Creativity as a Pathway to Meaning

By Becca Barcom, LCPC

Take a moment to pause and think about what creativity means to you? What words, phrases, or images come to mind when you think of being creative? What is your history and relationship to creativity like? Perhaps creativity is something that you think of often in your life, or a notion that you’ve dismissed long ago. Whatever conclusion you arrive at, take these next few minutes to open or re-open your mind to exploring creativity.

Creativity comes in many forms, and all are beneficial to us as humans. In Existential Psychotherapy, there is an understanding that all humans engage in and possibly struggle with a few core factors of life: death, freedom, isolation, and meaning. No big deal, right? While importantly our brain and body are focused on keeping us alive and well through breathing, eating, drinking, and automatic processes- there are luckily more skills in the picture. The skill of creativity is able to be practiced to also assist in moving through life, especially making meaning. Any time you have been adaptable, resilient, relaxed, connected, or open minded, there’s a high chance that you were utilizing creativity to achieve these ways of being. And luckily, the more we practice creativity the more we feel those lovely words listed above. 

There are many ways accessing creativity can offer ways to engage and make it through our life; creativity includes more than “being good at art”. Two options for being creative are 

1. Making something, and 

2. Solving something. 

I encourage you to explore how creativity can assist us in supporting and going beyond the automatic processes that happen in our brains and bodies every day. Practice options include bringing awareness to the word creative when you are engaged in tasks you already do day-to-day. Below is a list of possibilities in the two creative categories. Feel free to utilize this list and add your own ideas of ways to foster creativity and create meaning in your life.

Making:

Art, Music, Crafts, Dancing, Cooking, Gardening

Solving:

Math, Puzzles, Mechanics, Relationships, Volunteering

If you would like to explore more about your inner and outer world, please feel welcome to reach out to Montana Center for Somatic Psychotherapy.

source:

Existential Psychology – History of the movement – Famous Psychologists, Existentialism, and World – JRank Articles https://psychology.jrank.org/pages/229/Existential-Psychology.html#google_vignette