Hacking Your Brain - Designer Therapy
I’ve been getting hypnotherapy recently, in part for my OCD, more on that later, but it’s got me thinking about mental health again; mine, and in the creative industry in general.
It’s not a problem unique to the creative industries by any means, nor would I say we have it especially worse than anyone else, but it’s what I know, and based on what I know and the people I encounter, we do seem to be an industry that’s a magnet for it.
Just being creative can be a strain. What is it that we do? It boils down to us coming up with ideas and solving problems, then putting large amounts of blood, sweat and tears into delivering them, before going off to meetings where other people then give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down.
And that’d be a polite outcome.
The advice is always to be detached from your ideas. It comes with experience, but every now and then, you work on something you really like. I reckon that’s a warning sign. Like an actor saying Macbeth.
Doom.
It can be an exhausting process, and something I don’t think education does a good job of preparing designers for. Sure, there’s plenty crits and feedback, but it’s logical, hopefully knowledgable. I once had a client ask for ‘more design,’ and a ‘nicer shade of yellow,’ in response to some print work I did.
What’s a nicer shade of yellow?
Design can be a bit of a strange gig sometimes, simultaneously we are both considered an expert professional, yet also someone whose opinion can be, let’s say, considered optional.
I’ve experienced this a lot throughout my career, to differing extents, regardless, it is a singularly frustrating experience to be hired, ostensibly for a skillset that you have that ‘they’ are in need of, to then have the opinions that come from having that skillset arbitrarily dismissed.
We all just want to do good work, right? To feel like we’ve solved the problem we’ve been given with the best possible solution within the circumstances we’re operating in. Sometimes, it feels like a battle just to do that.
It’s a stressful job. I do think my life as a contractor is definitely less stressful than my time in agencies, not to go into too much detail about that, but I had a full head of hair when I went in, and none when I came out.
It’s interesting that, having done a fair bit of student mentoring, I’m noticing quite a few who are already starting to feel burned out (but hopefully not bald), after only a year or two in industry; maybe the industry just isn’t what their education taught them it was, or what the industry presents itself to be. When your idea of designer life revolves around doing cool stuff, experimenting, creative freedom… Then they find themselves doing banner ads for a year, I can see why they start to get unhappy, frustrated, stressed out and start considering whether they want to leave.
It’s so frustrating to see people who were full of excitement and hope when I met them as students become disillusioned by the realities of their careers.
I watched a video from the great folks at Create Future discussing a talent shortage in Scotland, are these linked? If the industry is losing those who actually want to do this job because of how they feel they are treated, or they find themselves feeling stressed or burned out before they’ve even hit their mid 20's, is it any wonder?
I’ll freely admit that’s exactly how I felt, before I switched to contracting; tired, stressed and burnt out. I saw it as a means to take control of my own destiny, and to break out of an environment that I felt was taking a toll on me.
I’m keen to manage my stress levels, as, for me, stress manifests as OCD. I’ve written about having OCD before and it’s relation to me as a designer, but in terms of stress alone, when my stress levels go up, the OCD follows, which then makes me feel more stressed…
You see where I’m going with that?
So I’m trying to be open minded and explore options that could improve my mental state. In that spirit, I ended up trying hypnotherapy. It’s been such an interesting experience! I put ‘Hacking Your Brain’ in the title and that’s what it feels like to me, in concept at least. It’s amazing the effect that can be had on your brain from just lying down with your eyes closed, listening to someone speak. I left the first session and my mind was quiet. Totally quiet. I couldn’t honestly remember what that was like, it had been so long. It was such an uplifting moment.
If that’s how the rest of you feel all the time, damn.
It’s interesting too from a UX point of view, the impact certain kinds of communication can have on the ‘user.’ If the right set of words, and the right frame of mind, are able to shut off the stress addled part of my brain and leave me wandering around in a state of calm bliss, what can we designers do with that?
It’s a creepy thought that in a world of talking AI boxes they could end up effecting the way I think! Siri better not be whispering to me in my sleep…
Seriously though, it’s left me wondering. What can we do, or what could we do, with this concept? I had never realised that our brains were quite so malliable, or, if you prefer, hackable.
I would 100% recommend giving it a try, if you’re feeling stressed, anxious, have OCD etc. it’s been a great experience, and, now that I’ve been taught enough that I’m able to do it to myself, I’ll be able to just wash the stress out before it gets a chance to build.
(In theory, I’m still learning…)
This is all talking from my own perspective though, a single person’s experience within an industry, and while I think that’s valid, I’d also recommend this piece by Studio Something for more on dealing with the uniquely creative sources of stress more generally, but, for me at least, I don’t think we can have this discussion without talking about the environments that we work in as well; the agency studios, the offices, the creative hubs.
And that is a much, much bigger discussion. While I have my own thoughts on the working cultures I’ve encountered in those places, and certainly the effects they had, I’m not sure that me rattling off a big list would help, not without having the people who are ultimately the ones who lead those places involved, or different creatives too, for that matter. For every one of us that might find a given environment stressful, I’m sure there’s another that would thrive. It would have to be a discussion. Maybe we need to put on a debate / event about it…
In the meantime, get some hypnotherapy.
Seriously. Right now. I’d say to any agency, any business; have you got employees who are stressed or anxious? Scratch that, you absolutely do. Get a hypnotherapist in. Watch them glow.
(Disclaimer: They won’t physically glow.)
