Create Even Though You're Afraid
Reentering the Medical Industrial Complex
Here’s an asinine hot take I read on the ‘gram the other day: You must be regulated to be creative. Hogwash.
What a self-limiting belief to adopt, and I hope you avoid it like the plague. Creativity is, by definition, expansive and deeply human. How can anybody say that your creation is limited to a particular nervous system state?
Besides, our nervous systems are incredibly responsive, always ticking away behind the scenes, and seldom ever permanent in their status. One hug from a friend can melt your system like butter on a frying pan. A popping lightbulb (true story) catapulting your room into darkness after a bright final hurrah flash can spike your adrenaline, but it never stays elevated for long. It can’t persist for more than an hour.
I've written plenty of email subject lines while in a state of acute stress (powering through is an old habit that is dying a slow, slow death) that have garnered 40-50% open rates. I’ve written poetry while in a state of functional freeze. I’ve danced while on the verge of a panic attack.
Whether what I created in those moments was “good” is up for debate, a debate I give zero fucks about having. Meaningful, yes? Life-giving, absolutely. There’s no question in my mind. Good? Who cares.
If anything, creativity is the one aspect of us — the core of who we are — that’s always there. It may become dimmed, muted, blocked, or temporarily inaccessible, but we cannot rid ourselves of our creativity — it’s part of our souls.
While you can feel fear and still be in a regulated state, you can also experience its brothers panic and terror, flying into sympathetic arousal land. None of the above precludes you from creating. I’m not even touching on anger, the hallmark of a fight response.
In fact, often, we have to create with fear alongside us, holding the pen, choosing the words, twirling the paintbrush, and selecting the aperture. Fear is just as much a part of the process of creation as the end result. Journey yields destination.
We have to face our fear that our work will be absolute steaming garbage. That people will caw-caw from their digital podiums, divvying up their critical feedback like they’re in an era of abundance and that their opinions matter. That we might actually be good enough and how might that challenge the “I’m not good enough” status quo in our psyches. We have to entertain the idea that creating, pouring ourselves out onto a page or canvas, means somebody will see us. Thousands of people. Can we be with that fear? Sometimes, we’re not ready to face our faulty beliefs.
But is true creation devoid of fear or its escalation to dysregulation? Hardly. It’s essential to the process.
So today, I create with fear in my body and my mind.
For the past week, I’ve suffered a stomach in knots, restless sleep, and surging roils of anxiety because I chose to reengage with the medical establishment. A long, long story cut very short, the gist is I developed a paralyzing fear of setting foot in a clinic, hospital, urgent care, etc. Post-traumatic stress became profound avoidance. My nursing career left me raw and exposed — I saw too much, I know too much. Breaking down in body, mind, and soul from the stress was an endless disorienting pool of deep suffering, but it also was the catalyst for immeasurable growth and self-actualization.
It’s how I stopped denying myself my creativity.
So earlier this fall, I wanted to face my fear of the medical system. I knew that I needed to overcome this because while my approach to health and wellness is distinctly preventative and holistic, we ALL will have moments when we need the system. Health scares. Surgeries. Mysterious symptoms. Traumatic injuries. I will need the medical system at various points in my life, and I do not want my engagement to come from a place of fear and distrust (of myself and the providers that I partner with in my care). It makes healing much harder.
I’ve had a reminder in my Google Calendar for three years to schedule a physical. Three fucking years. In October, I decided my physical was long overdue.
I was terrified. Shaking in my boots times one thousand.
My goal was to do this differently. What hadn’t I done before? How could I transform the experience so it felt differently? My two priorities were self-advocacy and owning my fear. So I told one of my best friends I was struggling in anticipation of my appointment last Friday. She offered to accompany me, and if you’ve never had a good friend come with you to your medical appointments (I hadn’t), I highly recommend it. Maybe we’re not meant to raw dog this thing called life, especially when it involves intrusive fluorescent lights, unforgiving tile flooring, and the maze-like underbelly of what lurks behind the clinic door.
With her by my side, I was able to check in, wait, wait some more, and eventually get through the appointment with my new primary care provider. I addressed my checklist of concerns with her to remind me if I forgot anything. That is until the good ole’ doc ordered labs.
A few years ago, I had to go for labs prior to beginning my last nursing position. As I sat in the chair and the phlebotomist inserted the butterfly needle into my arm, she did something unexpected. She stood up, walked 10 feet across the room, and started rummaging through the stack of tubes to find something she had forgotten. In the meantime, I broke out into a cold sweat and pretty much stopped breathing, and when she turned around, I had turned some shade of pond water green. “Are you okay?” She asked. Ma’am, if you have to ask, the answer is no. I urged her to remove the fucking needle from my arm right now, okay? And POOF, that’s how fears are born.
As I wandered over to the lab, my body erupted into a stress response. I felt like I was walking into some divine judgment, some circle of hell. Waves of nausea. The sweatiest of palms. My friend asked how I was feeling; of course, the answer was afraid.
My body spoke as I sat in the chair in my cubby. I started shaking uncontrollably, full-blown sympathetic response. I squeaked out through tears, “I feel so stupid.” My friend calmly and assertively reminded me that my fear made sense and that I didn’t need to judge myself. It was exactly what I needed then — to get out of non-acceptance and meet myself with compassion.
Too many times, I’ve suppressed the intelligence of my body, practicing non-acceptance that’s a one-way ticket to trapping emotions, including fear responses, in my body. Not this time.
I was honest with the phlebotomist about my anxiety, who asked me immediately if I’d had a bad experience with a blood draw before. As I explained the above story, she commented, “Oh, that’s not okay!”
She then grabbed me a cool towel for my forehead, a cup of orange juice, and tipped me back in the reclining chair to relax while she attended to other patients. She repeatedly reassured me that my body would do what it would do and that it was totally normal; she saw it all the time.
The phlebotomist pulled up some music on a cell phone. Bruno Mars, I think it was, to help me feel more comfortable. She went above and beyond what I thought was possible. What I witnessed as a nurse. What I’ve experienced as a patient before.
Together, my friend and this phlebotomist guided me through my experience with empathy, acceptance, and encouragement. I am crying as I type this because it was a meaningful, healing experience only comparable to the two strangers who held my hands during turbulence on a flight a decade ago and talked to me until it was over.
Healing is not an absence of sensation, emotion, or challenge; it’s providing space to meet ourselves where we are. On Friday, at my physical, I was terrified, and I was able to experience my terror fully, without dissociating, without somebody trying to rush me through it or shame me for feeling. Without avoiding, suppressing, powering through, rejecting, and fighting with every fiber of my being to not feel what I was feeling. Am I cured of my fear of blood draws? I have no idea.
What I do know is that something tender and vulnerable within me was able to receive the attention it needed—healing. Healing is the word.
So, I create. I create a new experience for myself while in a state of conscious dysregulation.
My lab results came back later that day, and I had a minor meltdown because my LDLs were a little high. But during this journey I’ve been on for the last few years, I allowed myself to eat what I wanted, which included A LOT of butter, full-fat dairy, and red meat. I needed to let my body exist and pause some unhealthy, obsessive habits. Now, I’m adjusting my diet from a place of trust. I trust my body. I trust my LDLs will go down.
I’m still waiting for some lab results today, and I’m nervous. The uncertainty is like sticky, profuse tendrils wrapping themselves around my body, infiltrating my mind, and impossible to ignore. It’s hard not to think about the what-ifs; they are plentiful.
Nonetheless, I create.