Mental Health and Creative Writing
2020 was a banner year for me in terms of addressing insecurities and anxieties that had plagued my marriage since the beginning. Let me rephrase that: 2020 was a hard, painful, emotional, trying, yet ultimately redemptive year for me and my wife. (Even as I typed “banner year” I felt as if I was minimizing just how difficult last year was for the two of us.)
And yet, nothing good or lasting comes easy. This is something I (re)discovered when I made the commitment to see a therapist a month or so into quarantine.
Here’s how it started: since both our jobs pivoted to remote-only pretty early on in the pandemic, my wife and I were suddenly forced to confront things that had gone unchecked for so long due to busyness (in addition to both working full time jobs, we have five kiddos — at the time three at home, one in heaven, and one en route.) Pre-COVID, there wasn’t a space for talking through, unpacking, and addressing deep-rooted issues because, candidly, we could put it on the back burner due to a filled-up calendar.
But the pandemic wrecked a lot of people, upended marriages, shuttered jobs, and claimed countless lives. And like so many others, it pushed us to the brink.
Interestingly (and tragically), my creativity was my biggest enemy.
Once I started seeing my therapist, he quickly identified a tendency — no, a behavior — that I had developed over the many years of being imprisoned to my insecurities: I would have an “intrusive thought” about something, and then my insecurity would spin a completely false narrative in my head that was based on semi-truths. Out of respect to my wife, I won’t share specifics. Suffice to say, my insecurities and anxieties bred much hurt and pain and senseless quarreling.
Interestingly (and tragically), my creativity was my biggest enemy. I was creating false narratives in my head about certain things in my marriage and then living as if they were truths. It sounds absolutely crazy writing those words down, but when you’re in the throes of it — when you’re a prisoner to your insecurity and anxiety — your reality is quite literally skewed.
One of the practical tools my therapist gave me was to, simply, “personify” my insecurity and write out truths to combat its relentless lies. I reallocated the creativity that my insecurity had hijacked and used it to fight back. Where before my creativity was weaponized against me, now it was a critical tool that I used to repair my marriage.
When you’re a prisoner to your insecurity and anxiety, your reality is quite literally skewed.
God showed me in this healing process that His gift of creative writing is just that: a gift. He very intentionally used my love for words as a restorative means to nourish and enrich my heart and mental health. Which, ultimately, led to my being able to humbly pursue my wife and reconcile our marriage.
In short: God helped me reclaim my creativity, and He reshaped and redefined what creative writing actually is — and what it can actually accomplish.
