Creativity coach, author and psychologist Eric Maisel, PhD, notes “Some people become doctors, lawyers, accountants, or marketing executives. Some people stay at home and raise a family.

“But millions of people make another sort of choice, maybe only as part-time employment if you count the money they earn but as their full-time identity: they become artists.”

And, he adds, “they struggle.”

[Quotes from his site www.makingyourcreativemark.com]

In one of the chapters (“The Stress Key”) of his new book “Making Your Creative Mark,” he writes about how the creative life can be an ongoing source of stress – if we interpret or frame it as such.

“Anxiety is the great silencer of the creative person.” Eric Maisel, PhD

One form of anxiety is so-called writer’s block. This photo is Nicolas Cage as screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in the movie “Adaptation” by the real screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. It’s a great film about the kinds of insecurities, anxieties and distractions that can so often affect us as creative people.

Therapist and creativity coach Eric Maisel, PhD notes there are many different kinds of anxiety around creative expression, with different symptoms including confusion and a “weakness of mind and body” and persistent worry.

[See Part 2]

“Sometimes you’ve got to let everything go – purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything…whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you’ll find that when you’re free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.”

Tina Turner

Helping ourselves get as free as possible to create can take many forms, of course. Including, for Tina Turner and many other people, getting out of a destructive relationship.

Psychologist Cheryl Arutt believes “the best way to protect the art is to protect the artist.

“Learning how to regulate internal states, how and when to use self-soothing techniques, and how to know when we are actually safe — these are key to emotional well-being for anyone, but for artists, they are especially useful.”

She adds, “The ability to self-regulate provides an all-access pass for traveling the internal world, allowing the artist to mine for the gems that can be found there… without losing touch with the light of day.”

“I would burst from all of the emotion inside.”

How do you work with your strong emotions? Creative people experience a wide range and depth of intense emotions, and use that wealth of feeling to create artwork and performances.

The idea of overseeing or regulating emotions is not necessarily about suppressing or stifling, but about staying aware and in control of our feelings, to live with a higher level of well-being, and be more creative.

The quote above is from Gloria Reuben, who said: “The thing I love most about acting is that while I am doing a scene, I am allotted all of the freedom to feel. Sometimes, actually I find that most times in life, one is not able to fully express what one feels.

“And I am the kind of person that feels so much that if I didn’t have acting (and music), I would burst from all of the emotion inside!”

[From officialgloriareuben.com; photo from "Lincoln"]

Being relatively free of disabling moods like high levels of depression and anxiety can enhance and release creative thinking, but a number of writers and psychologists think too much focus on the pursuit of happiness may be limiting how we develop creativity.

“I’m not crazy, I’ve just been in a very bad mood for 40 years.”

Ouiser Boudreaux (Shirley MacLaine), in Steel Magnolias (1989).

As Shirley MacLaine has also noted, “Art is about energy, positive and negative. All art has the power to heal because it helps us see who we are, and what we resist.”

“The creative process shrivels in the absence of continual dialogue with the soul. And creativity is what makes life worth living.”

That is a quote by Jungian analyst and author Marion Woodman, from my post Spirituality and Creative Expression, which also includes quotes by Julia Cameron and others.

[This post is a continuation from Part 2.]

Spiritual insights

Author Tom Wootton has written about his experiences with depression, and says, “I have begun to gain tremendous insight into many things, including my spiritual life. It is in the spiritual sense that I have really begun to see that depression can be a great thing.”

From his article The Art of Seeing Depression.

He is author of several books including The Bipolar Advantage.

“The only thing I could do was write. I used to crawl from the bedroom to the computer and just sit and write, and then I was alright, because I was not present. ‘Sense and Sensibility’ really saved me from going under, I think, in a very nasty way.”

Emma Thompson on her depression in the past.

From my post: Emma Thompson, depression, and Mental Health Awareness.

[Photo: Emma Thompson as Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, 1995, for which she also wrote the screenplay.]

An article on the BP hope site (which “strives to increase the awareness of Bipolar Disorder), quotes a number of psychiatrists and experts, including Kiki D. Chang, MD, quoted in Part 1 of this article.

“As a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely…”

Psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison has written a number of books, including a memoir, about bipolar disorder. She reportedly first planned her own suicide at 17, and attempted to carry it out at 28.

Can such a profoundly challenging mental health issue like depression actually have some benefit for the many creative people who suffer from it?

Dr. Jamison responded to a question about experiencing bipolar, if she had a choice: “If lithium were not available to me, or didn’t work for me, the answer would be a simple no… and it would be an answer laced with terror.

“But lithium does work for me…Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It’s complicated.

In addition to all the destructive consequences that may follow traumatic experience, some people say it also has power to encourage creative expression.

The photo is of the late actor Charles Durning (1923–2012) who reportedly appeared in over 200 movies, television shows and plays.

In World War II, he was severely wounded by shrapnel, and also engaged a very young German soldier in hand-to-hand combat.

After killing the boy, Durning said in an article, he “held him in his arms and wept. He said the memories never left him, even when performing, even when he became, however briefly, someone else.”

Can this kind of trauma, which often leads to PTSD, have any positive impact on creative imagination and expression?

In her provocatively titled post Does Trauma Increase Creativity?, Laura K Kerr reports on a study that, she notes, “suggests there may be a connection between creativity and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“Writing is so difficult, that if it doesn’t heal you in the doing of it it isn’t worth the trouble.”

That is a quote by massage therapist, author, artist and teacher Cynthia Waring.

In her book and one-woman play, both titled “Bodies Unbound”, she relates the story of her life and growth as a therapist and artist, her journey of self-discovery and healing from childhood trauma and abuse.

In the process, she invites the audience and reader to see how ordinary life is the perfect process for transformation and actualization.