Drawing troubles and resulting stress/anxiety.

@Orphanim Hi Orphanim welcome to the forums! I do not have direct experience with what you are experiencing but I am sure there will be others on this site who have. A new face is always welcome from one newish face to another! You will find we are very friendly here.

Hello @Orphanim

It's very nice to met you. I am sure you will find your experience here at Sane a warm and friendly one. Thank you for sharing your story with us which I read with great interest. I also would like to send a wave 👋 to the lovely @utopia and @Bunniekins.

I did also experience something similar after my breakdown. I found making a daily routine very difficult and my motivation flew out the window - nothing came to me naturally anymore. Everything I attempted I had to push myself to do each day. And I still have to, but once I get going on some activity, creative outlet or work I find my motivation can pick up most days (bad days forget it). I make things happen in my life by a pure act of will. If I went by how I felt I would do nothing. I would have no life and just watch it go by.

It is the same when I go to write something fictitious. I can like the idea but motivation is wanting. When inspired it can become easier. Again I have to push myself to try harder to put pen to paper by an act of will initially, sometimes with great results as it can then start to flow - others times with frustration as nothing comes to me. But I put aside time to try and stick to it. And I do feel better for pushing myself as I can then feel some satisfaction when I look back at my day.

This lack of motivation and flatness is a result of my previous breakdown as I never use to be that way. Some medications can also do this. Hopefully in time this will improve as I consistently will myself to try things - hoping one day it comes a little more naturally. Encouragement and positive feedback from others can serve as outside motivation, so being around positive people whom support our efforts and acknowledges them helps towards wanting to make more of an effort also I find 😊.

Hope to see you around the forums 🤗x

Hi @Orphanim, welcome to the forum.

I too am very creative, mostly in video making, but at different times I also like to write, make music, and do general art and craft activities. This part of your post really struck a chord in me from my past experience:

"Not even the smallest scribble is acceptable to me, and always my mind is distracted and harried by doubt when I attempt to draw. I wish to expand my skillset and learn more, and there is a wealth of information to draw upon from the internet, but exposing myself to this information hurts and makes me feel extremely self-conscious."

What you are describing here is, I think, a kind of perfectionism. I suffer from it too and it can be crippling of the creative process. An antidote to this might be to focus more on the playful aspects of of your creative activities. The power of spontaneity, improvisation, synchronicity, for example. I have to consciously push that 'critic' part of myself away quite often. I also have to consciously tell myself that a piece of art (regardless of medium) doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, sometimes the 'mistakes' and 'imperfections' make a piece better. Perfection is very technical. Play and enjoyment in the creative process tends to give more to both the maker and the audience, I think. Play and enjoyment in the creative process is where the real inspiration is found. If I was you, I'd be forgetting about the 'how to' information for the time being, in order to rediscover the play and enjoyment again. Doing it just for yourself, not for some ideal of what the world might say is 'good art'.

By the way, I relate too about procrastination. This is both something we might like to change in ourselves, and an actual symptom of depression. I wonder if you are still receiving treatment or follow up for the mental health issues you mentioned.

Kindest wishes,

Maz

I totally second what @Mazarita said about perfectionism - I can be like this with my writing and it can cripple creativity. Thank you for the advice here @Mazarita - it has helped me as well.

Thank you for the kind responses, everybody!

@MazaritaI'll try to just let go and have fun with it again... That's the part that I miss most. I managed to recapture it briefly when I bought myself a sketch pad and a tip book on sketching: I'd go out for walks down by the water and sit down to draw things around me. Eventually I just stopped doing that again, though... I think it was because I had to take all my drawing stuff in a seperate back-pack with me, which was more effort to take with me.
I hoped that when I got an iPad from my father that I'd have an easier, more portable method to sketch with while out and about. I even have a stylus for it and everything. No such luck. Finding the right "App" to use is ridiculously obtuse, and even when I do find something promising, it doesn't seem to read pressure from the stylus correctly. Call me a hipster, but I always knew I was missing out on nothing by being stingy and sticking to my dumb phone all these years.

As for treatment, I will be seeing a psychiatrist next month, which I am looking forward to. I knew a wonderful psychologist up in the Blue Mountains who helped me get out of the worst of my depression, but I don't live near there anymore: The train trip was pretty exhausting from the coast to the mountains, and I ran out of free sessions with her anyway. I still miss her, though. It's amazing how much good just having someone to talk to can do for you. Half the time we'd just chat about current events!

@Orphanim, @Former-Member, @Faith-and-Hope and all,

I agree too with what Faith says about there being times in our lives when, for whatever reason, our creative activity is less. I've had periods like this too when the creative life took a back seat, or just went to sleep for a while. Like Faith, I found that it was awoken again when the time came.

Enigma raises good points too about sometimes needing to push ourselves through our discomfort. To do this, I remind myself of how much creativity has meant to me in my life. The gift of creativity has been a marvellous thing to me over time, so that it's worth overcoming some difficulties for it.

Having said that, I also relate to slumping when too much effort is required. In me, I see that as a symptom of chronic depression, as well as a human frailty in me.

Your old psychologist sounds great, Orphanim, and reminds me of the psych I'm seeing now. I hope your psychiatrist session goes well.

Thank you, Marazita & Faith 'n Hope.

I feel glad that I'm not alone, and I agree: Sometimes there are just 'slump' periods where I can't get anything done, parallelled by times of extreme productivity. It's just easy to forget when the moment of frustration is drawing on and on.