How Living with Mental Health Issues Can Make You More Creative
Written by Katja (she/her), who works as a freelance designer and art director in the creative industry. She is also a design director at SheSays London, a global network helping women advance in the worlds of creative and tech. You can see some of her work over here or follow her on Instagram.
6 min read
How the creative industry deals with mental health
As a freelance creative designer, I get to experience a wide range of how different companies deal with mental health in the workplace. While some go above and beyond to accommodate various needs of freelancers and employees living with mental health issues, others are completely oblivious to the mere fact that it exists in their agencies. Others even go to the extent of what can only be described as mental health workplace bullying.
The following thoughts and ideas are mainly related to anxiety, and hopefully they’ll be useful to help shift the perception and understanding of mental health issues. Nothing is foolproof, but that’s mental health for you.
There’s no quick fix for mental health issues
The basis for understanding mental health issues is acknowledging that each individual has a completely different experience. What anxiety means for me, can be utterly different to what it means for someone else. Hence, there can never be a quick fix or a one-size-fits-all solution. To use an analogy from the creative industry, it’s like the conundrum of a client asking for a bigger logo or the visual ‘to pop’ — without you asking a lot of questions, actively listening, and trying to understand the underlying meaning, you won’t find a suitable solution. When it comes to mental health, each person’s individual experience comes with variation, and anxiety can take different shapes on different days, or even hours.
“When it comes to mental health, each person’s individual experience comes with variation, and anxiety can take different shapes on different days — or even hours.”
Mental health issues do not mean an inability to work
I have days where my anxiety can render my whole being physically immobile and unable to leave the bed. Other days, or even a few hours later, I can feel incredibly creative, often triggered by hypersensitivity; imagine all your senses heightened many times over at the same time. While my brain can fire up synapses to create incredible links and creative concepts, and taste coffee a hundred times as intense, sounds can have an overpoweringly negative effect on me. I need a familiar and calm environment to work in, as even a ride on the bus or an ambulance switching on their sirens could send me into a full-blown panic attack. (On that note: does anyone else feel sirens are switched on on purpose, right when they’re a metre behind you in the street?) In short: living with mental health issues does not equal an inability to work, neither does it devalue creative ideas. What it requires is more flexibility to adjust to its various interpretations and manifestations.
Anxiety teaches you really useful creative skills
Years of living with anxiety and speaking to therapists enhance your skillset with incredible soft-skills. The lessons you learn about coping with anxiety rewire your brain with a new level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Anxiety teaches you a different way of seeing. It allows you not only to learn to tune into your body and mind, but also to read other people’s behaviour more clearly.
Living with anxiety — and living in your thoughts — always goes both ways. While anxiety can spiral into negativity, dramatic episodes, and self-doubt, it can also go the other way and sharpen your thinking, your ability to analyse situations, and draw conclusions. It equips you with resilience to be stronger in the face of challenges, makes it easier to live with vulnerability, to problem-solve in split seconds, and create links between topics you might have otherwise never thought of.
A few months back I woke up feeling on edge, knowing that a small trigger would be enough to bring on a panic attack. After forcing myself outside into the fresh air, I stopped at a puddle and saw my reflection. My brain decided to go into neuronal drama mode and send me down an imagined nightmare about Dorian Grey, the picture in the attic, and this being the end of all days. Not helpful in the paralysed moment of doom, but very useful a few hours later when adapting the idea of mirrored images for a creative concept I was working on. A comical analysis of the situation gives a sense of relief but also lets you approach life with a less serious outlook. If I can survive a day with high-intense anxiety and panic, then I’m equipped to deal with much worse than you think. Those skills are so very useful in the creative industry.
“If I can survive a day with high-intense anxiety and panic attacks, then I’m equipped to deal with much worse than you think. Those skills are so very useful in the creative industry.”
Living with anxiety means learning to deal with uncertainty
The underlying trait with anxiety is the inability to deal with uncertainty, and your brain telling you that control can sort any problem. But coping with anxiety means the opposite: learning to deal with said uncertainty, embracing it, and getting a different perspective on it. That’s something the creative industry could learn to do better: leaning into uncertainty, working with change and the possibility of failure.
Failure is treated as a mistake and something to avoid by any means. But we also know that change is inevitable and failure is needed to progress, learn, and produce truly creative ideas. Imagine future creative fields embracing uncertainty and failure and using it to build flexible environments where each individual can flourish no matter their mental state. Where sick days can officially be taken as self-care days, even if you’re not living with mental health issues. Learning the mechanisms of coping with anxiety and stress early enough can lay the groundwork for potential future episodes. One in four people in England lives with a mental health issue, with numbers expected to increase. Chances are high that anxiety or other mental health issues will affect you and your life in some way or another.
The quicker the creative industry learns to embrace mental health issues in the workplace, and starts understanding its various shapes, its value in creating soft skills, and how the principles of uncertainty and failure are underpinning our creative outcomes, the quicker we can move into a more balanced and equal workplace.
Want to read more about how the world of media impacts people’s mental health? Grab your copy of Anxiety Empire magazine today.
