Many creative people, even artists who are notably talented and acclaimed, talk about experiencing insecurity, unhealthy self esteem or low confidence.
How can we help improve our experiences with these feelings?
“I have experienced insecurity all my life.” Helen Mirren
Especially in a highly competitive arts career, “Your self-esteem is challenged at every turn.” Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz
“Learn to live alongside cringe.” Taylor Swift
“I’ve been a student of self-acceptance my whole life because I’ve had to be.” Elizabeth Gilbert
“I’ve been hearing a lot of HSPs be held back from the worry of judgment from others or being different…” Julie Bjelland, LMFT
Here is a short video with excerpts from this page :
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Confidence: Where it Comes From and How to Get it.
Julie Bjelland, LMFT is a psychotherapist, author and empowerment coach specializing in the trait of high sensitivity, and is a highly sensitive person herself.
One of her podcast episodes is “Confidence: Let’s Explore Where it Comes From and How to Get it.”
She writes in the show notes:
“I’ve noticed that so often something gets in the way of HSPs believing and accessing Confidence.
“Many of us have received messages our whole life that something is wrong with us for being so sensitive.
“Or maybe we have been so overwhelmed by the challenges of our sensitive nervous system that we are in survival mode, instead of truly living our life with purpose.
“What is stopping you from what you want?
“What would you need to do to find it and let go of what’s holding you back from accessing the most beautiful parts of yourself and your inner gifts?
“I’ve been hearing a lot of HSPs be held back from the worry of judgment from others or being different or listening to others’ expectations of you, or even self-judgment and fear of failure.
“Why is that? What would it take for you to let go of that?”
Listen to HSP Podcast Episode 117: Confidence: Let’s Explore Where it Comes From and How to Get it, with Julie Bjelland and Willow McIntosh, on Julie Bjelland’s Sensitive Empowerment site – where you can find many more of her articles, books, courses, Sensitive Community and other resources.
Also see her site page HSP Resources Supporting Highly Sensitive People – “Helping you lower the challenges of sensitivity so you can thrive to your fullest potential.” Free classes, posts, podcast, plus paid courses, HSP community, and more.
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“Learn to live alongside cringe. No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively.”
Taylor Swift, in her 2022 commencement speech. She was awarded an honorary doctorate of fine arts from New York University.
Swift also talked about her life as an artist, including “years of unsolicited advice” and how “mistakes led to the best things in my life.”
As a person who started my very public career at the age of 15, it came with a price.
And that price was years of unsolicited advice. Being the youngest person in every room for over a decade meant that I was constantly being issued warnings from older members of the music industry, the media, interviewers, executives.
This advice often presented itself as thinly veiled warnings. See, I was a teenager in the public eye at a time when our society was absolutely obsessed with the idea of having perfect young female role models.
It felt like every interview I did included slight barbs by the interviewer about me one day ‘running off the rails.’
That meant a different thing to every person who said it me.
So I became a young adult while being fed the message that if I didn’t make any mistakes, all the children of America would grow up to be perfect angels.
However, if I did slip up, the entire earth would fall off its axis and it would be entirely my fault and I would go to pop star jail forever and ever.
It was all centered around the idea that mistakes equal failure and ultimately, the loss of any chance at a happy or rewarding life.
This has not been my experience. My experience has been that my mistakes led to the best things in my life.
And being embarrassed when you mess up is part of the human experience. Getting back up, dusting yourself off and seeing who still wants to hang out with you afterward and laugh about it? That’s a gift.
The times I was told no or wasn’t included, wasn’t chosen, didn’t win, didn’t make the cut…looking back, it really feels like those moments were as important, if not more crucial, than the moments I was told ‘yes.’
Not being invited to the parties and sleepovers in my hometown made me feel hopelessly lonely, but because I felt alone, I would sit in my room and write the songs that would get me a ticket somewhere else.
From Billboard article with Full Transcript.
Photo above: Her fourth album “Red” had opening sales of 1.21 million – the highest recorded in a decade…But in a taping in front of a college audience for a tv show, she responded to a question from a college student, saying:
“I doubt myself 400,000 times per 10-minute interval. I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything — diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.”
From article Talented, But Insecure – How To Gain Confidence.
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“I’ve been a student of self-acceptance my whole life because I’ve had to be.” Elizabeth Gilbert
Elizabeth Gilbert speaks with Sounds True founder Tami Simon (for the online Self-Acceptance Summit) about “the ever-deepening journey of self-acceptance.”
Tami Simon: “Let’s start right with self-acceptance as a topic that you care about – why is this an important topic to you personally?”
Elizabeth Gilbert: “Well, I’ve kind have been a student of it my whole life because I’ve had to be, because its moments of absence in my life have brought me the darkest pain…”
Learn more about recordings for the Self-Acceptance Summit at the Sounds True site.
Also see more in my article The Self-Acceptance Summit.
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Helen Mirren has portrayed many confident, even imperious, women in her long and successful career.
But personally, she has experienced insecurity throughout her life.
She emphasized in an interview that it should be called “experienced” rather than “suffered” – a helpful framing of what is often perceived as a negative feeling.
“I’m beginning to get a bit fed up of all this ‘suffering’. But yes, I have experienced insecurity all my life, and I still do on a daily basis.”
(From interview article: “Helen Mirren: ‘I have experienced insecurity all my life'” By Celia Walden, The Telegraph, 17 FEB 2018.)
Insecurity can be challenging and self-limiting, but if we label it – and other so-called “negative” feelings as an experience we are having, not suffering from, we may shift how those feelings impact us.
(Photo: Helen Mirren in Catherine the Great, 2019)
In a trailer for her online course, she says “Acting is all about what’s happening within you.”
See video and more in article: Helen Mirren Teaches Acting – a MasterClass.
One of the more important “things happening inside” for actors – or really any of us – is our quality of confidence and level of healthy self-regard.
John Lennon once expressed a perspective on some of the self esteem challenges experienced by many creative people:
“Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.”
He also said: “There was something wrong with me, I thought, because I seemed to see things other people didn’t see.”
Therapist Sharon Barnes works with creative, sensitive, intense and/or gifted teens and adults, and hears from many of them statements like Lennon made.
She has developed a home-study video program to help creative people.
See more in my article: Creative people can feel “There’s something wrong with me.”
Learn about her home-study HSP-GT-2E Social & Emotional Empowerment Program in article:
Emotional Health for Creative, Gifted, Highly Sensitive People.
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If you are an actor, musician or other performer, or an author, coach or anyone who makes presentations to an audience, you may experience performance anxiety or stage fright – which may be driven by low confidence.
This image of a stage is from the cover of the book Stage Fright: 40 Stars Tell You How They Beat America’s #1 Fear.
The image is also used in my article Getting Over Stage Fright.
– From the article: Empathic Psychiatrist Judith Orloff says “Creative people are extremely sensitive. Neurologically, they are very finely tuned and open to all kinds of energies from the outside, so it’s important they protect themselves and not be overwhelmed.”
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Actor Mira Sorvino has talked about some of the thinking and feeling that can drive our insecurity and self-condemning inner messages:
In an interview after winning an Academy Award (1996) for Mighty Aphrodite, she commented:
“As a youth, I hated myself for not being good enough.
“All my inadequacies and failures, not being kind enough, generous or understanding enough, would assail me at night.
“It became a habit to be guilty and self-castigating, not liking myself because I was unworthy. There was no exit.”
She added, “I always had to be better, constantly never letting myself say ‘Mira, you’re okay.’ I really tortured myself.
From article Gifted and Talented but Insecure.
Can we learn to feel more confident? Can we more fully use our rich emotional landscape and imaginations for creative work?
Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Psy.D., LMFT helps creative people in TV/Film, performing and fine arts, and writes about confidence and other issues for artists in multiple articles on her site.
She writes in one of her articles about a creator feeling “a flood of creative ideas” at times.
“All you want to do is to express your creative energy… It might still be unformed and raw, but you already sense the different beautiful threads been uncovered.”
She notes in moments like this, “you feel focused and present”… And even if you don’t know where your ideas might take you, you have confidence that you’ll get somewhere.”
But, she continues, “as an artist you don’t always live in this confident, connected, creative space.”
Especially in a highly competitive arts career, “Your self-esteem is challenged at every turn” – often in ways beyond your control.
“You don’t always get the audition. You don’t always get to sell your script. You don’t always get to be on the stage. You don’t always get to have your show.”
She points out:
“Your creative success depends on you having a strong belief in your own creative ability. …
“But how can you stay confident in your art in a career that is filled with obstacles that challenges your self-esteem at every corner?
“Ground yourself in reality while you can still live in the realm of your artistic dreams…”
Continue reading her article for more specific suggestions:
How to Preserve Your Confidence as You Navigate Your Artistic Career
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Confidence to speak up
An interviewer asked actor Kristin Kreuk :
“More and more frequently, women in this business seem to feel more confident about taking charge of their career, their projects, their characters, and finding their own voice, as a producer.
“When do you feel like you really found that voice and that confidence to speak up, not just for yourself, but the characters that you’re playing?”
Kristin Kreuk: “I still don’t feel like I’m very good at that and I still have a long way to go.
“I was so scared for so long. On Smallville [her TV Series 2001–2011], there came a point where I finally got the courage to give my opinion on something, and it was so hard.
“I remember being on the phone with the producers and stating my opinion, and then quietly crying. I was so terrified to voice anything.
“And from that point on, it’s been a slow process of becoming more and more confident, speaking up, and having people listen to me.”
She comments about acting in her current series ‘Burden of Truth’ and how it has helped her confidence:
“Before this show, I had gone out and started pitching some of my own ideas, that I brought to eOne, who is akin to the studio on this. I mentioned my own stuff and they were like, ‘Yeah, maybe not. But here are some ideas of ours that we have in development. Do any of these resonate for you?’
“I was able to select from a bunch of shows that they had and find something that really moved me, and then go from there with them. That felt like a huge step forward. I obviously have a long way to go, but this is a really good step for me, in the right direction.”
From article : “Kristin Kreuk on ‘Burden of Truth’ and the Challenges of Playing a High-Powered Lawyer” By Christina Radish, Collider July 25, 2018.
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Feeling self-doubt around confident people
Natalie Portman graduated from Harvard University in 2003, and gave a commencement speech to the Harvard graduating class of 2015.
(See video in article Do Creative People Feel More Insecure?)
She has talked about dealing with the intense confidence of many of the students at Harvard and feeling as though she could never measure up.
“I believed every one of them,” she said of students who aspired to be president. “Their…self-confidence alone seemed proof of their prophecy, where I couldn’t shake my self-doubt.
“I got in only because I was famous; this is how others saw me; it was how I saw myself.”
From article Natalie Portman got super-real about facing “dark times” during her college years By Sammy Nickalls May 28, 2015.
(Photo: Natalie Portman from video for her online class – See article: Natalie Portman Teaches Acting.)
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Self-esteem – what is it?
Julie Bjelland, LMFT is a psychotherapist and author who provides resources to understand the trait and live better as a Highly Sensitive Person.
Many, if not most, artists and creative people have this personality trait.
- On her site, she explains:
Self-esteem is your evaluation of your own worth and how you feel about your SELF.
This attitude toward your self affects every decision you make and everything you do.
Low self-esteem is a negative self-evaluation and can create self-defeating behaviors. You may become blocked emotionally and have a hard time creating and meeting goals.
Do you wish your confidence and self-esteem could be higher? One of the many benefits to working together is that once you start working on your sense of self you start increasing your self-esteem.
When you increase the way you feel about yourself, you also have more access to your inner resources and navigation tools.
You feel more empowered to make the best choices for yourself and pick the path that’s right for you rather than accidentally walking on a path that’s not right.
When you are empowered, you choose the path in front of you, your journey is the one you want, and you feel happier inside, and life is so much better!
The image above is from one of her articles: “The Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) Make up to 50% of Our Clients” from March 2017 – find it and many others on The HSP Blog
Also visit the main page of her Sensitive Empowerment site, where you can find other resources including her podcasts, books and online courses: Sensitive Empowerment
Therapist and author Julie Bjelland on Self Compassion – one of the practices that help us experience healthy confidence and self-esteem.
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Actor Michelle Rodriguez on loving yourself – not narcissism
“I don’t think it’s narcissistic at all to love yourself and believe in yourself.
“I think some people are really scared to do that.
“I have to. If I don’t, I would not succeed in what I do.”
Another thoughtful quote of hers:
“My favorite part of my body is my brain. I think no matter what my body looks like, I won’t be satisfied unless I know how to use it.” (Quotes from her imdb section.)
Photo of Michelle Rodriguez from her Facebook page.
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Social systems can support and empower – or limit us
Actor Elizabeth Debicki commented, upon accepting the Max Mara Face of the Future award:
“I was taught by a system that tells women that they should achieve with a kind of humility, and with a kind of silent gratitude, for what we’re given.
“Which actually stung me a bit and made me realize how important it is for me to personally work at shirking that off.”
From article “At Women in Film gala, Issa Rae is loud and proud of her success” By Ashley Lee, Los Angeles Times JUN 13, 2019.
(Photo from article “Elizabeth Debicki is ready to be unlikable,” Financial Review.)
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Unconditional Confidence: Instructions for Meeting Any Experience with Trust and Courage – Audiobook, CD, Unabridged by Pema Chödrön .
From Amazon summary:
Pema Chödrön is one of today’s leading meditation teachers. With more than one million books sold to date, she draws sold-out crowds across the U.S.and Canada.
On Unconditional Confidence she offers two accessible sessions to help anyone find courage in times of challenge and change.
Featuring a three-step method for learning to work with uncertainty and fear and an exclusive interview, this liberating program offers practical tools and teachings that explore:
- True confidence―and how to cultivate the trust that makes it possible
• “Shaky tenderness,” the first step to developing strong and consistent bravery
• Practical steps to “leap into, smile at, and experience all of life”―even when fear is present
“For us to be of benefit to each other―in times of challenge or any other―we need to be able to tap into genuine confidence,” teaches Pema.
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A few related pages to help support healthy confidence:
How to build self-confidence – includes links to programs by Mel Robbins, The Lefkoe Institute, and more.
Building Self-confidence and Changing Limiting Beliefs
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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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