Author Martha Beck is not the first to suggest that creativity can lessen anxiety. Carl Jung claimed his psychotic patients could be cured through writing, painting or other creative pursuits. But Beck’s new book, Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose (Penguin Random House), thoroughly details the mechanics of the process.
“Anxiety spirals pull us away from the world,” Beck writes. “Creativity spirals pull us into it.”
The route to calming anxiety? Activate the part of the brain where all the fireworks happen: the spatially and visually oriented right hemisphere.
In other words, make things.
Beck notes that defeating anxiety doesn’t mean you have to be a novelist or a watercolorist. Any ”three-dimensional work that calls on right-hemisphere thinking, like gardening, building, or cooking” will do, writes Beck, a Harvard-trained sociologist.
Calming exercises can help tame anxiety, Beck notes, but they’re only a start. “Anxiety can’t just be ended,” she writes, “It must be replaced.”
Beck became interested in exploring the anxiety-creativity connection when anxiety disorders skyrocketed during the Covid-19 pandemic. “By 2020, nearly half (47 percent) of human beings surveyed said they experienced regular bouts of this life-draining, health-destroying, torturous condition,” she writes. By 2023, half of young adults reported being anxious.
Beck calls anxiety “the most common mental illness in the world.” Studies published in Scientific American and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence show that creative people are far more susceptible to anxiety and depression. But the personality markers contributing to that—intuition, sensitivity and empathy—can also make creatives more resilient.
Curious how much anxiety might be simmering in your psyche? Take Psychology Today’s Generalized Anxiety Disorder Test.
Rumination Can Be Repurposed
Negative rumination, defined as repetitive thinking about distressful situations, is synonymous with anxiety.
“You can see evidence of obsessive rumination all over the internet, as people go over and over and over the things that anger and upset them,” said Beck in a written response to questions. “Creativity doesn’t so much counteract rumination as repurpose it. A chef can spend hours planning a new recipe or a menu; a choreographer may listen to music over and over, thinking up new moves; a gardener can mull over the best way to combine crops for hours or days.”
Society, culture and economic systems are designed to encourage fear and anxiety, mainly as a way to boost productivity. Beck writes in her book. “To stay productive, we believe, we should stay anxious,” she writes.
Creativity can become a disruptive and even a revolutionary act in such systems, she said, “since social norms rely on repetition and cooperation.” When creatives bust out of that mold, “these days, it’s the definition of subversion.”
While researching, Beck often talked with neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, known for her TED Talk, “My Stroke of Insight.” Taylor’s talk—a fascinating look at how her brain’s left and right hemispheres pulled her in opposite directions during a massive stroke—has racked up over 30 million views on the TED website.
Beck launched her research because she was plagued by anxiety. “I was always, always, always anxious,” she writes. During the pandemic, she began using new calming strategies while also teaching them to others. Her anxiety dropped to “nearly nonexistent and stayed there almost all the time,” writes Beck who has worked extensively with Oprah Winfrey.
She witnessed how people create “anxiety spirals” that spin and accelerate without conscious awareness. She also saw that anxiety is contagious, noting that reading social media comments can easily trigger people to hop on an outrage train.
A Creative Life Is Not Necessarily An Easy Life
Entering a creative flow state, while it can tame anxiety, isn’t the route to a tranquil life. Regularly clocking hours on a creative project “may be the best hardest thing you ever do,” Beck writes. “To get into the blissful state of ‘flow,’ we often go through moments when we’re taxing our skills to the limit. It can be incredibly frustrating, but in a way that leads to growth rather than shutdown.”
But make no mistake, creativity is what can save you, said Beck. One of her favorite quotes is from the Gnostic Gospels, discovered in 1945:
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
“The final clause of that quote relates to trauma psychology, as well as creative invention,” Beck said. “Repressed, the pain from our wounds destroys us. Expressed—whether in simple conversation or artistic work—these same traumas and secrets can be alchemically processed into wisdom, peace and beauty. Salvation, if you want to call it that.”
Beck believes it’s possible to re-wire the brain, both through self-calming techniques offered in her book, and by leading a creative life. “Now, even very alarming things tend to show up in my mind as interesting possibilities, rather than anxiety,” she said.
