Why You Don't Feel Like Creating Today

Researchers have a word for what you're feeling: psychological reactance.

Word-lover that I am, I’m always delighted to be introduced to a term that perfectly captures a phenomenon I have known but never before named. That’s how I felt when I first encountered the psychological term reactance.

Reactance occurs when people respond with negative emotion to the threat of having their freedom and autonomy taken away. When in this state, people are motivated to reestablish their sense that they are free to act as they choose.

For me, the concept of reactance brings to mind a dog—let’s say a beagle, that stubborn breed—that pulls against its leash precisely because its owner wants it to walk in a particular direction. When the tension in the leash is relaxed, the dog will often willingly trot along the same path it so vigorously strained against a minute earlier.

In our lives as everyday creators, we may encounter reactance quite a bit. (I know I do.) You know you’re supposed to get down to work—to write, to paint, to compose—but you just don’t want to do it. 

Interestingly, we can experience reactance against external demands: we feel resentful about and oppressed by the project that’s due to a client or boss tomorrow. And we can also experience reactance against the demands we make of ourselves. Say there’s a passion project that we really want to finish, and we’ve told ourselves that we’ll complete it by the end of the week. Then, somehow, that self-generated expectation becomes an onerous duty that we thoroughly begrudge and look to escape.

It can feel particularly perverse to find ourselves resisting and chafing against intentions that originated with us in the first place. But it’s an internal battle that many creative people will find very familiar.  

I find that it can help to put ourselves back in touch with the values that drew us to create in the first place—values like: Creating something beautiful. Making something useful. Clarifying something that was muddled and confusing. Opening a channel between two minds, creating understanding though some marks put down on paper. 

Reminding ourselves of these core values—values that feel so integral to our sense of self—can help move us away from the feeling that our creative work is an imposition or an obligation.

Psychologists have developed an exercise called a “values affirmation” that you may find useful. A values affirmation is a written exercise that reinforces your sense of integrity and self-worth by reminding you of what you care about most deeply. Here’s one version of a values affirmation, adapted from the Stanford psychologist Geoffrey Cohen; give it a try, and let me know how it goes.

And share here, if you like: What are the values that lead you to create?

Values Affirmation Exercise

1. Make a list of the values that are most important to you. Such values might include qualities like creativity, curiosity, empathy, integrity, independence, courage, or perseverance. Choose the two or three values that are most important to you.

2. For each value, think about why that value is important to you. Describe this reason in a few sentences. 

3. For each value, think of a time when you enacted that value—when you put it into practice (perhaps especially in your creative life). Describe this episode in a few sentences.

Adapted from: Geoffrey L. Cohen, Julio Garcia, Nancy Apfel, and Allison Master (2006). Supporting Online Material for “Reducing the Racial Achievement Gap: A Social-Psychological Intervention.” Science, 313 (5791), 1307–1310. PDF