Can Creativity Support Healing with a Cancer Diagnosis?
Research confirms that creativity can be an important part of the path to healing and wholeness for cancer patients and survivors. Whether painting with watercolors, drawing, collaging, writing, or engaging in other creative processes, creativity engages us in the present moment and provides support for emotional and physical health.
In this article, author of Creative Prescriptions ™ for Women with Cancer, Annette Tello, M.S. offers insights and tips on how cancer patients and survivors can benefits from the creative process (and despite the title, men can benefit from creativity too).
For those who want to explore the healing potential of their creativity, this workbook serves as an excellent guide and companion for individuals working on their creative skills alone, with a counselor, or coach, or in a group setting.
Annette, can you tell us about your background and how you got involved in working with the cancer community?
For the last twenty-five years, I have worked as a counselor, health, and life transitions coach. In recent years, I worked for a non-profit agency, where I helped women navigate their cancer journey. What struck me was that these clients had many needs and challenges that were not being met by our program nor by other service providers in the community. One of the challenges was the lack of accessible tools to alleviate the emotionally overwhelming experience cancer patients and their families face in their daily lives.
I knew from personal experience that creative expression in the form of art-making was an instrumental tool in my own healing from cervical carcinoma. This inspired me to create a program that would give cancer patients creative tools to help them cope with their challenges and facilitate the healing process, in between doctors’ appointments.
Can you describe your book and how it supports cancer patients/survivors?
I developed the Creative Prescriptions program to specifically address many of the challenges faced by cancer patients. While you are in treatment, your medical team will take care of your body. However, you are more than your body; you are an intellectual, emotional, intuitive, spiritual, and creative being. All of these aspects of the self are affected by cancer, and should be included in the healing process.
Creative Prescriptions helps you to tap into your inherent ability to be creative and its potential to heal physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. Creativity is your “prescription” to reduce stress, raise spirits, and gain a sense of control over your own healing.
Creative Prescriptions is a guide for creating your own personal wellness program to support you during treatment. This guide allows you to bring all aspects of yourself into the healing process. This book is meant to be your companion through your treatment and recovery because it is a creative first-aid kit to use as needed.
My book was also an Award-Winning Finalist in the Health: Cancer category of the 2019 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest.
Author Annette Tello, M.S., has twenty-five years of experience in rehabilitation counseling and coaching. For the last five years, she has specialized in working with women with cancer. The use of creative expression through art-making was a critical tool in her own healing from cancer and inspired her to help others by writing Creative Prescriptions ™ for Women with Cancer.
Annette combines holistic cancer coaching and life coaching in her Cancer to Wellness Program. Her mission is to provide a coaching platform that focuses on emotional healing through the creative arts and evidence-base mind-body techniques. Annette has walked the cancer path and brings her heartfelt experience to her work with her coaching clients.
Creative Prescriptions is not about mastering art techniques; it is about the process of “making art” as a form of intuitive self-expression that allows us to tap into its healing benefits. The best part is that no previous artistic skills are required. All you need is to trust yourself, and be willing to play and explore expressing yourself creatively.
Cancer patients can navigate their healing and recovery by selecting from six basic prescriptions that address specific challenges and offer corresponding creative coping tools. Pick the prescription you need at the time and go right to that activity. For example, if you are “feeling fearful,” chapter 5 has an activity to address this. Use this guide in the way it feels the best to you, your process and path are uniquely yours.
The six Creative Prescriptions are:
- Trust Your Intuition
- Make Yourself a Priority
- Express Yourself
- Manage Your Mind-Set
- Connect to Your Body’s Wisdom
- Cultivate a Spiritual Practice
Are there any research studies that supports this work in creativity and cancer?
Research shows that creative activities that use your hands, help to decrease stress, and relieve anxiety. Barry Jacobs, PhD, of Princeton University found that repetitive movements, such as those used in creative projects, enhance the release of serotonin, relieving symptoms of depression. Serotonin also improves moods, increases feelings of happiness, and reduces anxiety.
Studies show that creativity does increase happiness and improve mental health. The Journal of Positive Psychology (2018) published a study article titled “Everyday Creative Activity as a Path to Flourishing,” and it states, “Recent experience sampling and diary studies have shown that spending time on creative goals during a day is associated with higher activated positive affect (PA) on that day. Overall, these findings support the emerging emphasis on everyday creativity as a means of cultivating positive psychological functioning.” In other words, creativity makes us happy!
A study in the Journal of Health Psychology (2006), by researchers Collie, Bottorff, and Long, titled “A Narrative View of Art Therapy and Art-Making by Women with Breast Cancer” states “There is wide clinical acceptance of the value of art therapy and therapeutic art-making in cancer care.” The researchers found that participants experienced the therapeutic benefits of the art-making process whether they were in an art therapy group or made art on their own. The good news is that you can receive the healing benefits of creative expression in the comfort of your own home.
A study done by the Journal of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts found the following: “Art-making was an effective way of venting feelings about problems.” In another study, published in the Journal of Health Psychology (2006), by researchers Collie, Bottorff, and Long, found that the art-making process allowed participants to “see” what they were feeling. It stated, “It led to other things, such as acceptance, resolution, empowerment, healing, decision, and reduced fear.”
There are hundreds of studies documenting the physical benefits of the creative process on the body. These studies show that the creative process reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, improves immune function, and it can even reduce pain. A study done at the Mayo Clinic and published in the European Journal of Cancer Care showed that patients that participated in a creative process had “significant improvements in positive mood and [reduced] pain scores …”
Adult coloring is a great tool for people who don’t consider themselves to be “creative” and for those who can benefit from a more contained creative process. A study published in the Creativity Research Journal (2017), called “Sharpen Your Pencils: Preliminary Evidence That Adult Coloring Reduces Depressive Symptoms and Anxiety” states, “Coloring participants showed significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms and anxiety after the intervention, but control participants did not. We conclude that daily coloring can improve some negative psychological outcomes and that it may provide an effective, inexpensive, and highly accessible self-help tool for nonclinical samples.”
Annette, do you have any stories of how the creative process helped some of your clients?
One of my coaching clients told me that when things did not go well in her treatment or in her life, she often became very negative. Her inner “mean girl” came out and would keep her in a negative self-talk mode for hours at a time, if she let it. She would tell herself things like, you’re so stupid. Why didn’t you … She found the easiest and fastest way to shift out of her negative self-talk was to pick up her art supplies and just start playing with the materials. This distracted her from her self-deprecating commentary and provided a most effective way to stop her negative mind-set; in addition, she had amazing art journals!
Another coaching client found the Creative Prescriptions activities so helpful that she decided to start her own art group with her friends. Creating art in a group setting reduced her isolation, helped her forget about her treatment, and contributed to her feelings of well-being. I saw many of the pieces that she created. They were powerful images about her life and her cancer journey. Even though she was in treatment, she made creativity a priority because of the many healing benefits she would not have experienced otherwise.
Cancer Support Group Journaling Story
In addition to the power of creating visual art, I also saw firsthand the power of journaling for healing. As I was getting ready to present a journaling workshop to a cancer support group, a few members returned from the hospital and informed us that one of the group members was not doing well. Understandably, everyone in the group became upset. I took that opportunity to talk about how to use journaling as a tool for expressing emotions.
I gave all the women lined notebooks and asked them some open-ended questions to answer. One question was how they felt about their friend, and what fears it brought up in them. I also asked them to think about what they could do to self-soothe or take care of themselves. Afterward, the women had a chance to share what they had written.
There were many tears and a lot of love and healing that took place in that group because they were able to share their feelings and fears in a community of women who were experiencing the same thing. I completed the workshop by giving the women art supplies and stickers to decorate and personalize their journals. The women left feeling happier; the journaling allowed them to unburden themselves by expressing their feelings, while thinking about self-care, and the fun of decorating their journals lifted their spirits.
How can people find you and your book, and get involved in creative pursuits after a cancer diagnosis?
Please see my website for information on coaching and classes: www.annettetello.com
Creative Prescriptions ™ for Women with Cancer is available on Amazon.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
I am creating a series of online classes that teaches people how use their creativity to remove the obstacles to their opportunities, health and joy. Check out my website for additional information and bonus material.
