfalls of being too scared to start. Of not believing in ourselves enough to trust ourselves. Of coming up with a myriad of reasons why we will fail, or why our art will fail, or why it’s just not meant to be.
This is all telling of some deeper wound within us that needs addressing. And by addressing those wounds, it all gets easier.
Because of how creativity is such a natural extension of our beings, it is vital that we reinstate and receive this part of ourselves again. No matter how big or small, starting is starting.
The illusion of unsafety starts breaking as we start giving in to stepping out.
Creating is akin to putting ourselves out there (even if we do not share what we create) and it might give us qualms because it feels like standing at the forefront of a cliff with everyone else standing below scrutinizing our every move. But that is only so because it is the same creative instinct in us that has gone haywire and now feeds us imaginings of why not to imagine further.
So whether we are healed or not, our minds will never stop creating our realities for us. That’s why it’s so important to become aware of this and to start striving for more conscious creating because it stops the unconscious loop created for us. To create is to heal and to heal is create, and it is vital we experience both if we want either.
Here are 4 insights into why you are afraid of creating even when creating is all you think about:
1. You still haven’t healed and integrated your inner child
This is the general and overarching reason why creating can seem like such a massive undertaking.
When there is a wound around your creativity, there is an innate wounding around your inner child. This associates pain and restraint with your creative abilities since the world of creation is where the inner child lives.
When we carry this within us, there may be shame that we are not creative, unique, or good enough. There may be shame around standing out or shining our light — things that we’ve received criticism or neglect around, which makes us question and doubt our right to individuality.
If love was not given when it came to our authentic expressions, we will feel fear and emptiness when we start to authentically express ourselves.
Having a wounded inner child may have meant feigning a type of maturity we thought would win us points or at the very least, shield us from the hurt being flung at us. We might’ve felt pressure or conditioning to ‘grow up too fast to survive or prove our worth — essentially assuming responsibilities beyond what our child selves were ready for and therefore, stepping away from just being, which is an essential child quality.
Know that we can always get back in touch with this part of ourselves at any time we choose.
2. You judge your world of imagination as futile
This is in direct relation with the inner child wound and our conditioned proclivities for what is deemed as ‘mature’ or controllable. This, of course, is not our own voice telling us this.
For the wounded inner child, fantasies may be a daily occurrence. But ironically, true imagination is pushed aside because of our need to be ‘realistic’. We might relegate our playful sides to something that is futile because we are assuming ‘adult’ roles.
The world of possibilities that is imagination is reduced to what we call ‘zoning out, but if what it is really zoning in? Zoning back into the essential parts of ourselves that is nourished by play. Zoning back into the esteem that is founded upon knowing our power to create, cause and effect change.
If our need to maintain control and realistic is rooted in trauma, what we actually need to snap out of then is our comfort (numbing) zones, our routine ways of thinking and being that keep us still bound to our unconscious creating (of stagnancy, of unfulfillment, of repression).
3. You are still entrained in the world of external standards
This, too, relates to being cut off from our own inner resources and putting more stock into things that often have nothing to do with us.
This is the paradigm that ‘good boys’ and ‘good girls’ are entrained in, one that has us subconsciously searching for validation in externally measurable things.
We make the mistake of not making mistakes because it reinforces an archaic idea that we are less than if we don’t do things just right.
Our distorted imagination has us imagining all the people who will judge or ridicule or shame us for trying something new.
We reject first what we are afraid might be rejected by others.
We believe that our creations are for the world’s liking instead of it being firstly a gift we give to ourselves, instead of it being a symbol of our gradual liberation and loosening of rigid internal structures, instead of seeing it as our gift to be honest and at having a unique perspective, instead of seeing it as a journey of honing our signature of Soul.
4. Your nervous system needs time to heal
The reason why we freeze in response to getting creatively started is simply that we are still frozen. The nervous system needs practice in decompressing.
When we are stuck in survival mode, which the wounding of the inner child is, we keep using the parts of the brain that keep us hypervigilant, wary, and on edge, because it is familiar. The parts of the brain where play and imagination reign are foreign territories that need bridges to be built towards it and that takes time and work.
Remember that it is not our fault for freezing because being frozen has been a safety response. Physiologically speaking, the creative parts of us have been restricted from us in favor of something more urgent. It has been distant for a reason. But they are not lost or permanently inaccessible from us and that is the point to be made.
Just as someone in a comatose has to regain their physical muscles daily to return to fluid movements again, it can also take us a while before we regain familiarity with our creative muscles. And even then, there might be fears lingering, but with enough time, it will no longer deter us.
Neural pathways will be opened to attune us to being okay with being flexible, being receptive to what comes up in the subconscious, and dancing with the magic within us more and more.
Our nervous systems simply need the patience to be able to withstand being creative again.
When we have something to say but do not say it, it depletes us of our energy. If we are being called to create and give form to something inside of us, we aid in our energetic demise if we don’t try. It is up to us to give a name to a thing that wants to be heard or seen or felt. It is up to us to restore our own vitality.
Carl Jung says that loneliness comes from “being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself.” And for the creative soul, creating is to communicate and it is a salve that will rectify our lonely perspectives. By starting our creative processes, we are rewiring our ability to communicate what is most significant to us. We are rewiring our worthiness to communicate that significance. That is how we reinstate our vitality.
Creativity is the byproduct of believing in our own inner worlds so much that it spills forth from our fingertips. It is a connection to our unseen realms. It is our birthright because it is our natural state when we are in flow and harmony. And when we are not in that state, the inclination for creativity is a desire to get back to it.
In this world where rationalism reigns, creativity to heal and creativity that heals are needed more and more. We need more people who can live from this realm of the invisible to bring back more humanity in the collective. We need more people who can live from a nonattachment to linear time and live from their own carved-out space instead. We need more people who can bring the ‘unreality’ into ‘reality’ because that is actually what is most Real.
The world of child’s play is the gateway to what is Real. Playing IS real and we need to remember that it is Medicine for us and for those around us.
For those moments when we are ebbing back and forth between realities, getting started, and then shutting down, things may not seem to make sense simply because they are not meant to make sense at the moment. We are conduits at that moment who are just meant to follow what feels good and what feels right. Don’t be discouraged. This is creativity’s process.
Birthing something into form is scary but as procreation is in our biology, cocreation from inspiration is a part of our spirit. Creating encompasses creating ourselves and there is nothing of greater value in a world that wants to speak for us.
Denying the existence of something to emerge hurts more than trying and not getting it ‘right’. So let yourself fuck up. Creating is about making magic out of a mess anyway.
Ginger Tran is a writer and poet focusing on healing, mental health, spirituality, and psychology.
