Regulating the Nervous System with Creativity
This year, I have become more aware of how overloaded my nervous system has been.
Between an intense school routine, a shuffle in my services, renovations, a six-year-old, a three-year-old, and a very persistent call back to creativity, I have found myself craving less noise.
Or more accurately, a desire to reconnect with my own voice.-
AI technology has carried a similar energy to a gold rush. Fast-moving, experimental, loud and full of promise. And while parts of it are genuinely useful, I have also noticed a quiet fatigue settling in around it.
I find myself wanting to minimise my contact with my laptop.
To use it for what is necessary: organising, producing, communicating with clients.
But not as the place where every part of my creative life has to live.
More and more, I am being pulled back to analogue practices. Collage. Mark-making. Sewing. Observation. Things that do not ask me to hide and cover all the invisible work that goes into editing and refining work-rather practices that help to reclaim and make peace with human sensibilities like an unintended mark or a crease.
Are you experiencing a creative block? When was the last time your creativity felt safe?
For me, the desire to create has always come from a place of safety. It takes me right back to childhood and drawing to my heart’s content.
It gave me instant feedback that did not depend on other vices like bureaucracy.
A line either felt right or it did not.
A colour either brought me joy or it did not.
A small world could appear on the page because I made it so.
There was something deeply regulating about that. Moving at my own pace-either on impulse or over weeks. Looking back, I can see how creativity became a way of making room for myself. A way of building little worlds that felt beautiful or safe, even when the world around me felt too much.
It was not just escapism.
It was a form of ownership.
The return to mark-making
Recently, a few friends and I started doing creative check-ins. Nothing formal or high-pressure. Just a loose commitment to keep returning to our creative goals and gently notice what we are making.
And I have been surprised by how much the compounding has helped.
A small weekly practice does not sound dramatic. It does not have the same urgency as a launch, a rebrand, a business pivot or a polished body of work.
But that is the point.
The practice is not asking to be impressive. It is asking to be present.
It has helped me work through a creative block by removing the pressure to make something “good” and replacing it with the permission to make the most of what I have. In some mystical way telling my inner-child ‘I am enough’.
Sometimes the most powerful creative act is not starting a huge new project. It is making a small mark on a page and being okay.
I found a way back into creating.
If your nervous system has also been feeling overloaded, it might help to create a few different spaces for your thoughts and ideas to land.
Not everything has to live in one notebook. Not everything needs to have the same purpose.
You might like to keep:
A journal for sketching from life and making observations.
A journal for slowly developing your art practice.
A journal for writing, morning pages or personal reflection.
A career journal for business ideas, patterns, lessons and decisions.
A scrapbook for collage, visual references, junk journalling or anything that does not need to make sense yet.
I have one of each that evolves. I started with one dump notebook and noticed parts of me that wanted more attention over time. So my personal journal divided into two, then four.
I would say as long as you had a place to gather inspiration, a place to force transformation and a place to be present…those are the missing elements for anyone looking to return to their creative practice.
The point is not to create another system to maintain.
Because sometimes creative block is not a lack of ideas. It is a lack of safety.
And when everything is forced to become content, output or proof of progress, creativity can start to feel like another demand. But creativity, at its best, can be a return.
To the version of you who was enough for the world.
