The 7 Types of Rest, Part 6 : Engage Creative Rest with Online Therapy Maryland
Creative rest is for EVERYONE! Art supplies entirely optional.
After a brief blog detour to chat a minute about the change of the year, we’re back with another entry in this series about the seven types of rest (check out the earlier blog posts if you need to catch up!). I have been saving this one on creative rest for later in the series because it’s a personal favorite of mine and I needed to sit with it for a while before writing about it. It’s also a bit of a blog post crossover event—part True Confessions series, part Types of Rest series, part Blant (blog rant) series. Might be messy but let’s get creative and see!
When I first started digging into the seven types of rest last fall, in a personal attempt to figure out why I was always so tired despite getting enough sleep, a big AHA! moment came when I got to the description of creative rest: it’s the kind of rest one gets when engaging with beauty and creativity—whether one is witnessing or producing it. Something clicked in my mind and I knew that this type of rest (I didn’t even know it was a kind of rest before!!) is one that I had been sorely missing and that it would be important to invest in, as soon as possible. Life had gotten more busy than usual in recent years and I had made a strategic choice to pare a number of things back in order to have more time available for the things I truly had to do, while still getting the sleep I know I need (remember, I am a champion at protecting my sleep time). I didn’t quite realize, until this aha moment, that most of the things that got cut from my life were the things that provided creative rest for me, either actively or passively.
What exactly Is Creative rest?
Creative rest can also include moments of awe and wonder in nature.
Creative rest can be so many things! It can be appreciating beauty and creativity by taking in art or music or an outdoor scenic view that moves you, internally, in some way. It can be engaging in making or creating things in any form—from making friendship bracelets to baking a cake, to doing art of any kind, to writing, wood working, gardening and so much more. It’s about engaging in the creativity of life that allows us to be part of the beauty of the world.
What is it NOT???? It’s not being “good at art”. Creative rest is for EVERYONE! And you don’t have to have any special skills or talent to enjoy it. But a lot of folks do need to get out of their own way and make sure they aren’t telling themselves stories about how they aren’t creative and that this isn’t accessible to them. Trust me, I know this one.
It took many, many years for me to unlearn a lot of the stories I told myself as a child about who I am. Having tried the team sports that were available to me (softball and basketball), I concluded that I was unathletic because I was pretty terrible at them and wasn’t having much fun. So by the time I was probably 10 years old, I had already created an identity about who I was and wasn’t: “I’m not athletic”. Also, somehow “creative” = “artistic” in my young mind. “Art” meant drawing or painting at that time, in my little world, and I was probably even worse at those things than I was at sports, so I also thought of myself as uncreative. Fun fact: my worst report card grade ever was in middle school art. I hated that class. It took me years to realize that some of the things I did enjoy—like swimming and skiing and acting and dance were athletic or creative. Our small school didn’t have a swim or ski team so I told myself that those activities didn’t really count as athletic—I was just doing stuff for fun and I didn’t compete. And performing arts somehow didn’t meet the creative threshold that visual arts did, in my mind. As an online therapist in Maryland, I now know that lots of people have this experience of having to unlearn a whole set of assumptions about who they are, based on ideas they made up as a kid. And I now fully believe that creativity, and creative rest, is for everyone, including me and you.
Surround yourself with whatever you find beautiful and allow yourself to play.
Reclaiming Creative rest
Knowing that something would be good to do and doing something about it are two entirely different things. See: all people ever. Having had the realization that zeroing out opportunities for creative rest in my life wasn’t good for me was great but now I needed to take action to correct this situation. And taking action takes effort so that seemed like a bad deal when I was already tired. One of the absolute worst things about being a therapist is that I can’t claim denial and say I just don’t know what to do about a situation like this because I do know exactly what I’d tell a client. So I have to have my mini, internal temper tantrum that I just don’t want to have to do the right thing/ make some effort and why can’t everything just be better because I’ve had a realization about something???!?! One of the good things about getting older is that these mini, internal tantrums resolve quicker and I’m a lot more able to find the compassion and humor in the situation.
So, with great compassion and firm resolve, I had a little chat with myself that went something like this: Ok, pal, now that you’ve seen this important info about your life, you can’t unsee it. Yep, it’d be awesome if just understanding something would make things different in life but we know that’s not the way this goes for anyone. Being human is just the worst sometimes. But good on you for figuring this need for creative rest out! And, hey, it wasn’t a crazy idea to pare things back to try to make sure to protect highest need tasks and sleep—you were really trying to take care of yourself. We just ended up getting rid of some important stuff in the process and we need to walk it back a little. You started this whole exploration of rest because you’re totally fed up with being tired and worn out all the time. So, if making some changes here would help relieve this a bit, isn’t that what this whole thing was about? Wouldn’t that be worth it? Yep, I know you’re still tired and you have no time and all those other priority tasks are still there and you still gotta sleep. We’re going to start small. Really small. Teeny tiny. I promise, you don’t have to do anything you REALLY don’t want to/can’t do. If this whole thing ends up being a bust, we can forget it and try something else. Can we give it a shot for a bit though? Yeah? Ok, let’s get a cup of tea, the cute colored pens and make a plan.
Being a therapist can be fucking exhausting when you have to live with yourself. But I stopped my internal kicking and screaming and got curious. How could I reclaim creative rest in a way that worked for the life I have right now (not some magical life where I live alone in a self-cleaning mountain hut with a built in ceramics studio and home bakery)?
Creative rest in everyday life
The plan was that I was going to start working creative rest back into my life in small, easy ways. But first, I apparently needed to have one more small, internal tantrum about the fact that what I REALLY wanted was the the creative activities that I had enjoyed the most in recent years—ceramics, making glass art, the whole sourdough bread baking frenzy that I indulged for several years (Important side note: I’m not actually good at any of these things. I hang out at the advanced beginner level with pretty much no desire to get “better”. I do these things just because I really like doing them, which makes me happy). But all of these pursuits are resource heavy—they require more time, energy and/or money than I have available for this right now. Hence, having given them up for a while. So, after some more compassion and more tea, I was finally ready to engage with the possibilities that I actually have at this time.
It was time to start looking for tiny steps that would work—actions that I was highly motivated to take and required very little effort from me (Read BJ Fogg’s book Tiny Habits for more on this idea and more on making behavior change less awful). This approach is so much more effective for me than attempting to come up with a giant, grand vision that I will be too overwhelmed to engage with for more than 3.7 seconds. So, I started with Netflix. Wait, hear me out! Being honest with myself, I acknowledged I had some time everyday that I wasted just doing a whole lot of nothing, with a screen, that didn’t result in any sort of real rest or enjoyment. And I admit that I do totally love any sort of competition reality show where people make stuff—they could be doing cooking, baking, fashion design, make-up, glass art, metal art, you name it! I truly love just watching people come up with creative ideas of stuff to make and then seeing them do it. So, the most unbelievably low effort, yet enticing, thing I could start with, on my road to reclaiming creative rest, was to choose to watch these kinds of shows, even if in just small bursts, when I would have otherwise just spent time scrolling online.
HElp Small Seeds Grow
Great news! I was really good at this first step. I watched people make all kinds of stuff and I didn’t really ever regret the time that I spent watching these shows. This felt good and I was on the lookout for tiny sparks of ideas that would help me find my next small, easy steps. My toxic trait is that, despite every movie or story ever written that tells me that it would be a terrible idea, I would absolutely pick the ability to manipulate time if I were given the chance to pick a superpower. No doubt. Thankfully (for all of us), that chance hasn’t been afforded to me yet so I’m stuck with needing to use only the same 24 hours in every single day that I’ve always had. So, I knew I needed to try and get more out of the time I already had, but not in a frantic do-it-all-seize-the-day kind of way.
If you have been on this blog series journey with me, you’ll remember that I learned that there is an active component of physical rest. So, I’ve been walking in my neighborhood as much as I can. My next high motivation/low effort idea that fall was to just stop for a while on each walk at one particular part of my regular route—the place where a row of trees were all lined up and in autumn color. There were yellow ginkgo leaves, orange and red maple leaves, leaves in various shades of green and brown. And it would look different everyday at this time of year. Having moved out of New England decades ago, I still miss it badly every autumn. This little stop on my walk was a way to take in what I find very beautiful—the changing trees, leaves and light of this time of year. It could be creative rest as I just looked at the shapes and colors, shadows and light. Going for broke, I layered in sensory rest too, making sure to take off my headphones for this brief stop. I listened to the sounds of the wind moving through the trees, the dried leaves crunching underfoot, dogs barking nearby. It took no extra time out of my life and required virtually no effort on my part, just the ability to remember to stop and rest right there.
CReative Rest, Creating Energy
Thankfully, my “aha” moment about how important creative rest is for me turned out to be pretty correct! The more I engaged in any creative rest, the better I felt. As I felt a bit better and had some more energy, I found myself wanting to invest it in other creative rest pursuits. Nothing huge or ground breaking—just things that brought me creativity, beauty and joy. I got myself some watercolor pencils and some autumn-themed watercolor pictures to color in. When I had a day off during the holidays, I put on some Irish music and made some soda bread and Irish stew to enjoy. The DC area has great, free museums, so I picked another afternoon over the holidays and went to spend a little time strolling around one and seeing what was new. I baked two loaves of bread today. I started using the beautiful water glasses that have been sitting in the back of my cabinets for TWENTY YEARS because they are the good glasses and I had been “saving them”. For what?!?!?!?! I don’t even know anymore. But they are beautiful and I am loving using them. I’ve kept my promises to myself that I wouldn’t ask too much of myself with this goal of increasing my creative rest or stress myself out about it. I’ve watched a lot of Project Runway. And I’m now excited to keep following the little sparks of interest that come along.
How to start today: Small steps towards more Creative Rest with ONline THerapy Maryland
If you want to increase your own experience with creative rest, here are some other easy, lower effort ways to start playing around with how to incorporate it into your life.
Take a Visual Detox
Spend 10 minutes in a visually calming environment, such as a park, garden, or even a quiet room with minimal distractions. Surround yourself with soothing colors, natural textures, or artwork that inspires you. This intentional break from overstimulation can rejuvenate your creative mind.
Incorporate Playful Creativity
Engage in a low-pressure creative activity, such as doodling, playing with clay, or experimenting with a new recipe. The goal isn't perfection, or even any semblance of “good”, but rather the joy of creation. Do stuff just for fun. These activities can unlock fresh ideas and reduce the mental fatigue that comes from rigid thinking patterns.
Seek Out Wonder
Make time to experience something that inspires wonder—watch a sunrise, listen to an uplifting piece of music, or visit a local museum or gallery. Walk the route in the neighborhood that takes you past the house with a nice garden or cool piece of art outside. These moments can reignite your imagination and foster a sense of connection to something larger than yourself.
Unplug from Productivity
Make some space each day for an activity with no goal or deadline attached. Whether it's daydreaming, journaling, or wandering without a purpose, giving yourself permission to "waste" time can restore the creative energy often drained by constant busyness. I’ve got several axes to grind about productivity but that’s going to need a whole other post later…. Note that this kind of unplugging is different than brain rotting while consuming digital content.
Surround Yourself with Inspiration
Allow your environment to reflect what sparks your creativity. This could include keeping a vision board, displaying images that motivate you, or having tools for creative expression—like sketchpads or musical instruments—readily available. A creative-friendly space encourages spontaneous moments of inspiration. Use the good dishes and pretty plates if it makes you happy.
A free consultation For ONline Therapy in Maryland
If you’re looking for support, consider reaching out for a consultation. Online therapy Maryland offers a compassionate space to explore creative rest and more. Take the first step toward reconnecting with beauty and joy with the help of a skilled therapist. I see folks in-person for therapy in College Park, MD and offer online therapy in Maryland. You can explore more information about my services throughout the website. Feel free to contact me for a free 15-minute phone consultation.
