CREATIVE HEALING FROM ADDICTION

You may not think of yourself as a creative person right off the bat. You may automatically associate the word creative with expressions of artistic fervor such as painting, pottery, drawing and sculpting or the like. Those forms of artist expression don’t define creativity at all. You create daily. Anything you put your mind or hand to is a creation. Picking up is a creation. Addiction, excess, compulsiveness, doubt, fear, resentment, some depression, and a good helping of pain and suffering are part of the worlds we create for ourselves.

At work you create excel spreadsheets, you create business for your company, you create a name and position for yourself in a corporation. If you are a creative thinker, or want to be one, you will need to be what is called a divert thinker. As a divert thinker you are able to process information in an unusual way, so contrary to that of a conventional thinker. It allows flexibility of ideas and gives a person several ideas or options when confronting a problem or situation.

Another key ingredient in creativity is cognitive complexity. You should, as a clear-headed being, be able to think ‘outside of the box’ so to speak. To do so successfully it requires a more complex thought pattern. In other words if you get an idea in your head, or a craving in your stomach, you don’t necessarily leave it at that first idea. You add to it alternatives, variations and perhaps even a magical touch of original thinking.

Art is often used as a source of therapy, and is used as an effective tool by doctors and addiction therapists everywhere. From child or play therapy, to people who are suffering or depression right through to those suffering from schizophrenia and addiction.

Artistic in the Oxford Dictionary is ‘having or revealing natural creative skill’. Every one of us is an artiste, naturally, basically. We just need to physically and cognitively reveal our talents to ourselves and others. We need to be active artists not dormant ones. You are a co-creator in this universe along with God, and every other human being that has ever been created. Many of you might well be able to identify with what Julia Cameron said in the artists way when talking about us as left brained beings. She says that “Most blocked creatives are cerebral beings. We think of all the things we want to do but can’t”. What is blocking you from being creative in your choices? Is there a part of you locked in this ‘wanting the fruits of sobriety, but I just can’t’ area?

BECOME CREATIVE AND MINDFULL

Sophocles said “Look and you will find it – what is unsought will go undetected”.  Thought gives birth to your needs and wants. Thought precedes action, action is expanded thought. It is the asking in receiving. If you are trapped in a directionless day to day existence and are seeing where ‘fate’ leads you, you are treading on dangerous ground. The mind as leader and spirit as follower, or observer, is a terrible thing to experience. One minute you are up and the next minute you’re down. The mind is subject to feelings and emotions that dart around wildly. Cravings, just feeling weird, or silent self sabotage, one hard to tell from the other, could get you back to square one or worse. Much worse.

Creativity is a powerful outlet in the field of addiction treatment and recovery. Engaging in creative activities can help you accept your addiction, have more success during treatment and stay clean during life in recovery. For help contact Pathways Plett rehab +27445330330 or info@pathwaysplettrehab.co.za