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Creativity and mental health

grahamcmorgan1963

Creativity and mental health

West Lothian Bipolar Group

04 11 2021

Hello everyone.

Today I am not here in a work role but in my role as a writer. I have to start off with a denial of expertise! The session is has been advertised as being about creativity with readings from my book.


There will be readings from my book and I will touch on creativity but I am not remotely an authority on creativity at all. Maybe that is good because we might all be able to teach each other from our own perspectives.


My knowledge of this subject relies on a ten minute google search this morning when I finished work; it is a sketchy, inaccurate knowledge, written about from memory.


My understanding of creativity is that it is about thinking differently, making new connections, finding original thoughts and that it extends way beyond the arts. Creativity is just as much about cooking a delicious meal as painting a picture, or holding a party as carving a sculpture, it can be about telling jokes, dancing, singing or, in my case. writing.


As far as I know I am not creative, or not particularly. I lack spontaneity or energy or curiosity. I never dance or sing. I never tell jokes or hold people captive with my wit and charm.


However, my partner, Wendy, is maybe one of the most creative people I know. If we are walking with the children, she will sing the most ridiculous made up songs. If she is musing about the weekend, she may design a weird cake or set off on unique adventures. If she is idle she will scan the internet for things of interest. If she is bored she will make up skits about mental health and mental health services that make me giggle and giggle and then she will forget all about them. Her life is colourful, every moment is new and routine is something she avoids as much as she can.


My creativity is more measured! I tend to be cautious and organised and move from step to step with no great leaps. I don’t make things up; I don’t have great leaps of imagination. But even someone like me can shape and find excitement in the new and the odd.


For me, I like the shapes that flowers and ferns make. I like the drift of clouds, the sparkle on the sea and the call of the birds. I like the smell of mud and seaweed at low tide and I like to somehow bring it into some sort of life with photography and words. It may seem the opposite of creativity but I think I am it is at work that I am at my most creative; when I am writing a speech or developing a report. I read that for some people; creativity is about getting absorbed in a task to the exclusion of other stimuli. For me when I am crafting a speech and shaping the phrases I lose touch with the outside world and when I am lost in a writing a report and including the voice of people like me and you in it; I focus so much that when I come back to the world it is as though I have been away in another realm; unaware of what is happening and dizzy to have to reconnect to the kitchen and the radio; the sleeping dog, the chattering children. I also find it in cooking: I love to cook; I love the smells, the chopping and mixing, the colours, the gift of the food I give to those I love.


Most of all though, creativity is when I am writing from my heart and I wish I could explain it to you. There are occasions when I feel I connect to something else; my words feel like music or a river and fill me with a sense of joy and fulfilment, in contrast to those times when I type away mechanically and what arrives feels stilted and formal and mechanical and slightly dull and grey.


I had heard that people like you and me are naturally connected with the gift of creativity but my swift search of google seems to imply that our brain chemistry is similar to very creative people but that the more severe our illness is the more impaired our abilities become and that instead it is people at high risk of bipolar or schizophrenia but without the terrible symptoms who are more likely to be creative; in other words our brothers and sisters, people like that. I must confess I find that a bit irritating!


However I have also found out that the world of creativity is one in which people who experience distress and wild thoughts may be one in which we can sometime function well and feel at home in, so maybe that is a slightly better perspective.


I have heard that whoever we are, that creative activities tend to be good for our sense of wellbeing and let me remind you that that doesn’t mean that you have to paint a master piece, colouring a colouring book can be just as good, or working out what to make friends and family for dinner can be creative and fill you with good feelings.


The last thing I have gleaned from the internet is the value of creative therapies. I must admit I like them; not so much for the words it allows me to speak that otherwise I couldn’t speak but for the distraction it provides and sometimes the warm sense of comradeship that I have sometimes got when making pictures or cards or clay shapes in hospital.


Now before I do my first reading I will tell you a bit about how I came to write START; which some of you will have heard me talk about in the past.


I first got involved in creative writing when I worked with HUG action for mental health in the Highlands. A group of us spent many years having the great privilege of working with Moniack Mhor (Scotland’s creative writing centre.) We were taught and mentored by famous and talented writers. We spent weekends away; cooking together, talking, writing and eventually finding the courage to perform our work or make music at ceilidhs we organised and which were organised for us.


As time went by, we ran our own writing groups in hospital and in the community. We made our own publications and gave performances to each other but also to others at festivals and the like.


I had always been interested in writing and this, combined with all my writing at work, inspired me to write more and more often for pleasure.


To my astonishment I wrote a book about my travels in deserts and voyages on the Atlantic. I won’t tell you its name as it was awful; maybe with more editing it would have been something to be proud of but what I did find; is that out of the horror of the break up of my marriage and the loss of contact with my son, I had more and more time to myself.


Somehow, one day I started writing. I had no idea I was writing another book. I just found words finding themselves with the urge to write them at three in the afternoon or three in the morning, basically, whenever I was free.


After about nine weeks I had a morass of around 100 000 words; all heaped together, all untidy, all chaotic. I spent the next five years (with lots of help) reducing them and sorting them into some sort or order and structure, doing edit after edit and re write after re write and ended up with my memoir; START.


It is about my life over a year of compulsory treatment for schizophrenia but shifts between my thoughts of the future and the past. Maybe more than talk of mental illness it is about falling in love and finding out the joy that healthy relationships can bring. It is about learning about my family and the effect of my life on those I love and lastly, it features the natural world and the Highlands, because that is one of the places I am the happiest.


I am going to give three very different readings from START and then hopefully we will be able to do some wittering for the remainder of my time with you.


(Photo: Ardmore November 2021)

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