9 Months To Birth Your Play

In this workshop we are building on our understanding of shame and the inner critic from Workshop 7 to explore what it takes to be able to celebrate success. We are also building on our first workshop on mindfulness to look at how mindfulness and the flow state are connected. 

Flow theory was formulated by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He described a ‘flow state’ in which people feel ‘in the zone.’ Flow state is a feeling of being completely immersed and engrossed in an activity that combines deep, intense focus, enjoyment and reward. Being in flow can involve losing track of time, feeling a sense of effortless engagement, performing well and not having the capacity to think about anything else. Flow state is also most possible when the activity aligns with the person’s interests, abilities and skill level. 

Csikszentmihalyi identified 9 characteristics of the flow state: 

• Intense Focus: A heightened concentration on the task at hand, leading to deep involvement. 

• Clarity of Goals: Clear objectives that provide direction and purpose during the activity. 

• Immediate Feedback: Receiving quick and relevant feedback, allowing for adjustments and improvements in performance. 

• Balance of Challenge and Skill: A perfect match between the difficulty of the task and the individual’s skill level, leading to optimal engagement. 

• Sense of Control: Feeling a strong sense of control over one’s actions and outcomes. 

• Loss of Self-Consciousness: Being so absorbed in the activity that concerns about self-judgment or external evaluation fade away. 

• Altered Sense of Time: A distorted perception of time, often feeling like it speeds up or slows down. 

• Intrinsic Motivation: Engaging in the activity for its own sake, rather than for external rewards. 

• A Sense of Effortlessness: The activity feels almost effortless, as if actions flow naturally without conscious effort. 

Examples of activities that can bring about a flow state are exercising, painting, reading, playing music, dancing, knitting, running, – and playwrighting! 

Reflection 

I’d like to invite you to pause for a minute, close your eyes if it helps, and think about a time when you felt in the flow state when you were writing a play. What were the key characteristics for you? Was it an enjoyable state? Did time pass quickly? Did you feel like your writing went well in that state? 

Now, think about a time when you found it difficult to get into flow state or resisted it once you were in it. What do you think were the factors that contributed to that? 

One of the factors that can influence how we experience flow state can be neurodiversity, in particular having Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or ADHD traits.  

Although diagnostically, the term ADHD describes a deficit in attentional processing, another way of looking at it is a difference in attentional processing. This may make it particularly difficult to maintain focus and attention on something we dislike. It could also mean that we resist getting into or staying in a flow state even if we like something – like playwrighting! It can mean we find it really hard to not get distracted and to become absorbed and stay absorbed. On the other hand, if we’re engaging in something we love, attentional differences can actually mean we have an abundance of attention rather than a deficit and become very much in a flow or hyper focus state. 

Although similar there are also differences between flow state and hyperfocus. Hyperfocus is common in both autism and ADHD and is a state of being completely absorbed in a task to the point of ignoring or tuning out everything else. It’s a compelling and dopamine fuelled state. You might not hear someone calling your name or you might miss an appointment because you lose track of time so much. This can become problematic if you’re finding it hard to get down to your playwrighting and get distracted and then engrossed in less productive activities like online shopping.  

Flow is a state that’s arguably experienced more commonly and usually doesn’t mean we’re completely lost in a task and unaware of our surroundings. 

Another important distinction is between flow state and mindfulness. These are two distinct mental states and the two can complement each other. As we explored in workshop 1, while mindful we are more aware of our sensations, feelings, thoughts and our environments in the present moment.  

During flow state, our internal and external environments fade more into the background. During mindfulness we are aware of distractions and refocus our attention when we become distracted. In a flow state, our mind focuses and shuts out distractions.  Mindfulness involves more conscious thought and attention but in flow our actions literally flow more automatically with less conscious thought.  

Cultivating mindfulness can increase your chances of more easily entering and experiencing flow state and bring relief if the flow state has become too intense or exhaustive. 

You can create conditions that are conducive to cultivating the flow state: 

• Minimise distractions: turn off your phone, find a quiet space or one with the right noise level for you, shut the door, tell people you’re not available for a specific time period, set limits on digital notifications or internet searching, listen to music on headphones. If you do get distracted, try being mindful self-compassion to this and set your intention to begin again. 

• Create time to focus: make sure you have adequate time to become absorbed in the flow state. 

• Use Time Blocks: Work in focused bursts (like the Pomodoro Technique), allowing for short breaks. This can help maintain concentration and energy. 

• Establish a Routine: Develop a consistent routine to signal to your brain that it’s time to focus. This can include specific times of day or rituals that prepare you mentally. 

• Immerse yourself in the activity and allow yourself to be vulnerable by opening yourself up to connect emotionally with the activity.  

 

Celebrating

As this is our last workshop, let’s finish by focusing on success and why it’s important to celebrate success. 

Firstly, taking pride in our accomplishments by celebrating them, including what might seem like small things can be a counter to shame through boosting our self-worth.  

When we experience the shame of ‘never enough’ we can soothe this by noticing and celebrating all the things we’ve achieved.  

This could be in the journey of playwrighting or just that we managed to go for a run this morning when we really weren’t feeling like it. 

Secondly, celebrating success can also motivate us to achieve more. Recognising our achievements can allow us to identify what worked so we can repeat it in the future. 

The boost to self worth can also contribute to a virtuous cycle where we feel more intrinsically motivated by finding (at least some!) joy in the process. 

Thirdly, positive emotions like this can be contagious. If you celebrate your success, it can give others permission to celebrate success too. 

It can be difficult to really feel and celebrate our successes. 

As we have explored through these workshops, we are uncomfortable because everything in our lives keeps changing and we can’t hold onto anything. We are also driven by our seeking systems to survive and thrive.  

“Lacking any permanent satisfaction we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones…”  – Tara Brach

And the same applies to experiences of success. As soon as we achieve a goal or reach a big milestone, rather than taking the time to bask in the glory of our achievement, we are often already going after our next goal. 

Think for a minute about things that you have achieved and accomplished in your life and in your playwrighting.  

How easy was it to recognize and celebrate these? 

Did you find yourself staying with any feelings of pride or moving onto the next goal? 

Feeling pride in our achievements and celebrating success is a struggle when we are constantly seeking to soothe our anxieties about imperfection. 

As we explored in Workshop 7, patterns of shame, the inner critic and feeling not good enough can be hard wired from a young age and drive our behaviour. Shame is a strong defence mechanism that has evolved to support our survival with caregivers and to ensure we remain part of the pack.  

We also live in a society and culture that can reinforce the message that we need to constantly survive to be and achieve more and never feel satisfied.  

This can also be driven by rejection sensitivity, something that can also be more common in ADHD. The fear of failure and also of success can make it hard to feel and celebrate it. What if we fail and feel extreme pain of rejection or succeed and then feel exposed and at risk of not living up to our success or like an imposter? 

We can experience limiting beliefs about not being enough and constantly put off the point at which we will celebrate our success.  

Do any of the following thoughts sound familiar to you? 

I’ll be successful when: 

I get a place on a writer’s course 

I am invited to press nights 

More theatre people follow me on social media 

People get in touch with me because they want to read my play 

I have an agent 

I have been commissioned by a theatre 

I have direct contact with an artistic director 

So, what can help us celebrate success? 

Review why it’s important and the positive difference it can make. 

Use the skills we have explored in this workshop series including: 

1. Mindfulness. Notice when you’ve succeeded in something, even if it seems small. Notice when you’re resisting this, bring mindfulness to the feelings in your body and keep coming back to stay with the feeling.
2. Bringing mindfulness to your seeking system to notice when you’re driven by a feeling that something is missing or wrong and how this is driven by a search for certainty of self survival that may not be serving you.
3. Get to know and remind yourself of your three basic psychological needs and motivations and how celebrating success could contribute to meeting your needs and motivations for competence, autonomy and relatedness.
4. Bring awareness to when your needs are threatened and try naming feelings of rage, fear and grief that may also be barriers to recognizing your accomplishments. Try bringing acceptance and validation to these feelings, recognizing that you’re not alone in feeling them and anchor and express the feelings. 
5. Get to know your neuro-psych type and the societal and caregiving experiences that have shaped you. How do you respond when you feel overwhelmed and threatened? Is this affected by neurodiversity and/or trauma? Are there ways in which you feel overwhelmed and threatened by your success? 
6. Do you feel a sense of inner conflict about your successes? Do you swing between feeling like you want to be better than others and feeling like you’ll never be good enough? Try finding a middle ground of celebrating your successes through also including your supporters and those who have helped you along the way.
7. Try noticing when you are feeling shame and use distress tolerance and mindful self-compassion skills to counter this and to allow the feelings of self-validation and pride. 

That’s it for this series of 8 workshops on the psychology of playwrighting and well-being for playwrights for The Bruntwood Prize for Playwrighting.  

Thank you for engaging with these workshops. I hope you’ve found them helpful and continue to draw on them in your playwrighting journey. 

About Anna Webster…

Anna is a Coaching Psychologist, Wellbeing Coach and Psychotherapist in Training. She specialises in coaching psychology workshops and 1:1 programmes informed by emotion neuroscience, neuropsychoanalysis, and dialectical behaviour therapy.

Anna works for The University of Salford on SPECIFiC; a 7-session therapeutic psychoeducation coaching programme on the neurodevelopmental condition FASD, the first of its kind in the UK. She co-wrote the manual, co-delivers the programme and leads on Public Involvement. She was a member of the Steering Group on the UK’s first FASD prevalence study and was consulted as an expert by experience for the NICE Guidelines on FASD. She is also a Health and Wellbeing Coach for the NHS.

www.neurowise.org