The Artist’s Way: Recovering a Sense of Integrity (Week 4)

How reading deprivation changed my life (but I still don't want to do it!) 🙃

Welcome to Life after Trauma; I’m Clare Egan. We’re in Week 4 of The Artist’s Way, a community exploration of the intersection of creativity and recovery.

In case you’re new here, here’s a quick overview: each week, we read a new chapter of The Artist’s Way and do our best to write our Morning Pages and schedule an Artist’s Date. On Tuesdays, I share my reflections on that week’s theme and on Fridays, we gather to share our experiences in the weekly thread. Here’s our schedule for April:

Huge thanks to everyone who came to our first virtual gathering on Sunday.

It was such a treat to see your faces, and hear a little more about what this experience has been like for you. Enormous thanks to

Devon J. Miller

,

Catriona Knapman

,

Amy Brown

,

Sandi Fanning

,

Michelle

and

Liza Debevec

(and also

Albe Gilmore

who wanted to be there but was foiled by daylight savings time!)

Devon J. Miller

also suggested we check out Doechi’s videos about the process on YouTube. Five years ago, she was doing The Artist’s Way. A few months ago, she won a Grammy!

Our next virtual gathering will be at 1pm Dublin time on Sunday, May 4th. Please leave a comment below if you’d like to attend and I’ll forward the meeting details.

Only our pets are allowed read this week! (Photo by 2Photo Pots on Unsplash)

The Artist’s Way Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity

Week 4 is all about media deprivation. This week’s chapter felt a little shorter and less dense than the trifecta of anger, shame and synchronicity from Week 3.

When I did The Artist’s Way last year, this was one of the hardest and most rewarding weeks for me! I’m usually very lax with the Artist’s Way “rules” and this week is no different, but if I could encourage you to do any task throughout the whole book, it would be this one. There’s something about quieting the noise of the world in order to more clearly hear your own internal voice that has the potential to be incredibly powerful. I think it’s worth giving it a try.

And yes, I recognise the irony of publishing this while none of us are “supposed” to be reading. 🙃

“For most artist’s words are like tiny tranquilisers”

When I completed The Artist’s Way last year, I was dreading media deprivation week. Like a lot of writers, reading is central to my life. On hard days, I often curl up inside a story and wait for my mind and body to relax. It’s the surest way to reset myself, and I was reluctant to give it up. But as we learned in a previous chapter “creative recovery is an exercise in open-mindedness” and I was willing to try.

The book focuses only on reading, but I made some broader rules:

• No social media

• No TV

• No podcasts

• No reading (the hardest thing!)

• No habitually checking news/emails

I went back to last year’s journal to see how the process unfolded for me:

“This week changed my life. Without all those external inputs, I made space to hear my deeper self. I could see how I flee from hard things. Like all cravings, I had to push past the initial agony of denying myself something I wanted but when I did, the mental space it created was incredible!”

Rather than succumbing to split-second compulsions, I sat back and observed how I refresh the news when my writing feels stuck, how I run from the pain of meeting myself on the page. I could see how my brain needed a break and instead of taking one, I’d go click something. Or scroll through something. Or open something I didn’t need to see. I’d check my email to see if there was any connection waiting for me. Or check the news to make sure I wasn’t missing out on anything. Media deprivation week allowed me to turn down the noise. It changed my life.”

That was my experience last year and despite how positive it was, I’m feeling very resistant to doing it again. Now that I know how powerful it has the potential to be, I think I’m even more turned off by the whole idea. But I’m still going to do it, or at least I’m going to try!

My rules will be similar to last year:

• No social media (I don’t want to lose momentum on Notes, so I pre-written a few to schedule throughout the week. But I won’t be scrolling my feed!)

• No TV (phew, it honestly feels like a relief to take a break from TV)

• No reading, apart from like reading and responding to your comments. (I want participants to feel supported and accompanied through this process, so I can’t unplug completely!)

• No promotions tab (aka where all my newsletters and ‘fun’ emails live)

• No habitually checking news/emails

I’m excited to give media deprivation a try. I know it won’t be perfect, but hopefully it’ll still be a useful exercise. I’ll let you know on Friday 😉

Snapshot from a walk in Glendalough during last year’s Artist’s Way

Other thoughts & reflections from Chapter Four:

• “We arrive at clarity, and clarity creates change” This is a big promise. I think it takes a lot more than clarity to create change, but in a way, the simple framing feels useful. Though on the other hand, I hope folks don’t use this simplistic framing to beat themselves up!

• “For most blocked creatives, reading is an addiction” I feel so seen! It reminds me of this conversation about our addicted society, and specifically how the interviewee talked about her addiction to romance novels. (“You mean that’s not normal behaviour?” the interviewer quipped.)

• “Extreme emotions of any kind - the very thing that morning pages are superb for processing - are the usual triggers for avoiding the pages themselves.” This feels true to me! Morning Pages are most useful for me on the days I *really* don’t want to do them.

• “Creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, in the focus, the well observed or specifically imagined” I love this framing of creativity as a grounded, embodied phenomenon rather than something that exists only as an ephemeral, fleeting instinct. It feels so much more tangible to me, which in turn makes it possible to capture in creative work.

• “We may be enmeshed, but we are not encountered. Art lies in the moment of encounter: we meet your truth and we meet ourselves; we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression. We become original because we become something specific: an origin from which work flows. As we gain - or regain - our creative identity, we lose the false self we were sustaining.” This is perhaps the clearest overlap between trauma recovery and creative recovery from chapter 4. The correlation between becoming more deeply ourselves and becoming a channel for more original creative work really resonates with me.

• “One of the clearest signals that something healthy is afoot is the impulse to weed out, sort through, and discard old clothes, papers and belongings.” This is the nudge I need to finally clean out my wardrobe, a task I’ve been avoiding since Week 2!

• “Think of yourself as an accident victim walking away from the crash: your old life has crashed and burned; your new life isn’t apparent yet” Oof, this is more true than perhaps she intended.

• “Your tastes and judgements and personal identity will begin to show through” - This was something I really wanted to get from this exploration of The Artist’s Way. 2025 has been dense with grief, which came to the surface again this weekend as we celebrated Mother’s Day in Ireland. Doing The Artist’s Way has started to re-awaken my creative instincts, though I am struggling to find a balance between structuring this experience for the community, and trying to find my own personal space for exploration. I’m not sure there’s a solution to this, but I am hoping to consider it more deeply through this week’s Morning Pages.

• In this chapter, Cameron writes about how we blur our uniqueness with vices which she describes as “junk food for the soul”. This may be true, but I think there’s a lot to be said for allowing ourselves some respite from the harshness of life when we need it. I’ve found tremendous relief in finding ways for my body to rest, breathe and just be for a moment especially when things are hard. There are times when I just can’t face the full depth of my trauma and I think it’s really wise to enjoy books/TV/dessert/whatever feels good to us.

• I’m all for the reading deprivation experiment but if it’s to be sustainable for us, I think it’s also OK to step back from it when we need to. When I did The Artist’s Way last year, I set my own rules and then I broke them. After a meal at a fancy Pakistani restaurant, I got sick. It probably didn’t meet the medical definition of food poisoning, but I felt lousy. I sat on the couch and read all afternoon. The following morning, I restarted my reading deprivation and tacked on an extra day at the end. Forcing myself through it wouldn’t have served anyone, and taking a break when I needed to made the whole experience feel a lot more sustainable.

• “When you didn’t realise how many small things you could do to improve your own life” This is a really annoying sentence, mostly because it’s true. Even in the darkest moments, there are often small things we can do to make a meaningful difference in our lives. I’ve gotten this advice, and worked hard not to punch the person giving it! I’ve also given it, and heard the sharp resistance to even the suggestion that things could improve. Reflecting back on it, I’m struck by the need to acknowledge the pain people are in. When we listen deeply and validate another person’s suffering, it helps them to feel heard and understood. They can then expend less energy trying to prove that their suffering is valid, and might find a little more space to make positive changes in their lives. Or they might need to sink further into their pain which has been deeply acknowledged for the first time. If someone’s behaviour doesn’t make sense to you, it’s because you’re missing a piece of the context. Cameron’s advice in this chapter is useful, but that doesn’t mean that every reader will be ready to act on it.

• I loved the concept of learning to “rest in motion”. I’m in one of those intensive moments in life where there are too many lists and priorities and all I want is to curl up and read, which obviously I can’t do this week! But I love the idea of using Morning Pages to keep your creative self in motion, even if you don’t have the capacity to embark on a big creative project. “Your morning pages are your boat. They will both lead you forward and give you a place to recuperate from your forward motion.”

  

Tasks

• Explore some Buried Dreams. When I read this section, I was initially very resistant to it. It’s a bit of a theme this week, isn’t it? Mostly, I didn’t want to have to face the disappointment of not being able to achieve those lost dreams. I do find it useful to approach these ideas from lots of different perspectives throughout the book, but it can be painful to repeatedly ruminate on your disappointments. That said, I’ll try to make some time for it during the week. What we resist, we should try to complete.

• Time Travel: Describe yourself at 80. As my partner and I have been planning our wedding, I’ve been thinking about what it means to commit to another person for the rest of my life. I think it’ll be interesting to imagine what my creative life might be like at that age too.

• Time Travel: Remember myself at 8. This has the potential to be a triggering task. Anyone who’s experienced childhood trauma might find this difficult. That said, I’ve been gentle with myself through a lot of the other child-focused tasks, and I think I'd like to try this one. I suspect the goal is to see what throughlines exist from my child self to my older self, and I’m curious to explore that.

• Review my life pie from Week 1. List any ongoing self-nurturing toys I’ve bought myself. (Reading this, I realised I haven’t bought myself a single thing throughout this process. Perhaps I should?)

• Plan an extended artist date. One weekend day. This feels like a stretch goal but with Easter around the corner, I’d like to put aside one day just for me and my creative exploration.

• Pass on one low-self-worth outfit. Yes! I’m gonna tackle the wardrobe this week.

  

Best of luck with The Artist’s Way this week.

It’s not to late to get involved! Every week, more people sign up to explore The Artist’s Way through this community. Some are planning to jump in during later weeks. Others are re-doing the program to see how it might resonate differently for them now. You are always welcome to join us!

If you’ve struggled this week, please know you’re not alone. The material can be heavy, and it’s OK to take your time with it. Be kind to yourself, and reach out for support when you need or want it! 💕

Thanks so much for taking part in this experience. It’s always an honour to be in community with you.

💕 If this piece resonated with you, please tap the heart below to help spread the word.

💌 I’ll be back in your inbox with the Friday Thread soon. Together, we’ll share our wins, grieve our stumbles and cheer each other on.

🚫 If you’re not interested in The Artist’s Way and would like to unsubscribe from future posts in this series, please adjust your preferences here.