Tian Dayton

“Do that thing that only you can do, that’s how to be successful as an artist,” says, Steven Lavine, president of California Institute of the Arts. “Especially in today’s economy it’s important to be entrepreneurial with your skill set and adapt to the environment in which you find yourself.”

Earlier this week I helped to host an event that welcomes new students to Cal Arts. I heard some things that I felt both moved by and motivated to pass along. It was inspiring to realize that this delicate balance between the freedom and passion an artist needs in order to create along with the discipline and self confidence to push projects through the myriad of obstacles any creative effort inevitably encounters, had actually been intentionally nourished and nurtured at my alma mater, all these years I thought I’d come upon it through my own trial and error!

Artists have long been confronted with the harsh reality that what they love passionately, doesn’t necessarily pay the bills, so they have had to learn to adapt their skills to what the market place might be looking for. Maybe the rest of us can take a page out of their books this year; if ever we needed to be creative and adaptive it’s now! Visioning and mobilizing a creative vision and hving the confidence to actualize it ,is what Cal Arts has long had to train its artists to do in order to survive in the workplace. As examples of this form of entraneurship, Lavine cited musicians who started a ring tone company and actors who use their performance skills to train business people in speaking and self presentation so that they can do their art freely on the side. He challenged other young artists to do the same, to think creatively and to be willing to adapt and reinvent themselves.

Daily we see actors appearing in add campaigns or moving from the silver screen to TV and stage. Or artists who apply their drawing skills to advertising events, imitating Toulouse Lautrec’s approach to keeping the wolf from the door by creating popular posters (now our art) advertising the goings on in Parisien society. Or writers who write what businesses need written so that they can work on their novels on the side. Film makers are working in the industry filming and editing so that they can produce their own original work and graphic artists design the trendy, arty imagery that floods our unconscious shaping and defining how we may see a product, person or event. This is how artists pay the rent and keep their creative spirits alive.

The inspiring thing about this is not only in the message that we can learn to use creativity to adapt but that there is, in fact, something inherently creative in the adapting process itself. Actualizing an inner vision is deeply satisfying whether that vision be a delicious dinner, a painting or a film. Creativity and actualization can even be their own reward. Taking this adaptive approach allows us to enter what Jane Austin referred to as “the healing waters of action.” Sometimes just getting up and getting going has a curative power. Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, has spent years researching what he calls the “flow state” one that we enter when we are fully engaged in activity that is challenging enough to keep us engaged and manageable enough to enjoy. Athletes, artists, cooks, seamstresses and kids alike, anyone who enters this state in fact, can experience this deep sense of pleasure and integration taking place within them. After a flow” session, Csíkszentmihályi has found that people emerge feeling calmed, soothed, integrated and with a strengthened sense of self. Applying the principles of creativity, entrapreneurship and engagement can help us to, as they say, “grow from adversity”.
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We learned, from Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s work on death and dying and from Jonathon Bowlby’s on grief/loss and separation, that human beings become profoundly attached to caretakers and experience a deep sense of loss and disorientation when they are separated from them. In my own work in the field of addictions, I observe that addicts and others in recovery, go through similar stages of grief/loss and disruption when they move through the various losses that occur around letting go of either a substance, a behavior or a period of their own lives. The loss is not only giving up alcohol, drugs or a compulsive relationship with food or sex but also the grief experienced around the loss of something upon which they have become dependent, something that has been a part of their identity, their sense of who they are and what they need to “survive” in the world. Are we going through a version of these stages of the grief process as a result of the recession and the losses we’re experiencing of jobs, income and financial security? And can you figure out, by looking at the stages below where you might be in your own process? Following is my own adaptation of the stages of grief and loss:
• Numbness/Denial: “This isn’t really happening: I think something is happening but I don’t feel it ”
• Yearning and Searching: ‘
“Where is life as I know it/the life I miss and want?”
• Bargaining: “I will become a better person if I am less materialistic/I have my loved ones, my health”.
• Disorientation/Anger/Despair: “I am mad at the markets, mad at my managers, mad at myself, I am just mad and feel it may never get better, I don’t know what to fix this”.
• Acceptance: “It is what it is, I have to give it time, roll with it, do the best I can, this too shall pass”.
• Reorganization and Regrouping: “My life feels different but it’s still my life. I have moved through the losses, made adjustments and moved “.
Do you see yourself in one or more of these stages? The loss of a job, of the kind of income that once provided for a certain type of lifestyle and the loss of just plain money can disturb our trust and faith in a predictable and orderly world and our sense of identity. Let’s face it, next to those we love, we are very much attached to where and how we live and the recession is causing many of us to worry, adjust and sometimes lose what we’re used to having. We can feel grief and loss over a lot of things, over periods of our lives and parts of ourselves. Our sense of who we are, our sense of identity, in other words, is very much shaped by what we do and what we have. Changes in either of those can make us feel that we are changing and that can be a disorienting experience. This recession is hitting a lot of people at that core level; we’re feeling not only a loss of money but a loss of self because when our identity is at least partially woven into what we have and what we do, we’re bound to experience some loss of identity when those things shift, it’s natural.
Numbness is a response akin to shock and it’s certainly where I saw most of my clients go in the first weeks of the recession. Much as I asked the question, “how are you doing with this financial crisis?” it was really only the money managers and those sophisticated in money matters who were wrapping their minds around what was happening and what was likely to come. Everyone else was either numb or in denial; e.g. “I know it’s happening but I don’t feel it yet” or “this isn’t that big a deal”. As time moved on and it became really obvious that this was, in fact, a very big deal that group moved into yearning and searching for the old familiar feeling or scene. We look back with longing and regret, “it felt so easy then” or “why didn’t I see this coming? What could I have done differently?” We look forward with anxiety. “What’s going to happen next?” Some were already grieving the loss of lifestyle, jobs and job prospects or just the feeling of being flush while others were busy bargaining, making deals with themselves, identifying silver linings. “I will become a better person if I am less focused on money all the time, I’ll have friends over for dinner rather than go out, shop in my closet rather than frantically at the stores and Ill take walks and go to museums and movies rather than entertain myself by mindless acquiring and compulsive consumption”.
As the realities of the recession began to wear away at everyone’s patience and pocket books and life styles really did have to under go some changes the anger began to set in. “Who are these CEOs who have gotten us into so much hot water and why are they so damn greedy? Who has allowed these inequities to go on for so long. Why is my money manager taking home big pay while my bottom line is shrinking? I want my vacation back, my new car, my contentment”. After a few months of anger at just about everything from government, to spouses to corporate America, I am seeing and hearing more people say “it is what it is”. Acceptance is setting in. Some of the dust is settling, enough people seem to be still surviving, eating and paying bills so that we are, as a whole, feeling less terrified and more able to manage our emotions about what is happening. Maybe we can’t exactly see the light at the end of the tunnel but we have more of a sense that it’s probably there. We’re living a little differently, we’ve absorbed the shock, felt the anger, disorientation and longing for what’s been lost and we’re beginning to regroup and reorganize.
This recession will likely affect any maybe even adjust our countries values which were, let’s face it, spinning out of control. Maybe it’s corrective on a lot of levels both personal as well as financial.Whatever it is or isn’t, we’re stuck processing it and maybe the framework of grief and loss can help to lend a little perspective on that process.I hope so!
email any questions to askdrdayton@tiandayton.com

Ever wonder why men need so much “space” while women seem to need just the opposite when under stress? The answer may be found in recent UCLA studies, in which researchers found that women respond to stress somewhat differently from men. The well known fight/flight response to stress may be more male than female. While men’s default position stays at fight/flight, women under stress seem to eventually want to engage in what researchers call a tend and befriend response. Here’s roughly how it goes:
When first under stress both men and women initially go into fight/flight (as do animals and reptiles, for that matter)
Then oxytocin, aka the “touch chemical” is released in both men and women. However, and this is where the parting of the ways comes along, the testosterone in men tends to override the effects of oxitocin while the estrogen in women enhances those “let’s chat and get cozy” oxytocin type effects. This means that men under stress have always wanted to fight or flee while women under stress have, through the ages, wanted to gather together, grab the children and run for safety. And the more they gather the more they want to gather as oxytocin output increases through continued physical closeness and touching. Thus women under stress may exhibit different behaviors from men, that is, under stress as men take off or get into a conflict, women may connect or even cling.
Understanding the difference between how men and women respond to stress might save a lot of people from…well….more stress. Fight/flight chemicals can translate into fight= aggression, flight= avoidance….recognize any familiar patterns here, ladies? Men aren’t kidding when they say they need to take a breather and cool down or go for a run to get rid of those built up stress chemicals (those racket sports aren’t so popular for nothing!). Men really do need to “take a break”, “have some space” or even “get aggressive” through a sport to calm down so they don’t get into unnecessary fights or take off.
And from the female end oxytocin can translate into touch= talk, cuddle/huddle. Seem familiar to anyone? Women aren’t kidding when they say they need to talk, and talk and talk some more to reduce feelings of anxiety and stress. Women need to gather together for reassurance and a sense of safety which can mean anything from “meet me in the ladies room” to “let’s have coffee” to texts, calls or emails just to feel connected and supported. When it comes to working through stressful moments, men and women may not pair up so well because our ways of calming down when stressed are so sort of ….incompatible. However, just knowing this might help. If women can let men take a break or if men can give that little bit of extra talking, cuddling or reassurance we might have a lot fewer fights or emotional disconnects. Stressful moments might even lead to feeling understood rather than misunderstood, who knows?
I will be starting an “Ask Dr. Dayton column, please send any questions you’d like me to answer to askdardayton@tiandayton.com.

Caring for your soul isn’t often discussed in conjunction with therapy. Generally therapy is thought to be the province of the mind, a path toward better thinking which is supposed to lead to better living. But the human machine runs on something more than thought and action. And that is spirit, that part of all of us that is beyond words and even beyond thought. No one with a heart or intuition can look at this world and not wonder what brought it into being in the first place. The green movement taps into this eco energy by trying to preserve what is essential to the healthy functioning of our natural world. Well…..people have a natural world, too. People are a perfectly balanced and sustainable eco system, a system that can maintain wellness or sickness. And part of maintaining wellness within ourselves is to nourish our spiritual being.

In the same way that exercise is critical for maintaining a healthy body, the mind needs quiet. Within that quiet there is a kind of awareness that nourishes us from within. We each have it but it gets drowned out by the hustle and bustle of life, the constant need to get somewhere, do something or be someone. But life is not lived in a straight line. In fact this linear mentality that makes life seem like a straight line is exactly what keeps us from dropping down into our own inner depths, let’s call it our vertical being. What we need to do is to create quiet space in our day just to be. We need to walk in nature or in parks, we need to sit or lie quietly and let our minds wander. We need to turn off the TV, the computer and the phone and disconnect from the three dimensional world so that we can connect with the invisible dimension that puts us in touch with what it means to be human and alive. Most of us know the relaxing effects of a day lolling around the beach or a picnic in nature. Nature invites us just to be with it and to be with ourselves, to relax and unwind with no particular agenda, to enjoy who we’re with in an easy and natural way. We can go to a soothing beach or to a bucolic field in our minds any time we want to. This dropping down nourishes us spiritually so that we can sustain and renew ourselves from within our own self system. It draws from that same invisible, life giving force that is part of the mystery of the natural world, part of bringing forth life.

When we lose track of this inner, self sustaining route, we may need to use a variety of props to shore ourselves up. Maybe we depend on what we wear, who we know, where we live or what we do to sustain ourselves and these things become more or less who we are. Don’t get me wrong, what we do, who we keep company with and where we live are all very important life choices and do contribute to shaping certain aspects of self. But self is more than the sum of these parts. All of these can become hollow and disappointing if we put our faith in them rather than in the power of life to rebuild, repair and renew itself on a daily basis. When we feel empty inside and the only way we can figure out to fill up again is by acquiring something from the outside we’re heading down a slippery slope. Within us is the perfect life awaiting to be born, to be experienced, to expand and become sustaining. Without this daily conscious contact with our own inner being, with our spirit, with the spiritual or creative force that lives within each of us therapy can only take us so far. Therapy should remove the blocks that keep us from living in the present, the personal traumas and conflicts that keep us so preoccupied with the past or worried about the future that we can’t relax and live in our own bodies.

If we want therapy to be sustainable we need to learn to find that place within ourselves that renews us each and every day, that place of quiet, prayer and meditation that goes to our core and draws forward what is life enhancing within us, that makes us feel personally renewed.

Dr. Dayton will be starting an “Ask Dr. Dayton” column…..please send any questions that you have that are appropriate for a psychologist to answer to askdrdayton@tiandayton.com….possible subjects might be parenting, anxiety, family of origin issues, advice on relationships, depression, addiction, codependency etc.