It's a little dramatic I know, but let's be honest...us creatives do love a bit of drama😉
I want to share about an experience I had, that I haven't really been able to speak about until now.
You see, for years I was so reactive and gun-ho about personal development, bettering myself. And whilst there were elements of that that were healthy, the underlying desire to prove myself and 'be enough' led to some dangerous experiences.
Not so much in that my physical form was in danger, but what it did to my psyche, my emotional and spiritual world was quite traumatising.
I speak about it in a few of the shorter episodes on my podcast, because I believe it's a really important thing to become aware of when we're creative and we 'put ourselves out there'.
It takes vulnerability and courage to rock up at an audition, to share poetry, to sing in public, to dance on stage opening up to people's opinions and judgements of you...
And if you are still in a place of seeking that child like validation and wishing to be good enough in your mother and father's eyes...there lies the potential danger of then handing over your power to the audience, teachers, mentors and directors.
This morning I woke from a dream where an old acting teacher featured heavily in it.
In the dream she was drunk and untrustworthy. It's not how I remember her - her power-play was more subtle in real life, but the manipulation was real.
I woke up and memories, flashes of my time studying as an actor came flooding back.
Experiences of being in masterclasses. When I say I was gun ho, I used to work as much as I could and then spend all my money on classes.
There was a particular experience which I share about on my podcast, where I got up on stage naked with a blanket around me (*because the scene description said the character was naked with a blanket around her*) and I wanted to be 'courageous' and prove myself to all 200 people sitting auditing the scene as well as the teacher.
I actually don't remember a lot of what happened in that experience, it was something I'd dreamed of doing for years and when I got to it, it was one of the most traumatic things I've ever experienced.
I remember feeling like a deer in headlights. It was like my brain stopped working. My body froze, I remember feeling the stage light on me and praying for a shield of light to be around me. Afterwards I was in total shock. It was like the world slowed down, everything was in slow motion and I felt so alone.
I've had many experiences in my life where I've performed and had a lot of praise coming towards me and felt like the loneliest person in the room. It's quite bizarre to think that the two can go together, but its actually quite common when we are still living in the projection and pattern of searching for 'mother' and 'father' unconsciously outside of ourself, in anything and anyone that represents that to us.
It's also hard because whilst we don't consciously choose to do it, it's something that happens unconsciously and a part of us is choosing to do that in the hope - this person, place or thing will love me and tell me I'm good enough.
And if you're reading this and feeling a little sick in the pit of your stomach, chances are this pattern and survival mechanism is in you too.
And it's ok.
Because it literally is that...a survival mechanism.
A tool.
Something we learnt a long the way.
And that's ok.
It's not something we need to beat ourselves up over, we do that way too much.
What we can do though is realign and re-pattern those limiting beliefs and internal unconscious patterns to go love in the right places.
To not put ourselves in dangerous situations for our psyche and our internal world. To build that kind of resilience of knowing that there is a higher force that is with us always, watching over us, inside us, guiding us, loving us actually just as we are.
Already.
I do believe we are all creative.
I do believe that it expresses itself through each of us in so many different ways.
I do believe it is a force of healing and joy when we access it and allow it to move through us and out into the world.
And I do believe we can form healthier relationships to it, for so many of us lost our trust with it because we either abandoned ourselves in the process or allowed intolerable behaviour to come towards us because we'd already handed over our one sacred light...that was only ever ours to hold.
So, wherever you are in your creative journey, however dormant or alive it feels...please just know...
You can forgive yourself for ever having abandoned it.
For ever having not trusted yourself with it.
You can reclaim your love and passion for it.
It may look differently to how it expressed when you were a child...and that's ok.
We evolve.
We change.
We grow.
And most importantly, we can learn to love again...
It starts here...
Today.
Because that's all we have, right?
Join me on The Creative Zone Podcast for more tools and ways you can rekindle this relationship with all these parts of yourself.
And live in your Creative Zone.
With so much love,
Tali