Self-Care for the Creative: A Survival Guide for Creatives, Empaths and Highly Sensitive People

By Stefani Fryzel

Self-Care for the Creative is the survival guide every artist didn’t know they needed to live an empowered life in a creative field. In this practical how-to-guide, artist/songwriter and author Stefani Fryzel offers up 7 chapters of self-care strategies and techniques for creatives, empaths and highly sensitive people living outside-of-the-box lifestyles in music, art and entertainment. You'll learn to:

-Nail the basics of self-care
-Thrive as an empowered empath and highly sensitive person
-Nurture your creativity, maximize your creative process and tend to your inner child
-Manage yourself (and your team) in a creative career field
-Tap into your spiritual side
-Design a self-care toolkit unique to you!

By the end of Self-Care for the Creative, you’ll have a plan of attack, tools and techniques for when disaster strikes, and the skills to overcome any self-care emergency.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Muse Literary
• Release date: Oct 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781960876133

Book preview

Introduction

It’s a Self-Care Emergency

It’s to the point where at the end of most days, you’re hoping a glass of wine is enough to knock you into a coma. You’re exhausted and overwhelmed. You’re juggling a million moving parts (again). Switching gears and switching hats faster than a racecar driver who owns a lot of hats. Your gas tank is empty. There’s no time to catch your breath, let alone hear your own thoughts. Your brain feels disconnected. Your body feels like a fucking sandbag. Your schedule is packed, but your creative well is drying up. Still, you tell yourself to put on your big girl pants and just get through it. You forgot to eat breakfast, switch the laundry, and call back your friend. You can’t even remember the last time you ate. Does food taste like anything anymore?

Your anxiety has been at an all-time high. You’ve been plagued with writer’s block, depression, and panic attacks, feeling misaligned with your purpose and just wanting to give up. Now you’re fighting tears, unable to decode any of your emotions because you haven’t made time to feel them. Stress-mode has fully invaded your castle, totally wrecking the vibe of your inner Queendom. There are some ugly gremlins (you know, those paralyzing, self-sabotaging beliefs) sitting on your throne instead of you, kicking around your gorgeous crown while your soul drowns in the moat.

Staying on top of everything is Mission: Impossible. Why are there so many freaking things to do in life? It already takes sooo much to manage a career, to be creative, to be an entrepreneur (oh! and a social media guru)—all while breaking boundaries and glass ceilings on top of being a good friend, sister, daughter, mother, wife, coworker, cook, cleaner, bill-payer, errand-runner, mental laborer, and so on. There’s never enough time for anything, and the things you really want to be doing (like taking a nap or going on more artist dates), you aren’t doing because you’ve convinced yourself that being a professional juggler of a thousand flying balls 24/7 is more noble than taking care of yourself. What’s worse, you’ve also told yourself that if even just one of these balls hits the ground, you’re a complete and utter failure.

Sometimes our approach to self-care (or lack thereof) can be a bit like boarding a plane without any safety checks. That thing is gonna crash. When you give everyone and everything else a first-class ticket to your time, effort, and attention, and there’s no concept of putting on your own oxygen mask first before helping others, then I’m sorry to say, your flight time is a short duration to Destination: Overwhelm and Burnout.

Remember the movie Final Destination? The one where Devon Sawa’s character has a premonition that the airplane is going to explode and he wakes in a frantic sweat, trying to warn all the passengers that the plane is indeed going to combust and kill everyone on board? Understandably, most people think he’s crazy, and the crew ushers him off the plane. Everyone else stays put except a couple of his friends who believe him, at least enough to disembark with him. Remember that?

Well, let me be Devon Sawa’s character for a moment and give you a short preview of your own tragic death if you choose to board the same plane without actually doing any real self-care or any safety checks. The plane will take flight. The engine will fail. There will be a giant explosion in the sky. And a million pieces of disintegrated airplane will rain down toward the earth as you perish in flames. That’s not what Katy Perry meant when she said, Baby, you’re a firework.

Girl. Get the fuck off that plane, before you fucking die.

I’m a Prepper

I live in Los Angeles. A high risk hazard zone for earthquakes. In my spare closets I have forty gallons of water, a month’s supply of food, flashlights, a hand-crank radio, first-aid kits, go bags, a trunk full of tools and supplies, and enough candles for a forty-day seance. My level of preparedness is borderline nuts enough to go on the show Doomsday Preppers (love that show, btw), minus the guns and a bunker. I realize the level of lunacy that occurs on that show, but I still find myself saying in agreement, He’s got a point. For whatever reason, I was raised to think ahead and always be prepared for every possible worst-case scenario. If the power goes out, backup generator. If you’ve got boo-boos, I’ve got some Band-Aids. If you’ve got shattered windows, I’ve got a tarp and a nail gun. If you go missing, I’ve probably even got photos of you on deck, ready to deploy the search team. At my core, I’m a prepper who’s thinking ten steps ahead. And I think about self-care the exact same way.

I’m always prepared for a fucking disaster.

I care about prepping so much that, one time when I hosted a party, I made miniature earthquake bags as party favors to give out to friends to keep in the trunk of their cars. Because you never know when the big one is gonna hit, and what if my dear friend is stuck on a collapsing freeway with no water or first aid, having a panic attack during the apocalypse? Not happening. Cue the part on the show when they say, And that’s when I knew . . . I’m a prepper.

There are two major turning points in my life that made me into the Self-Care Prepper that I am today:

1. My struggle with severe depression

2. The discovery that I am an empath and highly sensitive person (HSP)

These two experiences totally transformed my life and shaped who I am now, and if there ever was a cheat code to the game of life I wanted to pass out to every creative boss bitch on the planet, it’s how to handle both of these experiences. There are major hot zones in self-care that make it difficult for anyone to cope. Change. Transition. Loss/Grief. For me, I experienced all of the above without even knowing I was an empath/HSP, which meant everything hit even harder. Taking life’s plot twists without understanding your own sensitivities as an empath or HSP is a real doozy. Especially if you’re living an unconventional life as an artist.

I Get You Because I Am You

As an artist and songwriter, I am sensitive as fuck. For creatives, making art is so damn personal. We put our entire lives on the line for our art. We pour our freaking souls into it. The creative process alone is its own beast that we have to nurture, not to mention all the other crap that goes on in life. And here’s the thing about empaths: We feel everything. (And we feel that shit deeply too.) We are GIVERS. We are overgivers. But oftentimes we overgive at the expense of ourselves. And that’s where it stops being okay.

I’m here to make sure you are taking care of your MVP, which is YOU. Your endless sacrifices that leave you running on fumes serve no one. Being mentally, emotionally, physically drained and depleted is a complete disservice to yourself and everyone around you. There’s no badge of honor in store for suffering as hard as you are. And I hate to break it to you, but there’s also no one coming to rescue you from this problem except yourself. So let’s find a way to keep your own cup full first, run safety checks on all your flights, so that you can continue to pour all that magical, loving, caring, creative genius energy onto the world.

Okay, so what makes me an expert? Why should you care what I have to say? Let’s take a quick jump into my story so you know where I’m coming from.

My Story

I grew up half-Filipino in a very small town called Ladysmith, located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. I started singing when I was five, songwriting as a teenager, and I made it my business to perform at every mall, church, talent show, and town event there was. At seventeen, I moved out on my own to Vancouver, BC, and started an internship at a recording studio where I could hone my craft of songwriting and learn how to produce my own music. I worked a bunch of shitty jobs as a waitress, a hostess, a grocery store clerk, a retail stock girl, whatever I could do to pay the rent. Then enters my first abusive relationship with a narcissistic alcoholic sex addict. (Fun, right?) This experience sent me on a downhill spiral into my first bout with severe depression at eighteen.

At my worst, I wanted to drown myself in my bathtub just to make it all stop. I’d quit my job. I’d stopped writing songs. I’d stopped doing things that once brought me joy. For months, I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping, and I was stuck in a total brain fog. I’d barely left my house or seen anyone. Everything felt difficult and pointless, and time became a blur. My whole life kind of blacks out at this point, and my lil’ depressive moment lasted for about six months. These months were catastrophic for me. I pretty much crawled into my own hole and became suicidal, and I’d lost all motivation to do anything at all.

Eventually, by some miracle I began to reemerge but unfortunately continued riding that rollercoaster of a relationship for about another year. (I forgive you, younger self, for not knowing any better.) The relationship inevitably goes down in flames and rips my whole heart out. But this heartbreak would become one of my biggest blessings in disguise. Thankfully, I got away from that loser and began the process of rediscovering who I was.

At twenty-one, I hit a break! One of the songs I wrote about my loser ex-boyfriend took off on Canadian radio and hit number five on the Billboard Chart for Emerging Artists. Shortly after that, another one of my songs became the number one most-added song on Canadian radio, which sent me on a hot streak. I hit the road with my band and started touring over the country. For the next couple years, I performed at bars, radio stations, colleges, festival stages, showcasing at CMJ, Canadian Music Week, and North by Northeast (NXNE). During that time, my music started getting used in film and TV shows, I got to open up for a bunch of huge Canadian artists, people from all over the world started posting covers of my songs, and I got nominated for two Canadian Radio Music Awards. For someone who was severely depressed and wanted to die in a bathtub just a few years prior, this mental health recovery and career slay was pretty darn cool. It just goes to show that even when you’re in the pits of hell, you never know what’s waiting for you right around the corner.

After a couple years of touring Canada, I quickly realized I either had to be in New York or Los Angeles to immerse myself with some of the world’s best songwriters and producers in order to land bigger opportunities for myself. So I did just that. At twenty-four, I saved up $20,000 in gig money and server tips, moved to New York City with two suitcases and a guitar, and never looked back. I lived in a tiny, expensive apartment in Bushwick with three other roommates and started writing and gigging all around the city. In New York, I met my husband (a music producer), where we spent five lovely years cowriting, collaborating, spending short chapters of our lives together in Harlem, Flatbush, and Bed-Stuy. In 2017, I decided I wanted to completely revamp my artist project and change my artist name to DYLN. Yep, I completely rebranded my entire identity and started from absolute scratch! (At twenty-eight!) Many people thought I was crazy for this, but I did it anyway.

Eventually, we moved to Los Angeles, got married, and started a whole new life together living the California dream. At thirty, I hit a low point in my relationships and found myself struggling emotionally in my therapist’s office, only to have her tell me that I am an empath/highly sensitive person (HSP). This experience totally knocked my socks off and explained everything about me. Everything. In hindsight, it’s truly embarrassing and frustrating how glaringly obvious it is to see why I struggled with being sensitive most of my life. Had I known even just a few coping mechanisms, things would’ve been a lot different. Learning I was an empath changed my life forever.

Some Highs and Lows

After two decades of working in the music industry as an artist, songwriter, and music producer, my work has appeared on Billboard and been nominated for various music awards, including a Grammy. I’ve toured Canada and the US, played festivals, and performed on award shows, TV, and radio. (And, I might add, I’ve been self-managed for most of my career.) I’ve helped dozens of artists and songwriters find their voice, to develop a style and vision for themselves. But one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done in my career is spend a couple years touring high schools all over Canada, speaking to thousands of students about the importance of mental health and how using creativity is a powerful way to cultivate well-being.

The reason I toured in schools and talked about mental health is simple: I really fucking care about this. The truth is, everyone struggles. I’ve had the chance to see it firsthand, working with some of the most talented, unique, inspiring, eccentric, creative people. (Literal rock stars.) I’ve been in the room enough times to see the common thread of challenges that creatives face. Everyone hurts, and there’s no shame in admitting that. I don’t care what the Internet says or what perfectly manicured lives people are portraying online these days. Everyone struggles behind closed doors.

Because let’s be real. There’s absolutely no shortage of shitty situations along the way. Being a risk-taker, it comes with the territory. There’s being broke and working lame-ass jobs for money. There are disgusting, barfy situations with predatory men in the industry (we all know how that goes). There are BIG rejections, disappointments, and failures . . . And of course, there’s sexism, ageism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, self-limiting beliefs, comparison traps, and doom-scrolling. There’s feeling hopeless, worthless, and wanting to quit. Over and over and over again.

Now, I am not a doctor. I am not a therapist. But I do have a PhD in independent artist kick-assery. That, I can most definitely help you with. So if you’re looking for a self-care guide that speaks the language of an artist’s life and sees the world through the lens of an empath, then I’m your girl! Because there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to self-care for an artist. Everyone copes in different ways and needs different things. That’s why I’m here. There is a strategy that fits YOU perfectly. And I want to help you find it. I’m writing this book because THIS IS THE BOOK I WISH I HAD AT THE START OF MY CAREER. These are the little gems of knowledge that I wish I had known sooner. These are the things that would have made all the difference in the world to me when I was fourteen, eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-five, or even thirty! This book is a compilation of self-care tools that have helped me navigate a creative career as an empath and highly sensitive person. Yes, babe, I’m passing them to you!

Here’s what you don’t need: You don’t need to be living in a state of complete overwhelm, absorbing the world’s energies, unable to cope, shield, or protect yourself from overstimulating situations or environments. You don’t need to be so burned out or so busy all the time that you can’t recognize your own feelings. And you don’t need to be in unsatisfying relationships where all you do is give and all they do is take. Basically, you don’t need to be struggling this hard. So vow to yourself right now: "I am no longer available to deprioritize my own well-being as a creative empath."

What I really don’t want for you is to be where I was when I was eighteen. Severely depressed in a bathtub, watching the water drip out the faucet, actually wanting to die. At my lowest point, I really didn’t want to be here anymore. And that feeling of just wanting to invisibly slip away; it’s scary. The brain can do some pretty wild shit when it’s stuck on that depressive loop for too long. We don’t want that for you. This is why we reach out for help. This is why we self-care.

If I can beat a prolonged bout of depression, ward off suicidal thoughts, and feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness, and still manage to blossom into a creative career AND find happiness AND find balance AND find passion/purpose/meaning in my life AND learn to thrive as an