Designing Life, the Creative Way

February  2, 2012  In this monthly column, Jennifer Hicks shares ideas about living a balanced life through creativity

I don’t have the easiest time expressing myself. Although my job as a Speech-Language Pathologist is to help others communicate, I also struggle with presenting myself to the world.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

Inexperience holds me back from sharing myself in the traditional sense.  While I can express my ideas in writing with relative ease, my ability to really tell you how I am feeling over a cup of coffee can never approximate the truth.

A year ago, one of my favourite magazines introduced me to the term “alexithymia.” As it happens, this word was coined in the year of my birth and gives a name to a lifelong mystery for me. Wikipedia says alexithymia is: A state of deficiency in understanding, processing, or describing emotions; from the Greek, literally meaning “without words for emotions.”

My main difficulty is identifying how I’m feeling. I don’t well understand subtle differences in what it is to be anxious vs. panicky, or know how to differentiate between being content vs. happy. I’d look at you in bewilderment if you were to ask me whether I was more distressed or afraid about a situation.

I also have an extremely difficult time discriminating between these emotional nuances. Related to that is the fact that it feels neither natural nor acceptable to talk about emotions.

And yet I need to express. We all do. It’s kind of dangerous to keep emotions bottled up, as I’ve learned. But this whole alexithymia business puts me in a bit of a quandary; I must share my individuality, my personality, and my state somehow.

But how? For a long while, I didn’t know.

Over the years, I’ve figured out a few different options. One of my favourite ways to express myself is through my choice of clothing and physical appearance. When I don’t have the words, I love making statements about where I am through how I show myself to the world.

My big bold silver jewelry helps me express my desire to be confident and make a splash. When I’m wearing it, I feel upbeat, positive, and energetic. When I’m not wearing it, I’m sharing that I’m feeling a little insecure, more uncertain. I might wear a brightly coloured or patterned shirt or vivid eyeliner to tell you when I’m excited. On those days, I hope to share how very hopeful I’m feeling. On the days I’m wearing my white winter boots, jeans rolled to the knees, I’m telling the world that I’m feeling a little rebellious, balking at fashion (and societal) mores. If I’m wearing something that makes me fade into the background, you can be sure I’m going through a bit of a funk.

My clothing expresses my personality and how I see the world. Although I’m interested in what is going on in the fashion world, I’ll never let it dictate my clothing choices. In fact, if something is “popular” you’re sure to never see me wearing it.

A clothing item’s intended purpose or accepted pairing won’t limit me. I’ll wear a dress as a shirt, a skirt on top of a pair of loose flowing pants, a scarf as a belt, or a belt as a necklace. A tank top might double as a scarf, or a pair of toeless socks might become a pair of arm warmers.

My words will ever really tell you about 10% of what’s really going on. The next time we meet, just take a look at my appearance to get the true sense of how I am doing. That’ll save us both a lot of effort…