I have the great good fortune to be surrounded by many, many amazingly creative people. People that are bursting with creative energy and ideas, talent and enthusiasm. Friends and colleagues who are living wondrously creative lives and by their example are serving as a creative catalyst and an inspiration for me and everyone who knows them. They spark me with a wondrous sense of creative possibility. Their unflagging devotion to the goddess of creativity is a source of heartfelt encouragement and an ongoing blessing in my life.

I admire and respect these people tremendously.

And most of the time I feel like I am a member in good standing of the “live your life creatively” club. That I belong and am one of them.

Most of the time.

Oh oh…Where did all my friends go?

But there are other times when I feel very much on the outside. Like I’ve been cast out. Excluded. I don’t quite measure up. In those moments it looks like those friends are rapidly passing me by. Leaving me behind.

Maybe they are getting more attention. Or coming up with more brilliant ideas. Or actually manifesting things that I have been dragging my feet around for longer than I care to admit.

During these periods those people in my life who are usually angels of creative light mutate into denizens of discouragement and darkness. They turn on me. They undergo a frightening transformation into demons and monsters who torture me with their brilliance. They laugh at me from their lofty pinnacles of originality and genius. They turn their back on me as they frolic together in the land of ease and creative flow.

But of course, they haven’t changed at all. They are still the same lovely and generous souls they always were. The only thing that has changed is a certain frothing neural activity in the dark corners of my brain that looks and sounds like “You’re just not good enough, talented enough, creative enough.”

The only demon that has wormed it’s way into my psyche is not a person at all but a painful state of mind that I know only too well.

I have been unceremoniously abducted into the anti-creative netherworld and swallowed up by the demon of ( drum roll please)… toxic comparison.

Comparison is not the devil…except when it is.

Comparison isn’t inherently a negative thing. Comparison is simply a process of differentiation. It’s acknowledging how one thing is unlike another.  When it becomes deadly is when that differentiation carries a value judgment with it. It’s saying that not only are these two things not the same but one is inherently better than the other. It’s creating a system of hierarchy. Which includes things like scarcity and competition.

When applied to creativity it leads to the assumption is that there’s only so much creative goodness to go around. That some people got it and some don’t. When you are in the jaws of that particular demon you are utterly convinced that you are for sure someone who DON’T… got it. And that way of thinking can lead to a whole world of psychological hurt and  trouble.

If you keep your eyes closed and your mouth shut you’ll have no trouble painting at all.

In a recent blog post I talked about how I ask that my intuitive painting students not make any comments on each others work, which includes positive comments, because what we are doing is trying to refrain from judgment and a judgment is a judgment even if it’s a positive one.

But another reason that I ask people to refrain from saying nice things about each others work is because of a phenomenon that I call “painter envy” that regularly happens in the studio when people paint together in a group. Of course they invariably look around at each others paintings. And they start comparing. And not in the value neutral way of simply noticing how each person is uniquely themselves.

Oh no. This kind of comparison looks and sounds like “Oh my god. Look at how beautiful that painting is. She really knows HOW to paint a bird. My birds always look like dead, scrawny chickens no matter how hard I try. And I have no color sense at all. I’m positively ADDICTED to fluorescent orange and everyone knows that is just a hideous, stupid color. Her colors are so ELEGANT and refined and flow together so well.  I can’t believe I still paint like a 4 year old after all this time. She obviously came out of the womb knowing how to paint and draw. I can’t even……”  and on and on.

This is another BIG reason I ask people not to make comments. Since the comparison is going on in people’s minds anyway… since they are already trying to convince themselves that their creative expression is deficient or wanting in some way… hearing a positive comment about someone else’s painting when no one has said anything to them just underscores the belief that theirs just doesn’t measure up.

If someone says something nice about Nancy’s painting then Jill automatically assumes that hers is a piece of crap. And vice versa. So not saying anything at all is a way to help create an atmosphere where we are not throwing gasoline on that particular raging fire.

My friends are back but my creativity is taking a break for a while.

When we are pinned to the ground by the toxic comparison demon it effectively stops our true creativity dead in its tracks. To be creative we need to feel safe. And valued. We need to feel like our creativity is good enough just as it is.

Without that confidence and trust in ourselves we tend to shrink and hide. We tend to find ourselves feeling blocked and stuck and paralyzed. The creative ideas just don’t flow. The creative river goes deep underground to a place where we can’t find a way to access it’s limitless creative goodness. And we can totally convince ourselves that it’s dried up and gone forever.

I find that I am the most vulnerable to the negative comparison blues when I’m already feeling low or sad or scared about something else in my life. When I’m feeling overwhelmed or stressed, tired or drained I don’t have the resources necessary to put that particular demon in perspective.

So when I sit down and try to do something creative and the words won’t come or the paint is not flowing joyfully onto the paper, when it looks like my artsy friends have all of a sudden attained creative rockstar status and left me behind in a heap of dejected inadequacy, I try to remember that what I need at that moment is some kindness. And a cup of tea. Maybe a nap. Or a good cry.

And to also try and remember that this too shall pass. My feeling of being a creative has-been is not anywhere near the truth and is no reflection at all on my intrinsic creative worth. It’s just that I’m at a low ebb of my creative cycle. And what I really need is to curl up with a good trashy book and let someone else do the creative heavy lifting for a while.

And maybe take another nap.