How to deal with the ups and downs of a creative career

Let’s be honest: carving out a career as a creative is not for the faint-hearted. Budgets are tight, clients are demanding and keeping a high standard of work is challenging when you don’t have an abundance of time. Add in strong competition and a career landscape that can be devoid of mentors, and you have the perfect recipe for burnout and emotional drain.

Creative careers are often lacking a foundation of support. There are rarely established HR departments or long term business strategies in place for employees or business owners to lean on when things get tough. This can cause creative people – especially women – to internalise and blame themselves if things aren’t going well.

So when you find yourself exhausted and emotionally drained, what to do? Ignoring the signs of burnout or anxiety triggered by a tough phase at work is a dangerous path when your career depends on putting yourself into your work (which so many creative careers do). Add to that the possible impact on your personal life and relationships, and it becomes clear that your mental health is vital to thriving through the ups and downs of a creative career.

You have probably heard of mindfulness, and all its potential benefits for stress. But when things are tough at work (and indeed, in life) and you feel unsupported, there is a deeper practice that might just help shift some of the difficult thoughts and emotions that arise and conspire to keep you stuck.

Mindful Self Compassion (MSC) is a practice developed by two American psychologists, Kristen Neff and Christopher Germer. It is made up of three components designed to break through self criticism and painful emotions; mindfulness, self-kindness and common humanity. For the purposes of simplicity, here we’ll use the terms ‘pay attention’, ‘be kind’ and ‘you’re not alone’.

1. Pay attention

This part involves paying attention to your own thoughts and emotions. Most of us avoid this because, well, it can be painful. But stopping and paying attention to how you’re feeling is actually the key to moving past it. Avoidance leads us in the opposite direction: to stuck-ness, anger, and frustration. Neff and Germer say “why is mindfulness an essential component to self compassion? Because we need to be able to turn toward and acknowledge when we’re suffering, to ‘be’ with our pain long enough to respond with care and kindness.”

But how do you actually pay attention to yourself in this way? It can help to write it down, or speak to someone who won’t judge or offer advice to start with. The key is to explain exactly what you’re thinking and feeling without editing yourself at all. It’s vital to remove judgement, explaining and solving from the equation to see the real truth of what is going on for you. After some practice, it should be something you can identify internally – all it really takes it to be able to say: “this is exactly how I feel”. Don’t judge yourself at any stage of the process, especially if its hard to do at first!

 2. Be kind

The key difference between mindful self compassion and a straightforward mindfulness practice is the self compassion component. Arguably, this is its most transformative element. Once you know exactly how you actually feel, then it’s time to respond.

We are all familiar with responding to our emotions and thoughts, but for most of us the response is predominately negative. Enter self-kindness. This part is simple but challenging. Your task is to respond to the emotions and thoughts that arose in step 1 with deep compassion. There are two options: imagine, in response to yourself, that you are either responding to a very small child, or your closest, most cherished friend. How would you respond? What would you say? The likely answer is that you would be kind, understanding, helpful, empathetic. As women we are well practised in putting ourselves in others’ shoes and showing (and genuinely feeling) compassion. Try writing your response down as if you’re speaking to the small child or good friend, and once you’ve done that, its time to direct this towards yourself.

Look back on what came up in step 1 and sit with yourself, no matter how uncomfortable it is, and offer the kindness that came up in this step. Do this when you’re alone if possible, as it’s important to allow yourself to feel without judgement.

3. You’re not alone

The final component is an important close to the practice. Common humanity is the reminder that you are not alone. Whatever you’re going through, someone has come before you, and someone will experience it after you do. Remembering that you’re not alone is difficult in our increasingly isolated communities, where we don’t necessarily hear and see (face to face) exactly what those around us are going through. But the truth is, all humans suffer. We all struggle, and no one is immune to challenge. Truly understanding this can alleviate a great deal of pain.

To be more specific, working in a creative field can be hard. It takes courage to persist and show up, no matter what your job, business or practice. Know that there are many others in the same position as you, often struggling alongside you, feeling all the ups and downs. Even if it feels lonely, you are not alone – just knowing this fact can help you feel more supported. Understand you are part of a bigger picture, and a community of creative people who, no matter how it seems, really do understand what you’re going through right now.

Bec Mackey is a freelance feature writer who has worked in the media industry for over fifteen years. She writes about wellbeing, work, personal development and travel, and when she can muster the energy and courage, she writes about Things That Matter. Connect with Bec via Instagram or at www.becmackey.com.