Mental and emotional health challenges impact many of us. Can creative people be especially vulnerable?
How do people experience their depression? How do artists use creativity to deal with it?
- “I figured depression was just the way life was.” Artist and professor Clara Lieu.
- “Deep depression is the flip side of comedy.” Parker Posey.
- “Is depression always a ‘disorder’?” Therapist and creativity coach Eric Maisel.
- “Being profoundly different than others can evolve into a sense of alienation, accompanied by anxiety, depression.” Therapist Sharon Barnes.
- “Often, depression is just a symptom that covers deeper wounds.” Therapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz.
Video on possible links between creativity and depression:
By Psych2Go – see the video on their YouTube channel – the description includes links to related articles etc.
The video says “The World Health Organization estimates that over 121 million people worldwide suffer from some form of depression.”
The National Institute of Mental Health reported that in 2017, “An estimated 17.3 million adults in the United States had at least one major depressive episode…7.1% of all U.S. adults.”
But there are probably many more of us who experience periods of depression that are not severe enough to be diagnosed as “major.”
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Clara Lieu, a visual artist and professor at the Rhode Island School of Design noted that she’s lived with depression since the age of ten.
“I didn’t even know I had it. I figured it was just the way life was, and I would have to put up with it.
“When I was diagnosed with it…it was the shock of seeing myself clearly for the first time.”
From article Creative Artists With Depression.
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Actor Parker Posey has commented:
“I can do comedy, so people want me to do that, but the other side of comedy is depression.
“Deep, deep depression is the flip side of comedy. Casting agents don’t realize it but in order to be funny you have to have that other side.”
From article: Comedy and depression.
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A symptom that covers deeper wounds.
Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz helps creative people in TV/Film, performing and fine arts.
She also writes about the emotional and creative pleasures and challenges of their inner lives on her site Creative Minds Psychotherapy.
Here is an excerpt from one of her articles on the topic of depression:
Let’s be honest, you know you lived with depression for a while now. It comes and goes, and it never really goes away.
At times, your art is your haven where “the blues” can’t really touch you.
At other times, even your creative energy is taken away when the depression invades you in its darkest shades.
Sometimes, you think to reach out for support.
Maybe you can find some purpose or meaning.
Or, perhaps you can find a way to feel alive and inspired for more than the moments when you’re expressing your craft and finding your flow in your art.
You want to wake in the morning without being held back by the blues that keep you hostage in a lonely and disconnected world.
You want to be seen, valued, appreciated and emotionally fulfilled by simply being you, the artist and the person behind your art.
But what really hides beneath your depression?
We tend to think that we know what depression is and minimize the messages that it’s trying to convey to us.
Often, depression is just a symptom that covers deeper wounds.
Depression can mask the experience of being an unloved child.
A lack of emotional acknowledgment and love in the early years can leave an adult with a continued sense of loneliness, disconnection, and emptiness.
Depression often emerges in the aftermath of early emotional trauma.
Your natural life energy can be repressed by unresolved early emotional injuries such as abandonment, rejection, criticism, shame, humiliation, loss, or abuse.
Emotional trauma doesn’t have to be a big shocking event. Emotional trauma is any experiences that won’t allow you to really bloom.
Depression can also be brought on by a failure of individuation.
This can happen if you were not allowed to explore this big and beautiful world as a child, so you can find yourself and understand where you belong.
If you don’t have the chance to individuate you can’t really be of touch with yourself.
You don’t truly know who you are or what you want.
What are your dreams and aspirations? What makes you tick, what makes you hide?
What makes you spark, what makes you cringe?
If you live like this for too long, eventually you cease to exist on an emotional level.
The lack of authentic and fulfilling relationships can cause depression too.
All people need genuine connection to feel alive.
You need to be inspired, motivated, and validated and cannot thrive when you’re starved of joyful connections. We feel and become our best selves through connections that feel right.
Or, depression may simply be the result of a genetic or biological predisposition.
When you have a genetic predisposition, depression can be more easily triggered by your circumstances.
At the same time, what we might call a genetic predisposition may be just an unhealthy emotional environment that gets passed down from generation to generation.
Emotional circumstances impact and even change our genes.
With that in mind, you can actually change your genetics through your own emotional transformation and this will positively impact the next generations too.
Depression can be understood as a “life force” or problem
Despite the different flavors and causes of depression, there is one common thread among all of them: loss of vitality.
Inherently, we are all born with a life force. We are all born with the predisposition to survive, become, and thrive.
Our life energy enables us to create, to connect, and find purpose and meaning.
But, sometimes, something happens, and our natural life energy gets trapped. When we can’t express that life energy, depression takes over.
As an artist, you found your art in order to connect and express your life energy.
But, when you’re away from your art, you’re often lost. It’s seems harder to connect with that life energy if you’re “just you.”
So, the question is: what is the story behind your depression?
The lonely abandoned child? The rejected child? The child of the alcoholic parent? Or, maybe, the survivor of abuse?
Whatever your story is, you can rediscover it and rewrite it.
Read more in her article
Depression and the Life of the Creative
Image above is from her article EMDR Therapy: A Path Out of Emotional Pain Into Emotional Freedom.
She writes in that article: “The great news is that you’re not doomed to live feeling unhappy and unfulfilled!
“You don’t have to live with depression, anxiety, relationship issue, addictions, or creative blocks. You don’t have to live stuck in old traumatic memories and repeat old stories.”
Dr. Holtz provides both in-person and online/telehealth counseling – follow above links to her site.
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In a 1997 magazine interview, Halle Berry talked about the devastation she felt when her then husband David Justice ended their marriage, leading her to consider suicide.
She went into therapy, and said, “I know it sounds cliche, but you have to find a way to hold on because time really does heal all wounds.”
From my article Halle Berry on depression, esteem and growth.
My comment – “Time heals all wounds” may feel reassuring, but can be a dangerously self-limiting belief; we may need help from friends, books, programs – even mental health professionals when appropriate – or make changes in our self-care and lifestyle, to have an emotionally healthy and creative life.
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Kristen Bell on Depression and Self Esteem
This video interview is from an episode of Off Camera with Sam Jones: “Kristen Bell Explains There Is No Shame In Feeling Anxiety & Depression.”
In a candid article about dealing with her depression, actor Kristen Bell recalls that in college she “felt plagued with a negative attitude and a sense that I was permanently in the shade.
“I’m normally such a bubbly, positive person, and all of a sudden I stopped feeling like myself.
“There was no logical reason for me to feel this way.
“I was at New York University, I was paying my bills on time, I had friends and ambition—but for some reason, there was something intangible dragging me down.
“Luckily, thanks to my mom, I knew that help was out there—and to seek it without shame.”
She also talked in an interview about some of the self-limiting impacts that depression can have:
“For me, depression is not sadness. It’s not having a bad day and needing a hug.
“It gave me a complete and utter sense of isolation and loneliness. Its debilitation was all-consuming, and it shut down my mental circuit board.
“I felt worthless, like I had nothing to offer, like I was a failure.
“Now, after seeking help, I can see that those thoughts, of course, couldn’t have been more wrong.
“It’s important for me to be candid about this so people in a similar situation can realize that they are not worthless and that they do have something to offer. We all do.”
See more in Time mag. article :
Kristen Bell: I’m Over Staying Silent About Depression.
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Online Help for depression and other mental and emotional health challenges.
Those “wrong thoughts” that Kristen Bell mentions are part of what makes cognitive behavioral therapy so effective for helping overcome depression – as well as anxiety conditions like OCD, and other emotional health challenges.
Note – I am a writer and researcher, not a mental health provider – this page, and hundreds of others on my various sites, present information, not treatment advice.
One way to get help is through an online therapy service.
One service is Online-Therapy.com, which provides personal therapists trained in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) – “one of the most commonly used psychotherapeutic approaches…it helps you to identify, challenge and overcome your dysfunctional thoughts, behaviors and emotions.”
One of their videos: Online Therapy for Depression:
Elizabeth Lombardo, PhD notes “feeling sad or having mood swings are normal reactions to the ups and downs of life that everyone experiences.
“But if emptiness, worthlessness and helplessness have taken hold of your life and won’t go away, you may be suffering from depression.”
Here are two examples of many more titles in the articles section of Online-Therapy – where you can also learn about connecting with a therapist via text, phone, video:
Negative Thinking – Cycle of Depression
Depression and Avoidance Behavior
*Note – The above are affiliate links (and perhaps others on this page), that I use to promote a product or program that might be of value. The company pays me a commission, if you choose to purchase. There is no extra cost to you. See details in note below the end of this article.
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Cynthia Germanotta has explained part of what led to her daughter’s mental health challenges earlier in life. She writes:
“When my daughter Stefani – who most people know as Lady Gaga – was a child, she had to learn painful lessons about the dangers of cruelty and the importance of kindness.
“She was creative and unequivocally her own person, but her peers didn’t always appreciate the things that made her unique—and different.
“As a result, they would sometimes taunt, humiliate, or exclude her. It was hurtful for her to experience and heartbreaking for me to watch.”
Her mother adds that the bullying weakened Gaga’s confidence, made her question her self-worth, and led to “anxiety, depression, and destructive behavior.”
From Raising Lady Gaga: Cynthia Germanotta on Why It’s Time for an Emotion Revolution. Daily Beast Apr. 14, 2017.
Photo: Lady Gaga in high school and at Super Bowl 2016.
Feeling like a freak
Lady Gaga has said she “felt like freak” in high school, and that she creates music for her fans who want a “freak to hang out with.”
She was identified as a gifted adolescent, and at age 17 achieved early admission to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Therapist Sharon M. Barnes works with children, teens and adults who are creative, sensitive, intense, and often gifted people. She says:
“For many, having an awareness of being profoundly different than others and then drawing a conclusion that ‘I’m defective‘ can come as young as ages 2-5 or even younger – at the very time that the foundations of the Self are being constructed.
“All too often this can evolve into a secret sense of alienation, and is often accompanied by anxiety, depression, anger, rage and a plethora of additional distressing emotional states.”
See much more in my article Challenged By Being So Smart.
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John Moe is a comedian, podcaster and author of a memoir on his experience with depression. He noted in an interview:
“What I want to bring out is the process of depression itself — what happened to me, why am I doing that, how is that shaping me.
“This is happening for everybody below the surface, but it doesn’t get talked about. I’m hoping that people will see some of themselves in what I’ve gone through, to know you’re not so special — that allows you to get help and be more comfortable in the skin you’re in and the brain you have.”
book: The Hilarious World of Depression by John Moe.
Why are entertainers so depressed? Comedian John Moe has been asking for years. By Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2020.
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Video: “Comedian & Host of The Conscious-ish Show, Mia Lux, takes a closer look at the state of Depression – What are the stats? The solutions? What on EARTH is going on!?”
See more videos at The Conscious-ish Show with Mia Lux.
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Self-medicating and hiding emotional health challenges
Fashion designer and entrepreneur Kate Spade died on June 5, 2018 at age 55 – her death was ruled a suicide, related to severe depression.
Her family said it was not unexpected, and she had suffered years of mental illness.
She had been self-medicating with alcohol, and was concerned hospitalization would harm her business image.
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Linking depression and creativity
In an article of hers, Harvard psychologist Shelley Carson, PhD commented, “After reading a newspaper article about some of the current research linking depressive disorders to creativity, an artist friend of mine commented, ‘Well, I guess now all I have to do is get depressed and my work will improve.’”
Carson adds, “Since the time of Aristotle, creativity in the arts has been linked to melancholia…but depression itself doesn’t necessarily enhance creativity.
“Quite the opposite: most poets, artists, and composers have reported over the years that they are decidedly unable to work during episodes of severe depression.
“In fact, many have found their inability to create while depressed to be an impetus for ending it all.”
Carson is author of the book Your Creative Brain.
Photo – “Overall, Jackson Pollock fulfills all criteria for alcohol addiction…Many people have interpreted Jackson’s drinking as a form of self-medication for his underlying depression and anxiety.”
Is depression always a ‘disorder’?
Therapist and creativity coach Eric Maisel, PhD, and other writers and practitioners question the “mental disorder” paradigm and argue for an alternative, “human experience” paradigm – that unhappiness, for example, needs not be looked at from a medical model of pathology.
In his series of podcasts “Overcoming Obstacles to Creating,” Maisel has an episode titled “Minding Your Emotions” in which he says, “It is necessary that a creative person have and express her emotions, but that is a very different thing from being led around by the nose by her fear, anger, envy, or sadness.
Referring specifically to depression, he thinks the term “has virtually replaced unhappiness in our internal vocabularies.
“We feel sad but we call ourselves depressed. Having unconsciously made this linguistic switch, when we look for help we naturally turn to a ‘depression expert.’
“We look to a pill, a therapist, a social worker, or a pastoral counselor – even if we’re sad because we’re having trouble paying the bills, because our career is not taking off, or because our relationship is on the skids.”
He adds, “That is, even if our sadness is rooted in our circumstances, social forces cause us to name that sadness ‘depression’ and to look for ‘help with our depression.’
“People have been trained to call their sadness ‘depression’ by the many forces acting upon them, from the mental health industry to mass culture to advertising.”
From article Rethinking Creativity and Depression.
Related books by Eric Maisel:
Rethinking Depression: How to Shed Mental Health Labels and Create Personal Meaning by Eric Maisel.
Hearing Critical Voices: An Eric Maisel Solutions Introduction to 60 Mental Health Innovators, Thought Leaders and Survivors.
The Future of Mental Health: Deconstructing the Mental Disorder Paradigm.
The lower photo is from my article Depression and Creative People.
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Related article: Pathologizing and Stigmatizing: The Misdiagnosis of Gifted People – A number of psychologists and experts affirm that “Many of our brightest, most creative, most independent thinking children and adults are being incorrectly diagnosed as having behavioral, emotional, or mental disorders.
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“I have felt more things, more deeply.”
Psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison first planned her own suicide at 17, and attempted to carry it out at 28.
Referring to her bipolar disorder, she has said:
“I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. 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, and therefore I can afford to pose the question. Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It’s complicated.
“I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely; loved more, and have been more loved… laughed more often for having cried more often; appreciated more the springs, for all the winters.”
From my article Making Good Use of Depression – Kay Redfield Jamison.
Her books include :
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness.
Touched With Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament.
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See list of more articles: Artists and depression.
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Douglas Eby (M.A./Psychology) is author of the The Creative Mind series of sites which provide “Information and inspiration to help creative people thrive.”
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