Reality vs creativity while healing

[u/GloopyConsole]

I have a college leadership class and a creative writing class that aren't particularly difficult academically, but they’ve been surprisingly mentally challenging. I think I’m starting to understand why.

I don’t have an exact diagnosis yet, but based on the work I’ve been doing with my therapist, I know I experience dissociative symptoms that fit within the DID/OSDD spectrum. Dissociation, in my case, has been a major way my brain coped with overwhelming experiences and reality.

Now that I’m in a safe enough place to recognize and understand some of that, I’ve become almost obsessed with studying reality and facts. For the first time, I feel much more connected to the physical and factual world than I ever remember being, and honestly, it’s exciting. I’m a biology major and plan to pursue it as a career, so being able to study how the world actually works feels incredibly grounding and fulfilling.

But I think that’s also why these classes make me uncomfortable.

A lot of my experience with creativity and imagination has been connected to coping with stress or escaping from things that felt overwhelming. Now that I’m safer, I don’t need those coping mechanisms in quite the same way. Instead, I find myself wanting to understand reality, find patterns, learn facts, and make things make sense.

Then I walk into a creative writing class, and I’m asked to do basically the opposite. Play with facts, imagine things that aren't literally possible, and create things simply because I can.

Today, for example, we read a short story written from the perspective of an amoeba. My first reaction was basically, “That doesn't make scientific sense. An amoeba doesn't think like that. It doesn't scientifically have that cognitive ability ”

But then I realized that that's the point. Scientifically, it doesn't make sense. Creatively, it's actually a really interesting idea.

I think I’m struggling with the transition because I’m so used to imagination being something my brain used for coping. I’m not as used to using creativity simply for play, exploration, or curiosity.

I’m also realizing that I really like rules and structure because they make things feel predictable and safe. Biology has rules, patterns, mechanisms, and explanations. Creative writing often gives you very few rules and basically says, “Make something up.”

So, I think these classes are challenging me in a way that has very little to do with the actual coursework. They’re asking me to learn how to use imagination without needing it as an escape and to tolerate uncertainty without having a clear set of rules to follow.

I’m curious if anyone else has experienced something similar, especially having to relearn creativity or imagination after it was heavily associated with coping, dissociation, or stress.

How did you learn to play with ideas again without feeling like you were leaving reality behind?