Of course, writers groups, support groups based on Julia Cameron’s classic book The Artist’s Way, and similar gatherings still enable creative collaboration and feedback from others.

Psychologist Paul Paulus has researched the value of group ‘brainwriting’ in which “group members write their ideas on paper and pass them to others in the group who then add their own ideas to the list,” as writer Amy Novotney summarizes.

She adds that in a study led by Paulus, “an interactive group of brainwriters produced 28 percent more possible uses for a paper clip than a similar group of solitary brainwriters. This may be because group members tend to build off one another’s ideas, leading to increased creativity and innovation. The effects of group brainwriting may even extend to groups that collaborate via e-mail, Paulus notes.”

From post: Using Research to Enhance Creative Thinking – Part 2.

Book: Group Creativity: Innovation through Collaboration, by Paul B. Paulus and Bernard A. Nijstad.

Ideas don’t appear from nowhere

Professor R. Keith Sawyer is a leading expert on creativity, with research in business innovation, organizational dynamics, children’s play, and artistic and scientific creativity. In a Time magazine article, he addressed questions about myths and other aspects of creative minds.

He commented, “Ideas don’t magically appear in a genius’ head from nowhere. They always build on what came before. And collaboration is key. Look at what others in your field are doing. Brainstorm with people in different fields. Research and anecdotal evidence suggest that distant analogies lead to new ideas—like when a heart surgeon bounces things off an architect or a graphic designer.”

From post: Creative inspiration – R. Keith Sawyer on myths of creativity.

His books include Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation.

“Teams are demonstrably inferior”

Professor of Management & Organizations at Northwestern University Leigh Thompson, PhD writes in her book on the topic, “Several years ago, I made a research presentation to a group of scholars and a few consultants. My opening statement was, ‘Several decades of research have unambiguously found that teams are demonstrably inferior to individuals when it comes to brainstorming and idea generation.’

“I thought that such a statement in the presence of academics would not cause too much commotion. I was wrong. One of the scholars was a lead consultant for a major Silicon Valley company that prided itself on creative idea generation, particularly in teams. This led to a spirited debate between the two of us that lasted through the evening and the next couple of months.

“I eventually dug up more than fifty peer-reviewed articles and put them on his desk. Every single article indicated that teams were inferior to individuals when it came to brainstorming.”

[From excerpt on her site www.leighthompson.com from her book Creative Conspiracy: The New Rules of Breakthrough Collaboration.

[Photo: Google office in Zurich, also used in my High Ability site article by Noks Nauta, Sieuwke Ronner: Giftedness in the work environment.]

Another aspect is personality: many creative people are introverted, highly sensitive, shy – or all three – and may be inhibited in corporate groups, especially with a pressure to come up with needed ideas on the spot.

Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, is critical of brainstorming and ‘GroupThink’ and declares working alone is usually better than working in groups in terms of productivity and creativity.

So maybe the motivation for and specific nature of a “brainstorming” group is what matters in how well its members come up with creative ideas.

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• 6 Websites to Boost Your Creativity – Goodnet
• 10 ways to… Encourage creative thinking
• 10 Practices from the Most Innovative Organizations
• Personality Traits and Being More Creative

“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” Psychologist William James

Our needs for attention and appreciation may be basic, and grounded in survival as a child, but for some people, those needs are especially potent.

In a recent article, Ben Kingsley commented about being a performer as a child, like so many other gifted actors, and some hurtful responses from his parents.

“I had always been the song-and-dance man of the family,” he says. “I remember my father referring to me as ‘our little Danny Kaye’ when I was about seven. That was the only remotely positive comment I remember from them. They never praised me or acknowledged a gram of talent in me.

“Their way was to mock – ‘when are you going to finish with this acting lark’, that sort of thing. My mother, far from being proud, was very jealous of my success.”

[She was an actress, with only a few small roles, according to Kingsley.]

His interviewer notes that mention of being knighted, in 2002, “seems to make Kingsley glow.”

“I told you about my parents, and the fact that any kind of embrace was totally absent from my life,” he says. “So to be embraced by Her Majesty… I felt like stopping people in the street, saying my mum loves me, you know. Because that’s what it felt like, to me. The filling of a vacuum in the universe.”

[From Sir Ben Kingsley: ‘Without a mask, I haven’t got a clue’ By Stuart Husband, The Telegraph 24 Apr 2013.

Author, speaker, coach and interfaith minister Laura Berman Fortgang talks about this very human need:

“There is pain in not feeling valuable or knowing how we are to leave our mark. We want to know we matter. We struggle when we are not recognized or we feel there is nothing particularly outstanding about us. We have egos and we need validation. We need to be witnessed.

“Like the little kid about to jump off the diving board at the pool saying: ‘Mom, look at me, look at me!’ we never quite outgrow that. We demand evidence of our existence and feel better when we have it.”

From her book The Little Book on Meaning: Why We Crave It, How We Create It.

Kingsley’s comments about his childhood remind me of the kinds of experiences most people have to some degree – perhaps it is the impossibly rare person who doesn’t.

But some of these are rightfully considered traumatic, and can deeply affect our self esteem and identity, and confidence to be creative. See my article Creative People and Trauma, with quotes by and about Sarah Polley, Halle Berry, Lady Gaga, will.i.am, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonathan Safran Foer and many others

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• Dealing with fame – or not
• Personality & Mental Health; Highly Sensitive Men; Being Creative & A Mother

“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.

He explains, “A stressor is anything, positive or negative, that makes a demand on us. Stress is our body’s physical and psychological reaction to those demands — on the physical level, it is a buildup of chemicals that keeps increasing as the stress persists. The stress buildup is the reaction, and the demand (or stressor) is the cause.”

But, he continues, “The demand can actually be positive. Imagine your editor calling you up and telling you that she wants a new book from you. That’s lovely — unless you can’t see how on earth you can fit writing it into your schedule. It is lovely to be wanted, but her call still creates a demand — and stress.”

Shifting how we respond can lead to experiencing stressors in another way.

“We can normalize or even reframe many demands as opportunities, and when we do, the associated stress vanishes. If you are holding it as lovely to make three calls today to gallery owners instead of as something dreadful that you wish you could avoid at all costs, you have changed the demand characteristic of the situation to one of opportunity.”

Continued in a much longer chapter excerpt: The Stress Key, by Eric Maisel – from his book Making Your Creative Mark: Nine Keys to Achieving Your Artistic Goals.

Also see my related articles:

Gifted and Stressed – For many gifted and talented people, their sensitivity and “blessed unrest” may increase chronic arousal that leads to stress.

Multiple Talents, Multiple Passions, Burnout – Many multitalented people feel inspired and energized to pursue multiple creative projects, often at the same time. One potential downside is physical and emotional burnout.

Photo: Tea worry by qousqous – from my post To Be More Creative Deal With Anxiety.

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Related articles

• Is Your Life Meaningful?
• To Be More Creative Deal With Anxiety
• What is our rush? Freeing yourself from pressure.

“Well, obviously you need a writing instrument and you need an idea. I’m just not sure which should come first.”

Forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance ‘Bones’ Brennan (Emily Deschanel), from TV Series “Bones” (imdb.com)

Creative expression is not just about using outside materials and tools, but actually being an instrument oneself.

It is a valuable and challenging idea that has been a theme of a number of acting coaches, but also applies to any form of creative work.

One example was the acclaimed teacher Sanford Meisner who said, “Every actor’s instrument is different because every actors instrument is their humanity, their sensitivity. Their soul. And there is no ‘right way’ or ‘one way’ to get to that instrument. That soul.”

[Book: Sanford Meisner on Acting.]

The following inspiring and insightful perspectives by dancer, choreographer and teacher Martha Graham have been around many years, and widely quoted – but it may be valuable to think about them every now and then.

She refers to many topics that impact us as creative people, and can slow down or shut off our channels of creative expression.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.

And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.

The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions.

It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.

You have to keep yourself open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open.

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.

There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

Quotes from the book: Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham, by Agnes De Mille.

A final quote:

“If you are an artist, you are your instrument. The greater access you maintain to yourself, the richer and broader your array of creative tools.”

Psychologist Cheryl Arutt, Psy.D., in her article Affect Regulation and the Creative Artist.

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Related articles

• Directing our feelings and thinking to be more creative
• How to be more creative; Creative Juice 2; Creative People & High Sensitivity; The creative introvert
• Aren’t All Creative People Multitalented?

In his post Creatives With Multiple Talents (on his blog The Artist’s Road), writer and instructor Patrick Ross mentions meeting two students in a Masters in Writing program who are about to graduate.

“They told me about a talent show their class held at their last on-campus residency. One of them said he had performed on the violin. The other told me he has acting experience but didn’t want to do a one-man show, so he performed magic tricks. I said it was interesting that all of these writing students had another talent they could perform.

“The violin player looked at me as if I had just expressed bafflement that an orange was the color orange. ‘All creative people have multiple talents, don’t they?’

“They do, scientists tell us, even if they don’t realize it,” Ross adds. “After all, if you’ve never picked up a musical instrument, you may not realize you have a predisposition to excel at it. But the creative brain knows how to both master a skill and think in ways others would find counter-intuitive to breathe new life into that skill.”

Throughout posts here on The Creative Mind and on my other sites, there are references to multitalented creators; here are a few well-known examples of accomplished artists:

Julia Cameron is well-known as the author of The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, and has been a writer since the age of eighteen, creating short stories, essays and political journalism articles, and more than thirty books including a crime novel, plus volumes of children’s poems and prayers.

She is also an award-winning poet and playwright, with extensive film and theater credits, including writing an episode of the TV show Miami Vice, and writer and director of the movie God’s Will. She collaborated with her former husband Martin Scorsese on three films. For her musicals, Cameron serves as composer as well as libretto-writer and lyricist.

She has a quote on her site that I really appreciate: “Most of us have no idea of our real creative height. We are much more gifted than we know.”

She also leads Julia Cameron Live – an online course and artists’ community based on The Artist’s Way.

{Photo from post: The mind of gifted adults: Julia Cameron on her mental health challenges}

Bryce Dallas Howard is an acclaimed actor in many movies including The Help; Hereafter; The Twilight Saga: Eclipse; The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, and others, and has credits as a vocalist for a movie soundtrack, for musical production, and as a producer, screenwriter and director.

Actor Jamie Lee Curtis has written a number of children’s books.

Actor Jane Seymour is author of several books and art kits, and is an accomplished and widely published painter.

Before graduating from Harvard with a psychology degree, actor Natalie Portman was credited as a research assistant to Alan Dershowitz and was co-author of a study on memory called “Frontal Lobe Activation During Object Permanence” that was published in a scientific journal.

James Franco – in addition to acting – was enrolled in Yale University’s English PhD program, and has earned a master’s degree from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and Columbia University’s MFA writing programs.

Read more examples in an excerpt from my book Developing Multiple Talents: The personal side of creative expression:

Multitalented creative people

But just because we don’t match some of these people in terms of achievement, doesn’t mean we are not in fact multitalented. There are many issues and influences affecting how fully we can realize our abilities. That’s one of the points of my book.

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But many boys and men find that creative expression is enhanced by the many positive qualities of the trait.

Writer and entrepreneur Peter Messerschmidt [aka 'Denmarkguy'], who – like myself – identifies as being highly sensitive, writes in one of his informative articles on the topic of highly sensitive men (HSM) and how much they “accept” or make use of this aspect of their personality.

He notes, “One group– typically the largest– display all the characteristics of high sensitivity, but forcefully deny and reject the possibility that they are ‘sensitive.’

“They have fully ‘bought’ the concept of the Boy’s Club and conventional ideas about how men ‘should’ behave. A few may be secretly aware that they are sensitive, and almost go overboard in their attempts to ‘prove’ they are not.”

Another large group “consists of HS Men who are aware they are sensitive, but live a bit of a double life: They accept their sensitivity at home, in private, but outwardly ‘fake it’ that their lives are quite normal.”

A third group, he writes, “is made up of HS Men who have come to understand and embrace that they are Highly Sensitive, and have found ways to integrate the effects of the trait into their daily lives.

“Often they are the ‘Cultural Creatives’ of society; men who have found ways to publically be themselves without sacrificing any of their sensitive traits. They may even be public figures like musicians David Bowie and Neil Young, although most are more behind the scenes like the late Thomas Leonard, founder of global life coaching organization CoachVille.

“These men have typically also moved beyond the point of getting bogged down in ‘being highly sensitive,’ and quietly go about their lives.”

From his article: HSP Topics: The Challenges of The Highly Sensitive Man.

Ted Zeff, PhD is author of multiple books, including The Strong, Sensitive Boy – for which he interviewed thirty sensitive men from five different countries.

For a lot more on this subject, see my article Are Highly Sensitive Men More Creative?

[Photo of Neil Young from my post Neil Young on collecting trains, writing sober and saving the music industry.]

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Related articles

• Are Highly Sensitive Men More Creative?
• HSP Topics: Understanding The Highly Sensitive Man

Not so much.

According to at least two people in a position to know, the present “system” is far from encouraging of artists.

Anna Wilding is a film executive, director, producer, writer and actress, according to her Huffington Post bio, where she commented in a recent article:

“The craftsmanship, skill and talent that was revered in Hollywood even as late as five years ago, is now not so revered or appreciated in the new media age. In fact the art of writers, producers, directors, still photographers, and artists (or ‘content creators’ as we are now ubiquitously called), has become somewhat devalued in this age and ease of digital data gathering resulting in more often than not, poorly made, dumbed down content creation.”

From her article Digital Hollywood and the Role of Content Creators.

Interviewed by Willow Bay at the Milken Institute Global Conference (April 28 – May 1, 2013), Brian Grazer comments on the power shifts between creators and the “system” in the video linked to the image below. He is a writer and producer, nominated for four Academy Awards, and winner in 2002 of a Best Picture Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind.”

He says, “Power sort of shifts in seven or eight year increments, it feels to me, where the power structure or system has dominance, and then it will shift to where artists have dominance.

“About four years ago, it felt like artists had dominance: they made more money, they had power over the system, they could dictate decisions about what they were going to do with their narratives. Now, the system has more power, and makes more money. But I think that is going to change.”

[Photo at top: John Turturro in Barton Fink (1991) - "In 1941, New York intellectual playwright Barton Fink comes to Hollywood to write a Wallace Beery wrestling picture...and discovers the hellish truth of Hollywood."]

As a creator, what do you think of the climate in the current marketplace? Does it encourage your self-esteem? Does it motivate you?

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She is another artist featured in the documentary Lost in Living.

See Part 1 of this post for a trailer and more.

Director Mary Trunk comments on the site for the film that Gerber “had over 25 books published, was a former fellow of the Wallace Stegner Writing Workshop at Stanford and was contemplating giving it up altogether.

“Her children had been among her subjects and at times they felt that their privacy had been invaded. She was conflicted between her need to write and her desire to maintain relationships with her daughters.”

Amy Bloom has worked as a psychotherapist, taught at Yale University, and is Wesleyan University’s Writer-in-Residence.

In an interview about being a mother and writer, she commented, “When I started, I wrote late at night, after they were in bed. I could do that and get away with it because I’m not much of a housekeeper and I didn’t need much sleep. I liked my kids and didn’t care much about my house, so it worked.”

But, she admitted, “writing with children present is not productive. They really never go away. My daughter made a sign for my study door that says ‘Come in’ on one side, and on the other side it says: ‘Knock first, then come in.’ That’s a perfect description of me as a writer.”

She also noted, “I’d be in the middle of a sentence and someone needed to go to mall for new shoes, so the sentence would be lost.”

[See list of Amy Bloom books]

Actor, writer, producer Emma Thompson has commented: “I’m very lucky I write as well. I don’t see how I could be as effective a mother as I’d like to be if I had to go away and act all the time.

“So I’ve sort of pulled back from acting, which is fine, because I’ve found over the years – and this was a surprise to me – that I can get the same kind of creative satisfaction from writing as I have heretofore gotten out of acting. It’s very encouraging, really.” [imdb.com]

Quotes are from my post Motherhood and creative work – which is an excerpt from my book Developing Multiple Talents: The personal side of creative expression.

Another actor, Jennifer Connelly, commented on motherhood: “It has changed absolutely everything [being a single mother to her two-and-a-half-year-old son]. I mean, it’s changed my life. I think I’ve changed as a human being more since I’ve had Kai than in any other period in my life. It’s such an incredible catalyst for growth. I found myself questioning absolutely everything: how I spend my time, how I speak, what kind of projects I work on, how I look at the world.” [Reel.com 3.21.00]

But some women, including artists, choose not to be a parent, or can’t be.

“I don’t think I was born to be a mother. During those years when my body would have wanted [babies], my mind wasn’t listening. My creativity was so starved… I was very seriously thinking about adopting a Chinese girl. A part of me wanted a love that would be mine and always be there for me. But somehow that just made me psychologically uncomfortable.” Holland Taylor [People 11.29.99]

“I have a very full life and I am very happy with where I am now. I don’t want to change anything. I once wanted to have children and it was not my choice not to have children but it hasn’t broken my heart that I haven’t. I think unless you’re truly whole-heartedly prepared to make a full-time commitment, you have to really think about it. I certainly wouldn’t adopt children just because everybody in show business seems to be doing it.” Anjelica Huston [imdb.com]

From my page Motherhood and creative expression, which has a number of other quotes.

Therapist Belinda Seiger, PhD, LCSW says she has “known many gifted women who seem to possess what I refer to as the ‘rage to achieve.’ They are constantly driven to learn, to create and to be intellectually productive even while raising young children.”

She adds, “What distinguishes these women from their ambitious counterparts is that their motivation is not financial security, accolades or professional visibility; but their love for the process of learning, creating and involvement in a field or arena that holds deep interest and fascination for them.”

From post: Mothers with a rage to achieve.

[Photo from one of her sites: Great Minds Gifted and 2E Counseling & Resource Center.]

Also see post: Artists are Crazy; Mothers Can’t Be Artists, and Other Myths

If you truly want and need to create you will find ways to do so in spite of the demands of your life. But there are helpful perspectives that can help, by other creative people – many of them mothers – throughout my Creative Mind posts, and my site Women and Talent.

Also see the page: Resources for Developing Creativity and Innovation.

Are you a mother and actively involved in some form of creative expression? If so, what are your challenges, and what has helped support your creative passions?

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Related articles

• To Be Creative and A Mother
• Can Moms Make Art?

“The motherhood thing – I think of it like a marathon, except a marathon is over in a day. It’s an endurance test and it’s something you absolutely can’t stop for a second.

“Part of what makes it really cool and interesting is almost anything [besides motherhood] you commit to, you can take a breather.”

Caren McCaleb “is an award winning documentary editor and filmmaker. Her work has shown on PBS, A&E, and at numerous film festivals including Sundance, AFIFest, and the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films.” [From her site: www.carenmccaleb.com]

The image is from a new documentary Lost in Living – “the story of four extraordinary women who share their personal triumphs and struggles as mothers and as artists and who uniquely define for themselves what it means to be a woman in our modern world.” [From statement by Director Mary Trunk.]

“Behind the domestic curtain of motherhood, where the creative impulse can flourish or languish, are four women determined to make a go of it. Filmed over seven years, Lost In Living, confronts the contradictions inherent in personal ambition and self-sacrifice, female friendship and mental isolation, big projects and dirty dishes.

“The complex realities of family life unfold in this documentary film about the messy intersection of motherhood and artistic expression.”

From Lost in Living site [where you can buy the DVD of this and other films]

Also see their Facebook page.

Here is a trailer:

Psychologist and writer Susan K. Perry interviewed the director, and comments in her article that the movie “delves powerfully into the conflicting emotions and life choices of parents, especially mothers, who are also writers or artists” and that she was deeply moved when she watched it.

Dr. Perry asked, “What was your initial inspiration for this film?”

Mary Trunk:  “I moved to Los Angeles when my daughter was one and a half. I was in the process of completing my first documentary film, so I was struggling with caring for my daughter and editing in small bits while she slept and napped. My husband was working out of town Monday through Friday. And frankly I am not exactly the maternal type. I couldn’t help but wonder how other mothers were handling this situation.

“I joined mommy and me groups, found a nursery school and tried to connect with other mothers. That certainly fed the need for some kind of adult interaction. But I did not meet anyone who was trying to make art while also raising a child. That’s when I thought I should just put it out there as a project/film and see if I can find people.”

Read more in Can Moms Make Art? by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D.

Over the years, I have collected a number of comments by women artists on being a mother.

Here are some quotes by writer Cortney Davis:

“Like many women who were writers and something else, I think about how I might have been a better mother if I wasn’t a writer. It’s tough, working fulltime and going to school at the same time. Looking back, I see myself as a very preoccupied mother. I was still trying to find my own way in life during a time when my kids were doing the same.

“Would I have been a better mother if I hadn’t felt this drive to be something else? I don’t know that it was a choice. I don’t think I could stop being a writer. I do it in spite of myself. If I wasn’t a nurse, I would still be a writer, and if I wasn’t a mother, I would still be a writer. Yet both those roles influenced my writing profoundly.

“Being a poet helped. I wrote at night after they were in bed, and wrote on the run. I would carry a poem around and work on it when I could. My children were often in my poems, which focused on interactions between family and life. It’s funny: writing is considered a hobby for women, relegated to their spare time, whereas for men, it’s a career. For me, writing is my avocation.”

From writerswrite.com interview: Mothers Who Write: Cortney Davis by Cheryl Dellasega, Ph.D.

Photo from www.cortneydavis.com

Books by Cortney Davis

Continued in Part 2 of this post.

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Related articles

• Can Moms Make Art?

“Anxiety is the great silencer of the creative person.”

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.

But, he says, “one of the most common anxiety reactions is a phobic reaction… many cases of creative blockage — perhaps most — are phobic reactions to the creative encounter. These real, painful, persistent phobias affect many creative people and help us better understand why creative people are prone to addictions.”

From my post: Eric Maisel on anxiety and developing creativity.

His books include:

Fearless Creating: A Step-By-Step Guide to Starting and Completing Your Work of Art.

Mastering Creative Anxiety: 24 Lessons for Writers, Painters, Musicians, and Actors from America’s Foremost Creativity Coach. In this book he asks, “Are you creating less often than you would like? Are you avoiding your creative work altogether? Do you procrastinate? That’s anxiety.”

His site: ericmaisel.com

Here is a video clip of  Nicolas Cage in “Adaptation”:

Creativity coach Lisa Riley describes a common scene for many creative people facing a blank screen or page or canvas:

“So you’ve decided to get an early start, wake before the rest of the world begins their day and be productive. … You sit down in front of the computer facing the stark emptiness of your blank screen.

“You gaze for a moment and then take a few sips of coffee, waiting for the caffeine to kick in. … Nothing comes to mind. Your eyes conveniently notices the flashing email icon in the corner of your screen, suddenly drawn like a magnet, you decided to check your email.”

She points out, “If this sounds like a familiar scenario, well, you are not alone. Many of us have experienced this form of procrastination. Where we give into the rationalization that once these convenient distractions are completed and put to rest, we can create.

“When in reality, this is an indication of our own internal resistance to facing the act of producing something. Feelings of self-doubt, criticism and negative beliefs can produce anxiety around the creative process.”

From my article: Procrastinating and Distracting Ourselves.

Photo of Lisa Riley from her guest article (on my site): Highly Sensitive Personality and Creativity.

Does anxiety affect creative and sensitive people more?

Former anxiety sufferer and anxiety program developer Charles Linden writes that his research “shows us that anxiety sufferers all share a superior level of creative intellect. This may not be experienced as academic prowess, [but] as a distinct range of both physical and mental attributes effecting creativity, emotional sensitivity and clarity, eccentricity, creative energy and drive…”

From article Creative intellect as a marker for genetic predisposition to high anxiety conditions, by Charles Linden.

Being highly sensitive probably increases our vulnerability to anxiety. I’m sure that has been the case for me, and I have had varying degrees of anxiety for most of my life. Getting older (and eating more healthy foods etc) has definitely helped, and now I am usually more calm and at ease than not.

Part of my motivation in researching and creating my series of sites is to better understand a variety of social and psychological issues that affect talent development and creativity – including the issue of mood challenges like anxiety: how it affects us, and what we can do about it.

Psychologist Elaine Aron thinks “high sensitivity increases the impact of all emotionally tinged events, making childhood trauma particularly scarring.”

In her book The Highly Sensitive Child, Elaine Aron notes that some sensitive adolescents may drink and use drugs to try to overcome anxiety or depression through self-medication.

From my article Sensitive to anxiety.

[Photo: Tea worry by qousqous – also used in my article Nicole Kidman: “I’m drawn to what I’m scared of.”

Writer Deborah Ward comments, “Because highly sensitive people absorb so much stimulation from their environment, we are more susceptible to these feelings of anxiety. A recent study showed that people with a more sensitive ‘startle’ reflex, that is, highly sensitive people, are more susceptible to anxiety disorders because we have different genes than others, making it harder for us to deal with emotional arousal.”

From her Psychology Today article Coping with Anxiety as an HSP.

Courage – Fear – Anxiety

There are many kinds of discomfort related to anxiety – some mild, some requiring change, even intervention or therapy, or at least greater self-care.

In her article Discovering the Gifted Ex-Child, Stephanie S. Tolan writes about one highly talented person with a common form of anxiety: stage fright. She writes: “Barbra Streisand, whose abilities are not only obvious and far from norms but also wide-ranging, is criticized for perfectionism, for demanding too much from those she works with. Her well-known  discomfort with public performance may come in part from the seemingly paradoxical self-esteem problems that often come with extraordinary gifts.”

Many of the personal, inner aspects of creative talent can challenge us in ways that demand facing fears and limitations and moving beyond our comfort zones. And many forms of creative expression may require at times a high degree of courage.

In an HBO documentary about making movies, actor Charlize Theron commented about courage when she noted, “There is no formula that works. There is no guarantee. But as far as making choices on material, I just kind of think, well, it has nothing to do with me, so why not just go for it? That’s why, when people say, Why don’t you make safer choices, I say What is a safe choice? There really isn’t a safe choice in this industry.

“You never have a guarantee whether it’s going to work or not. And it takes a lot of courage to do that. So you better make sure, if it doesn’t work, that you walk away with something else, and that is the knowledge that you did it for a good reason.”

From my book Developing Multiple Talents: The personal side of creative expression.

Rather than offer a “quick fix” or “sound bite” suggestion for dealing with anxiety – not that there is such a thing – I suggest you search here on Psych Central, and look through the collection of Articles on relieving anxiety on my Anxiety Relief Solutions site.

Do you have any experience with managing anxiety, and thus helping your creative expression?

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