How do you keep a creative mindset when you’re not sure you’ll be OK? These past 3 months and counting have tested Athena and me both. As part of chronicling her recovery from a fractured femur as a person with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, I interviewed Athena on what she has found helpful. What follows is an excerpt of that conversation, edited for clarity…
Becoming a body of light
S: I wonder if you could share how you’ve used focused attention or meditation to help you through some of the more painful moments in hospital.
A: We've talked before about how there are times when you want to be in your body, when you want to accept your body. But there are absolutely times when it's almost like your body is this klaxon that's saying pain, pain, pain. After the first klaxon goes off, it's like you need to shut it down. You can't keep listening to it because it's not providing you any new information.
S: Yeah, it's like a car being stuck in a certain gear.
A: Yeah, you need to escape the noise. And that's exactly what I see something like focused attention as being really valuable for. I know the leg is broken. I can say to my body, it's not helpful for you to keep blaring about the pain. With a broken bone the thing that makes it harder is the muscle spasms. And crying or screaming, which are very normal reactions to pain. These things clench the muscles even more and they grind the bone together, which just sends the pain through the roof. If anything, you need to relax. And so that's where something like hypnosis has so much value because if you can calm yourself down, you can relax those muscles a bit, you can get yourself under control. You're more likely to bring the pain level down from an 11 to something that is still probably going to be astronomical but it's not sending you into hysterics.
Stephen Gilligan was one of the meditations that you gave me early on. I'm still using it to get me to sleep. And in that one, it's more about sinking into this space. I’ve practically got it memorized now. And one of the things he says is that your body is a body of light. And I think for me, that is the thing that helps me to get out of the physical body and to get into a headspace of becoming a body of light. I become the spark and the spark gets sunk into this network and it gets sunk into the culture and the forest and somewhere in there I fall asleep. That particular one has been very good in terms of relaxing me and helping me get to sleep.
S: That exercise actually comes from Milton Erickson who was one of Stephen Gilligan’s mentors. Milton Erickson is an interesting person really in that he was a master hypnotist, he was a doctor, and he was also disabled.
A: Really?
S: He had polio as a young person. And he had a series of health issues all through his life. He was actually colourblind and later fairly blind. He had a series of physical limitations and he developed a hypnotic sort of approach of being able to separate the body from his consciousness.
The power of visualization
S: What would you say was the most helpful thing at the very beginning?
A: I feel like one of the things that really helped in the beginning was the work that we were doing together. I guess it started in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
S: I was using visual imagery with you to take you to a place that was free of pain and free of where you were right in that moment physically, because it was not a comfortable ride to the hospital. What about that was helpful?
A: It was essentially that there's a certain level of dissociation. You're putting yourself into a positive memory. We were using the memory of being out on Alice Lake. And that was something we came back to over and over again. When we were doing the side-roll changes in the hospital and I was in so much pain, I was just muttering under my breath: Alice Lake, Alice Lake, Alice Lake as a way to just try to anchor myself back. Didn't always work, but it gave me something to focus on other than the pain.
S: You say it didn't always work. Tell me more about that.
A: It's like you're reaching for something. Like in the ambulance, it's not a chaotic environment. You're basically lying passively and, you know, there's nothing being asked of you. Whereas when I'm up on my side in the hospital and I was doing one of these side-rolls, I wanted to be able to dissociate and just be in Alice Lake. But a lot of the times, I'm also having to provide directions to the staff or, I'm being pulled away by so much pain.
S: From my perspective, you had to be very vigilant to make sure they weren't gonna harm your leg. So you were trying to go into that sort of hypnotic state but you were not allowed to stay there. You had to come back all the time to give instructions, which is good information in terms of how to use clinical hypnosis.
Regaining some control
A: Yeah, I needed to tell them what to do. And there were so many times, particularly in those early days, when it was a lot of me just saying, don't touch there. Don't touch this part. Don't put pressure there. And that advocacy took a lot of work. And I think one of the most helpful things that you did early on was you coached me into telling them what to do, as opposed to telling them what not to do. So now when I'm coaching staff to do one of these side-rolls, it's like, you can put your hand on the centre of my back and my shoulder blade in order to help me roll but don't put your hand on my hip. Don't touch the thigh. The fracture is right there. But here are some other places where you can help me out. And I think... It gives you a bit of power. And I think, after 100 some odd days at this, the staff now trust me. They're not thinking I'm rude when I say, okay, have you ever done a side-roll with me before? And so that is power. And that was the thing that was really distressing in the beginning. They didn't know that I knew more about how to move me than they did.
S: Well, considering the population in this unit, it makes sense. They're doing it the way they've done it with everybody else.
A: Exactly. And just for context, the population in this unit is a lot of folks who are probably in their 70s, 80s, 90s, and are having a lot of cognitive issues, not necessarily knowing what they need. Whereas I am very experienced in terms of knowing what my body can handle.
Creating moments of reprieve
S: What's it like to go to Alice Lake while your body is in pain?
A: I think the best one we ever did was when we were kayaking on Alice Lake and we actually extended the visualization where I was kayaking up in the sky above Alice Lake. So it’s like I’m mentally lifting myself out of my body. It's very much an out of body kind of experience. It’s peaceful and it creates some distance from the pain.
S: Was it hard to leave that behind and come back to your body?
A: No, the body is always pulling you back. The hardest thing is to focus and do that separation.
S: I think why I'm asking is because I've had some out of body experiences myself in the past, but I remember for me, it wasn't so hard to dissociate. That was actually the easy part. The part that was harder for me was to come back.
A: No, I would definitely say that hasn't been my experience. My body is always tugging me back.
Separating mechanical pain from psychological pain
S: One thing I’ve heard you talk about is that there's the physical mechanical pain but then there's also the psychological pain that's associated with that. And that if you can’t eliminate the mechanical pain, you can still influence the psychological experience of pain. Conversely, you can actually make the physical pain worse because your body is reacting to your anxiety by further clenching up those muscles.
Mentally calming yourself down helps to physically calm yourself down.
A: Yeah. And that has a lot of value, I think, more than just with fractures, but with a lot of physical injuries. If you can calm your body down, your body has a better chance of dealing with the pain because it's not winding itself up.
S: What are some of the things that you've found helpful in calming your body down? We’ve talked about visualization as a tool, but are there any other things that you've found particularly useful?
Finding distractions and creative outlets
A: For those first few weeks, I did play a lot of video games, to be honest. Distraction is absolutely necessary. We've talked before about what you focus on, you amplify. Just not being focused on the pain, putting your brain somewhere else. Whether it's a video game or a TV series or something else. I've been very limited in what I can do in terms of not being able to physically paint. The act of painting is something that has always been a go-to for me. And painting with physical paints is very different than digital painting. It just is. And so I have definitely missed that. But one of the things we did early on was you found an app on the phone called Freeform, which is essentially an app that allows you to finger paint. So I began doing a lot of finger painting with the crayon and the brush tool, and some of the other tools. It's a different sensation than physically painting but it did provide some kind of creative outlet, which was valuable. And then eventually — I honestly wish we had done it sooner — we set up an iPad stand that allows me to use the iPad suspended over my face on the bed.
S: Originally we thought you could just hold the iPad but you kept dropping it on your face.
A: For the record I have an iPad mini so it's not even a very big iPad, but you just kind of run out of physical juice when you're trying to balance it.
S: Yeah, holding it up over your head is not the easiest.
A: The stand was definitely a good investment and it's something that I have been using ever since. I think I'm honestly a bit spoiled because I use Photoshop primarily when I'm working on the laptop. Because I have a subscription, I have an iPad version of Photoshop and I thought they would be the same and they are very much not. So I spent a lot of time that first week on Google trying to find out how to do things on the iPad version of Photoshop. And there are some things it does well, but there are some things it cannot do at all. I've also got the laptop now, which I can use a little bit. So I've got the iPad and I've got my phone too. I've got all these digital devices around me all the time now. Being able to draw on the screen is something that I have loved to do since I had a Cintiq, which is like a tablet that allows you to draw on the screen. Having that kind of control again with the iPad is definitely nice. I'm on this Facebook group right now called ‘Addicted To Paint-By-Numbers’ and I am seriously craving to get back to that. The problem is still that you're on your back. It's fine with an iPad because there's not something that's gonna drip on my face. But with paint it's gonna end up all over the bed and me. I don't honestly know how Frida Kahlo did it, painting on her back…
That’s it for now. We’ll continue to update you on how creativity is helping us through this challenging time. In the meantime: Stay grounded, stay light, and keep on creating.
Stefan and Athena
Stefan is Tilted Windmills’ clinical counsellor, generative coach and a self-described wounded healer. If you’re seeking support, consider booking a free 30-minute consultation.
Athena is currently on medical leave from creativity coaching with Tilted Windmills while she heals, however, you can experience her work as a fine art painter in her upcoming solo art exhibit, “The Extraordinary, Ordinary Nature of Interabled Love.”
Thank you S & A - just a thoroughly lovely interview, very real, very uplifting, and very valuable to all of us for when these times come. Yes - that Freeform App showed up on iPhone and iPad after one of the Software Updates (I think) but gosh - never imagined a beautiful creation like the little kayaker was possible with it. 👏⭐️💛
What really stays with me from this beautiful interview is the empowerment of telling the staff what to do vs what not to do. What a journey. I really appreciate what you covered in the interview and how you describe dealing with different aspects psychologically and physically. Continued well wishes to you both. 🌼