Confronting the Crisis of Imagination 

Written by Linda Lin, RCC RCAT

A few notes on imagination during uncertain times. Imagination carries a strong, spontaneous energy that control and certainty do not always approve of at first. Perhaps that is exactly why we need it. Imagination might teach us how to transform a future that does not yet exist.

 “Summertime sadness” has taken on a crisis-like state this Summer.

The word and feeling of uncertainty carries urgent, and collective grief as we face these precarious times.

It is the shared exhaustion of witnessing our dreams deferred, anxiety and numbness about the future, frustration of the widening social inequality and division, and feeling helpless amidst ongoing mental health crises.

When's the last time you let yourself wish for something without immediately talking yourself out of it?

In the therapy room, I often hear thoughts, feelings, images emerging that are ego-dystonic: inconsistent with who we are, what we believe, what we actually want to see in the world, and in our future.

When we see a decline in our mental health, through urgency and insecurity: be-it financial anxiety, intense transitions, unexpected changes of our climate, or being failed by systems of power, I wonder if underneath it all is a deeper crisis. A failure of imagination.

“Mental illness…is consistently associated with deprivation, low income, unemployment, poor education, poorer physical health and increased health-risk behaviour.” —“A Mad World: Capitalism and the Rise of Mental Illness,” Hampton Institute

The uncertainty we're experiencing highlights how deeply our environments, access to resources, and social conditions shape our wellbeing and sense of self. 

Creativity and imagination require conditions where people have room to wonder, play, and envision possibilities beyond survival. So nurturing our imagination is part of protecting our health and wellness.

The longing for certainty.

There’s this trauma we face on a daily basis: the experience of not being able to feel certain. The uncertainty of not knowing whether we’ll be able to meet the earnings we hope for at the end of the month (i.e. the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, finding a job we like, budgeting when we feel sad) or the anxiety of wishing joy and safety could show up more consistently, in case it leaves.

Often times we witness the celebration of the idea of creativity while simultaneously seeing systems create spaces that make creative exploration difficult, feeling like imagination is impossible for regular folks who have to grind, work, worry, and choose from scraps.

 There is a major disconnect between valuing creativity and believing it can be cultivated. Many people have internalized the idea that creativity is something you either have or you don’t.

But creativity is not a fixed trait: it expands the more we practice and nurture it!

Don't stop wishful thinking because that is what they want us to do.

When we stop imagining, it isn't just a stuck feeling, it bypasses our awareness of what's happening around us structurally.

 We are living in a time where imagination is increasingly squeezed out:

• 50% of Canadian 15-year-olds believe creativity is something that cannot change (a fixed mindset).

• Only 23.5% of applicants from one of the country’s largest arts grant programs received funding (2024–25).

• The federal government has planned to cut $75.9 million arts and culture programs by 2028–29.

• 85% cuts from government funding for non-profit organizations who build resources that specifically help underrepresented folks in the community

Not going to include more because we get the gist and we know they're specifically targeting communities that need resources. Everything is political. 

When creative spaces disappear, we don’t just lose art. We lose spaces where people practice imagining futures that are worth living for. 

Certainty is a trap

We become attached to “what is” because certainty and staying in the comfort zone (avoiding looking at what's uncomfortable) feels safer than imagining alternatives. 

 The contradiction to certainty is that imagination flourishes in uncertainty. The very thing we resist may be the condition that allows creativity to exist.

 We enter our own crisis: where we fear and distract (usually being harsh toward ourselves). We compare and lose grounding in what we desire and value.

 In an effort to resist this uncertainty, to make space for something beyond it, we can begin going against the usual grain of productivity and pace, one practice at a time. Maybe we can emphasize creative practices that align with a pace that supports our nervous system, or build consistent habits centered around wonder and play.

During uncertain times, imagination is how we begin to create what does not yet exist.

Building courage for agency / possibility / choice

 My clients always hear me say, trauma and systems of oppression make up stories to keep us stuck. 

 When we look for and create exits, we build new patterns that help us get unstuck!

 It’s about time we treated creativity as something NOT optional or reserved for those who are privileged with time and resources.

 What if creativity was something vital to our personal and collective health? And imagination is that necessary tool for creating futures we actually want to live in. 

Here are some practices for building imagination!

 ☆·•. When we stop filling the space, we make room for possibility. One creative practice I often share with clients is to intentionally sit in boredom for a few minutes each day. Not to force productivity or to create something beautiful to share with the world, but just to notice whatever comes up.You might be surprised to find that the spontaneity that emerges in these moments can feel a lot like tapping into our imagination. Creativity, new perspectives, and even a deeper awareness of our surroundings can emerge in the very moments we are constantly trying to fill, avoid, or distract ourselves from.

Boredom creates space for something to emerge from nothing. It gives us room to wonder, imagine, and play with possibility.

☆·•. If you cannot be with boredom (like if it's highly uncomfortable for you), try morning pages / free-flow writing (inspired Julia Cameron) or any stream-of-consciousness writing done first thing in the morning. It's to mimic and practice the act of expressing with a beginner's lens instead of activating inner critic and perfectionism. Or craftivism, invite your community to intentionally craft together, share notes, build a space for intimate social change.

☆·•. Build an imagination practice by going on dates with nature. Our imaginations are rooted in the natural world. Being outside in nature puts us into a state neuroscientists call ‘soft fascination’, in which our mind is at ease, we feel immersed in our surroundings and we have the cognitive freedom to daydream. 

Deliberately going outside before sunrise just to hear the dawn chorus. Forest bathing to reconnect to a different pace when we are ‘feeling behind’. Or timing your walk during blue hour to experience liminality: a threshold between worlds. 

Liminal spaces can loosen our usual patterns of thinking and make room for reflection, storytelling, memory, and possibility. The softer, dreamlike quality of the light may help us access a more imaginative state to soak in the unwinding of the natural world from the day.

 ☆·•. Reform, resist, build, heal! When we imagine different futures, beyond what the systems want us to surrender/feel imprisoned by, we are actually engaging in transformation. 

 Reform by expanding beyond the limits of what is currently available to us, resist by directly confronting systems of oppression, build new institutions and relationships that reflect the world we want to inhabit, and heal by tending to individual and collective trauma while making room for joy, rest, and connection. These are interconnected practices invites us to imagine, create, and participate in a more just and life-giving world.

This blog post was inspired by my recent summer reading of From What Is to What If by Rob Hopkins, alongside my own reflections on the role imagination plays during precarious times as I know a lot of us are navigating uncertainty. This is the rare experience where I explored ideas in one go without stopping and doubt. I believe that this is a little gift from the universe to share this writing to you.

Last thoughts before I sign off:
• Imagination is and will always stay resilient.

• Imaginative play, creativity, and inventiveness are always choices we can return to; they are always there for us

• We just need to make space for them… and when we do, they begin to grow again.

Imagination carries a strong, spontaneous energy that control and certainty do not always approve of at first. 

Perhaps that is exactly why we need it.

Rooting for your creativity, resistance and joy,

Linda ♡

notes by Linda Lin, RCC, CCC, RCAT

Q: “How are you doing things differently than what you were taught in grad school?”

Therapy is political.
I can’t separate therapy from social justice anymore: if one group is not free, all of us aren’t free. True freedom cannot exist in a society where some groups face oppression, discrimination, or limited rights.

Liberation-based healing
…is hard to reframe and unlearn. The language in which I initially type out from thoughts are wired from years of indoctrinated academia from psychology where it centers on people’s struggles, suffering, pain points, deeply rooted in colonization, pathologizing and problem-solving, rather than recognizing systemic oppression or honouring the wisdom and agency people already have and need from community and care.

Re-indigenizing.
I am slowly digesting that most of what I learned in grad school about the field of psychology is deeply appropriated from Indigenous, Eastern, African ancestral practices…eg. maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Blackfoot people) (Yoga: India, commodified into a fitness trend; focusing mainly on physical postures (asanas) without the spiritual or philosophical teaching that are core to its practice; EFT (chinese acupuncture); Mindfulness based cognitive therapy: and Mindfulness-based stress reduction draw from Zen Buddhism and Vipassana meditation; ACT: eastern practices: buddhist philosophy, mindfulness and acceptance; Somatic therapies: Indigenous healing traditions- body-mind connections; peter levine even discusses spending extensive time in Africa, pulling from some areas of chinese medicine)

I think of harm and repair differently.
Rooting in anti-carceral practices and harm-reduction approaches when it comes to supporting those who need immediate care and oversurveilled groups: seeking alternatives (community-based) interventions, pod mapping, Grassroots organizations/resources, care planning collaborating with folks I work with and their loved ones are involved instead of involving authorities to reduce retraumatization and systemic harm; ongoing informed consent and advocating; support after reporting/note taking, ethical reflection through the intersectional pieces at play: critical examination of our role as the ‘mandated reporter’ within systems of power and control.

On repair.
Healing also includes addressing the harm caused to clients. Academia/grad programs don’t teach us how to repair in ways where we address the systems that affect us; where we stay in the middle with folks: to stay in connection, and birth a new cycle that isn’t violent. This is different from fixing/solving; it’s a deep embodying of the impact from institutional systems that exist, races and identities, kin based violence have harmed us.

Q: “How is being a therapist at this point in time different from what has come before?”

Saying no to ‘therapy hats’.
I’ve realized there’s no such thing as a ‘therapist hat.’ I no longer wear multiple ‘hats’ to separate my roles in and out of the therapy room. This shift has helped me show up authentically—both with my clients and my loved ones. It’s also allowed me to align with my living ethics, ensuring the work I do feels liberating rather than stifling or oppressive.

Professionalism vs. Competence is ever-changing in online therapy.
The landscape of online therapy is constantly evolving, especially when balancing professionalism and competence:

• Professionalism involves adherence to ethical guidelines, maintaining boundaries, and presenting oneself in ways that foster trust and credibility in a therapeutic context.

• Competence focuses on a therapist's ability to effectively address clients’ diverse needs, requiring ongoing professional development, recognizing limitations, and seeking supervision when necessary.

In my practice, transparency is key. I focus on supporting underrepresented groups through community care, addressing systemic issues in the therapy field like policing and mandated reporting. Guided by ethics and social justice, I try my best through a harm reduction approach to ensure therapy is effective and rooted in care and connection.

Transparency and shared identities and values in the therapy room.
Therapy isn’t neutral. Many clients value transparency to ensure their therapist’s values and identity align with their own. It’s not just about visible traits—for instance, I’m a fair-skinned, medium-sized East Asian, able-bodied, and femme-presenting individual. Beyond these, I am a first-generation immigrant, born in this city with Mandarin as my first language, neurodivergent, living with complex PTSD, vegan, and demisexual. When seeking out my own therapist, I prioritize someone who “gets it,” who doesn’t just validate but can advocate for me, and is committed to creating a better world for all of us.

Therapy lingo has become less stigmatized, but weaponized.
The normalization of therapy language in daily life is a sign of progress in reducing mental health stigma; however increased use of therapy language comes with unintended consequences like how people may misuse therapy terms to control in conflicts or undermine others, making emotionally manipulative statements sound like legitimate boundaries or justifying hurtful behaviour as “self-care.”

Weaponized therapy language can obscure personal accountability. Phrases like "that's my boundary" or "you're projecting" can shut down meaningful dialogue, potentially preventing resolution or deeper understanding and curiosity for connection and repair.

Rationalizing is not as needed bc the culture does that enough: rational processing vs. Feeling processing; going back to listening to our body and embodying values, hope, change is what I see many of us needing right now.

Recent shifts in social justice and Empathy

Over the past 5 years, we’ve witnessed climate change crises, movements like #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the surge in fat liberation and HAES. We’ve seen the impact of systemic issues like greed, environmental justice, and the dark history behind Indigenous communities. From Roe v. Wade to the exposure of the entertainment industry complex, these events have sparked empathy. However, true solidarity requires more than just words—it's about living ethics through actions, not just blackout posts. I hope the therapy field can move towards one that actually protects us and keeps us safe.

Be sure to sign up to our newsletter, Creative Ponders, where we share tidbits from our therapists, art prompts + new updates on offerings, delivered directly to your inbox!

from our November newsletter, written by Linda Lin, RCC, CCC, RCAT

In my previous blog post on generational diaspora, I mentioned I was visiting my mother’s homeland, China, for the first time in over a decade! It took me a few weeks to sit with this journey before writing about it.

This trip involved much more emotional processing than rational processing. Feeling our emotions in this way can be challenging, and from my experience in the therapy room, it often only comes after we’ve built enough trauma-informed language and awareness.

What’s the difference? Rational processing is structured and analytical, focused on collecting information and making critical deductions about what happened. Feeling processing, however, is experiential—it’s about listening to and working with what comes up, viscerally. It’s when we start noticing signs that have been there all along: sensations in our breath, a gnawing in our gut, the energy we pick up, and a pull toward creating new, supportive cycles for our body.

Feeling lost? I was—and probably still am. Words didn't come easily to describe this deeply sensory experience. Here are some emerging themes as I sat on the images I created from my trip:

Chapter 1: The play.

The impacts of historical imperial violence are complex, and when passed down through ancestral lineage, it lands differently from person-to-person in different points in their lives…yet they feel familiar. 

As a Chinese person born outside of China, I found it challenging to fully embody the audience's cultural resistance. This surprised me, considering I feel deeply in other spaces. It prompted me to reflect on what I may have internalized from the West—and how numb I must've felt during the play. This numbness might hint at open wounds, unprocessed grief, and the overwhelming sensation of feeling too much without a concrete anchor for my intersecting identities.

To all the children of immigrants navigating multiple cultures and facing relational tensions due to generational cultural gaps—how are you all holding up?

Everything is political - including my identity.

Identity conflicts have felt especially confusing throughout the trip. The harbouring of internalized sinophobia stemming from Western political narratives about China feels practically acceptable in today’s world (& with elections in the atmosphere). Unfortunately and to no surprise, I encountered a lack of engagement and curiosity about my trip from some friends. 

These encounters have prompted me to reflect deeply on my own journey with internalized sinophobia. Internalized racism functions as a product of unresolved trauma—a cycle of harm and violence rooted in politically engineered oppression.

The layers of kin-based harm and wounds of what could’ve been.

So I found out from my trip that my partner’s extended family members love each other, like sincerely. It's like the kind of love bell hooks talked about in her book, all about love. The kind of love with all 7 components: care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, honesty and open communication. They've got a 75-person WeChat group, more than half of the group located in the city dine together every weekend and near 90-year-olds would keep the vibrant energy by playing mahjong into the early hours. They welcomed us with open arms, unconditional warmth and support. 

A few days later, I visited my mother’s side in a different province after 20 years and I was struck by anxiety and generational cycles playing out before me. I gave myself permission to bawl, allowing space to grapple with parts of myself that felt wronged by the stark contrasts in family dynamics and kinship.

It began to dawn on me that the heart of emotional processing wasn’t just about healing; it is about connection. 

Connection and care for the younger versions of myself, connection to parts of my culture and identity I want to keep discovering, and connection to kin who, in their imperfect ways, still attempt to show up for each other.

Be sure to sign up to our newsletter, Creative Ponders, where we share tidbits from our therapists, art prompts + new updates on offerings, delivered directly to your inbox!

from our newsletter, written by Linda Lin, RCC, CCC, RCAT

Maybe you can tell by now that 'dreamy nostalgia' is a core element of our therapy practice's identity. Lately, I've been exploring playfulness and cuteness not just as a look or an aesthetic, but as forms of resistance, rebellion, love, and radicalism.

Below are some reflections I put together!

The power of cute has not been explored enough.

In my search, I found it to be so odd that most articles that researched on cuteness were critiques of cuteness: infantilization, magical thinking, fetishization, being in denial as an adult, or packaged as simpler times.

Note: to be fair, I only searched the internet in the english language...

When I think about cuteness, it aligns with the most resilient parts of my current adult self and the purest parts of the younger versions of myself.

Cuteness is a point where I get to come closer to my personal interests without shame and embarrassment, liberating parts of me without oppressive restrictions like age-limit, how to dress or act or what’s appropriate or legit/professional.

Here are 4 thoughts on cuteness as resistance that can light us up:

1. cuteness as camoflauge:

when talking about serious topics like historical trauma, racism, or transphobia...

cuteness aids in politicizing conversations and reflections in a digestable, resonating and nostalgic way.

Cuteness helps us critique, question, reflect how we've been socialized, while mixing in elements of play.

2. cuteness is kitsch:

Kitsch is a German word for ‘worthless trashy art’, critiquing the quality of the art

Cuteness is our mark on decolonizing what art can be instead of art ‘should be’. It challenges the traditional ‘fine’ arts, dismantle and unarm systemic rules.

Cuteness helps folks tap in the power of making ‘bad art’.

Who knew that a sense of playfulness and absurdity can help realign my creative practice for pleasure and expression as a fundamental human right.

3. in postmodernism:

Cuteness helps me dream of a reality that makes sense.

Because a world that’s a dumpster fire isn’t cute and not going to cut it.

It helps me sustain optimism and conduct small acts of resistance through orienting to the playful parts of life and imagination.

4. Cuteness as relief

Cuteness charges our energy in the realm of healing.

Cuteness inspires us to connect with the softness, gentleness, kindness, loveliness which embodies safe moments so we don’t disconnect from the heaviness of everyday struggles.

It's probably why corporate workers love cute animal videos and memes to get through the day.

Resources that inspired my research:

• Cute affectivism: radical uses of the cuteness affect among activists and artists by Ingeborg Hasselgren

• @umeboi's tiktoks and reflections on kitsch in contemporary art and cuteness