Finding Ground: Self-Compassion and Creativity in Times of Uncertainty

Uncertainty is deeply uncomfortable, even intolerable. For most of us, it triggers a kind of low-level hum of anxiety, the mind scanning for threats, replaying worst-case scenarios, trying to think its way to solid ground that simply isn't there yet.

When I sit with clients in these moments, I notice how often the instinct is to push harder, to search for answers, be more decisive, more sorted. To muscle through. And yet this is often exactly the time when we need to do the opposite - to slow down and sit with the uncertainty and accept it. In learning to be compassionate with ourselves in this discomfort, we give ourselves a huge gift - that of knowing not whats going to happen, but that we can tolerate the not-knowing and therefore life!

Why uncertainty is so hard

Uncertainty activates the same threat response as actual danger. Our nervous system doesn't distinguish between I don't know what's happening and I am in peril, it simply reads ambiguity as risk and floods us accordingly. This is why we can feel so exhausted by periods of change or transition, even when nothing catastrophic has actually happened. We are, in a very real sense, running on high alert.

What makes this harder still is the internal critic that tends to show up alongside the anxiety. The voice that says: You should be handling this better. Others manage. What's wrong with you?

This is where self-compassion becomes not just a nice idea, but something genuinely necessary.

Self-compassion isn't softness

There's a misconception that self-compassion means letting yourself off the hook, or wallowing. In fact, the research (and my experience both personally and as a therapist) suggests the opposite. When we meet ourselves with kindness rather than criticism, we become more resilient, not less. We can actually feel more, because we're not spending so much energy defending against ourselves.

Kristin Neff, whose work on self-compassion I find invaluable, describes it as having three components: mindfulness (seeing clearly what's happening, without over-dramatising or suppressing it), common humanity (recognising that struggle is part of shared human experience, not a sign of personal failure), and self-kindness (speaking to ourselves as we would to someone we love).

That last one "how would I speak to a friend in this situation? " can be quietly transformative.

Where creativity comes in

One of the things I love most about creative journaling is that it meets us exactly where we are. It doesn't require us to have answers, or to feel better, or to produce anything beautiful. It just asks us to show up and make something, and in doing so, it gently loosens the grip of the anxious, controlling mind.

Uncertainty lives largely in language. It is the endless loop of what if and I don't know and but what if. One of the gifts of working visually or creatively is that we move into a different register, one that doesn't need resolution, that can hold contradiction and ambiguity without trying to solve it.

You might try this: cut up lots of words from a magazine and pick a handful. Sort through them and find something you want to say. Or take a page and simply let your hand move. Not to write anything coherent, not to draw anything recognisable. Just mark-making, lines, shapes, colour if you have it. Let the movement itself be the thing. Notice what happens in your body as you do it. Or you might write - not to process or analyse, but to express. Set a timer for ten minutes and let everything out onto the page. The fears, the not-knowing, the wish that things were different. Let the paper hold it, so that you don't have to hold it quite so tightly yourself.

A note on "doing it right"

There is no right way to do this. One of the most common things I hear is I'm not creative and what I notice underneath that is often a fear of not being good enough, of making something wrong. This is the inner critic again, shape-shifting.

Creativity, in the sense I mean it here, has nothing to do with skill or talent. It is simply the act of making something, of taking what's inside and giving it some kind of form outside yourself. That act alone has value. That act alone is enough. and it is inate within all of us.

In times of uncertainty, we cannot always control what happens. But we can choose how we meet ourselves in the midst of it; with harshness or with care. We can be with ourselves in the not-knowing and allow it to take us somewhere unexpected. We can make a step, with a blank page, and the willingness to simply begin.