How do sensitive and creative people deal with physical or emotional trauma, and other intense emotional experiences?
Many artists have talked about the power of their creative work, as well as therapy, to help them recover from the enduring challenges of trauma.
“I think I’ve spent my adult life dealing with the sense of low self-esteem that sort of implanted in me. Somehow I felt not worthy.” Halle Berry about childhood with her violent father
“Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you. Trauma is that scarring that makes you less flexible, more rigid, less feeling and more defended.” – Gabor Maté MD
“As an artist, you need to access your emotions to make your art, perform, or accomplish your goals. Emotions are your creative power. Sometimes, your past emotional experiences can hijack your feelings in the present; thus, interfering with your creativity or performance.” – Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz
“I was introduced to a brilliant woman with whom I did therapy weekly for about six years. It was thanks to her that all this stuff came out and I realized that acting was an escape for me.” Actor Patrick Stewart
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- In this article, see more quotes by artists and therapists, plus resources for dealing with anxiety and other emotions, and help with healing from trauma.
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Photo at top: Constance Wu writes “When our reactivity to old wounds renders us ashamed to the point of objection or repudiation, it reinforces the mainstream’s ignorant theory that the people who embody those stereotypes are inherently shameful.”
From her book Making a Scene.
Amazon review: “Growing up in the friendly suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, Constance Wu was often scolded for having big feelings or strong reactions.
“Good girls don’t make scenes,” people warned her. And while she spent most of her childhood suppressing her bold, emotional nature, she found an early outlet in community theater—it was the one place where big feelings were okay—were good, even. Acting became her refuge, and eventually her vocation.
“At eighteen she moved to New York, where she’d spend the next ten years of her life auditioning, waiting tables, and struggling to make rent before her two big breaks: the TV sitcom Fresh Off the Boat and the hit film Crazy Rich Asians.”
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“Did you know that physical and mental trauma causes a permanent change in your biology? The nervous system is where trauma gets stored in the body.”
Aimie Apigian, MD MS MPH continues:
“Healing Is Never Accomplished ‘In The Story.’
“Although there is a place for story in your healing journey…The ANSWER to healing has always been in your nervous system.”
See links to resources by Dr. Apigian including free ebook Steps to Identify and Heal Trauma – A Roadmap for Healing in article How We Can Heal Trauma Using Our Nervous System with Dr. Aimie Apigian.
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See more programs in the Resources section at the bottom of this page.
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“Everyone has experienced trauma.”
Keesha Ewers, PhD continues in a post: “Trauma can be experienced as physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Research tells us that the physical kind is much easier to recover from than the other three types.
“In addition to the four kinds of trauma, there is also TRAUMA and there is trauma. I call capital “T” trauma the kind you usually think about when you hear the word trauma: physical violence, sexual abuse, emotional and mental and spiritual neglect/abandonment, and undernourishment.
“This is the kind of trauma I studied in my 2013 Healing Un-Resolved Trauma (HURT) Study. I found that the initial wound along our developmental map created architectural changes in the brain, nervous system and our belief and behavior patterns.”
The first part of this audio is from her video “The Impact on Your Health from Stressful Childhood Events.”
One of the related resources by Dr. Ewers is The Adverse Childhood Experience Quiz – “Do you ever wonder the ways in which your childhood may be impacting your life today? This is a way to quantify some of your traumas from early life.”
The 2nd part of the audio is from a video about her program “You Unbroken.”
Dr. Ewers summarizes: “This program consists of me guiding you through videos, worksheets, and audio recordings through a trauma healing program for emotional freedom. Make sure you know that you might also need a therapist.
“The program gives you the tools you need to become attuned and aware of your emotional world and will help you stay that way in spite of the inevitable stressful situations in your life.”
Learn more about You Unbroken.
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Artists and creators are often Highly Sensitive People (HSPs), and the personality trait can help us be more creative, but also more vulnerable to trauma.
“I was a highly sensitive child…Most actors are highly sensitive people, but you have this incredible scrutiny.
“You have to develop a thick skin, but you can’t have a thick skin in your work.”
From article ‘Nicole Kidman on fame, and actors as highly sensitive people.’
Julie Bjelland, LMFT, a psychotherapist specializing in high sensitivity, recalls a period of her life when she experienced trauma and emotional impacts:
“I was 17, graduated from high school, and planned for college the first time severe depression and anxiety struck me.
“I was excited about preparing for college when a sudden illness changed everything.
“Ignoring trauma doesn’t work because it doesn’t just go away; it can stay with you for a lifetime if untreated. It tends to bubble up into anxiety and or depression when left untreated.
“HSPs can be even more impacted by trauma. I struggled the whole semester and ended up taking the next semester off. It was then my depression and anxiety hit the hardest. I was in a terrible space and even felt suicidal.
“I didn’t know about trauma, and what I had been through was a trauma. I didn’t know about the trait of high sensitivity and how trauma might be especially hard for me as a sensitive person and that there were some tools I needed and didn’t have.”
From her HSP Blog post “Anxiety and Depression in Highly Sensitive People” – see link to the Blog and much more on her site page Resources Supporting Highly Sensitive People.
This is a short introduction to why we can be more emotionally reactive
“When the emotional brain is activated, the cognitive brain kind of goes to sleep.”
Julie Bjelland, LMFT is a psychotherapist, author and empowerment coach specializing in the trait of high sensitivity, and is a highly sensitive person (HSP) herself.
She explains “Highly Sensitive People have particular brain differences that make us more susceptible to high stress, overwhelm and even anxiety.
“Thankfully there is a way to train your HSP brain so you can live your fullest life.”
See videos, audio podcasts and more about her online course in article How Can Brain Training Help Highly Sensitive People Thrive?
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Can emotions interfere with creativity?
Therapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz notes “There’s something about living in the full depth of human experience that is conducive to creativity.
“The extent to which one can step into the full breadth of their emotions is what makes them a true artist.
“The ability to be with and use complex and mixed layers of emotions is important for creativity.”
From her article Why Do My Emotions Interfere With My Creativity?
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“Creating art has always been a way to channel emotional intensity.”
Psychologist Cheryl Arutt adds, “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.”
In this short excerpt from our longer interview, she comments about high sensitivity and regulating disruptive feelings with self-care.
Hear longer excerpt in my podcast episode, in article Psychologist Cheryl Arutt on Emotional Health and Creative People.
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Podcast episode: Perspectives on Trauma – Evan Rachel Wood and Sia
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Courage and consequences of telling about abuse
Writer Patricia Grisafi notes in her NBC News article:
“The act of telling someone about domestic abuse is terrifying.
“It can lead to healing or it can lead to further harm — in many cases, both.
“In ‘Phoenix Rising,’ a new HBO documentary about actor Evan Rachel Wood’s struggle to name her alleged abuser and reclaim her story, we see how telling completely upends her life.
“She is excoriated by the public on social media. She must travel to a safe house with her child.
“And still, at the end of the documentary, she names Marilyn Manson, aka Brian Warner, as the man she accuses of having brutalized her for years.”
“Over time, Wood claims, Manson deprived her of sleep, threatened her and her loved ones and drugged her and assaulted her…Wood says that by the time she escaped the relationship several years later, she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder…”
From article “Evan Rachel Wood reclaims her story in new HBO doc.”
video: Evan Rachel Wood – Surviving Trauma and Speaking Out | The Daily Show
> From the transcript:
Trevor Noah: Sexual abuse, as we learn from the Me Too movement, is far more rampant than people would have wanted to admit or even some people realized. And you’ve created a documentary here…
So many people want to let go of pain in their life…want to move on. It feels like you’ve done the exact opposite. You’ve gone back into the pain. You’ve gone back into the story. Why, and why now?
Evan Rachel Wood: Well, it is 16 years later. I do get a lot of people commenting on how I’m able to speak about things and put on a brave face and how “strong” I am. But it took 16 years to get here.
And the first thing that I did when I got out was try to get as far away from it as possible. Try to forget it ever happened…and then, of course, it catches up with you, and I couldn’t run from it. The trauma started to seep into other areas of my life.
So I threw myself into therapy, which I highly recommend if you have the resources… Unfortunately, in this country, mental health is not always at the top of the list.
I was planning on taking this to my grave… I really was not planning on saying anything ever. I was that afraid. And that afraid of retaliation. I just did not feel safe, and I felt very alone. I thought I was the only one. And you’ll hear that a lot from abuse survivors.
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Phoenix Rising | Official Trailer | HBO
Summary: HBO’s Phoenix Rising is a documentary with actress and activist Evan Rachel Wood… she “co-authors and successfully lobbies for passage of The Phoenix Act, legislation that extends the statute of limitations for domestic violence cases in California.
“On February 1st, 2021, Wood publicly named Brian Warner, aka Marilyn Manson, as her abuser.”
Text from HBO site on Phoenix Rising – which has multiple related documentaries and resources.
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“I’m a trauma baby, as is, I think, pretty much everyone in Hollywood.“
Singer, songwriter, voice actress and director Sia (Sia Furler) has talked about having complex PTSD from a number of childhood, developmental and adult traumas.
Read more of her comments at the bottom of this page, in the RESOURCES section, and see link to The Wisdom Of Trauma movie and Talks on Trauma interviews.
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Dealing with a traumatic childhood
“I think I’ve spent my adult life dealing with the sense of low self-esteem that sort of implanted in me. Somehow I felt not worthy.”
Halle Berry was commenting in an interview about what motivates her to support and work with an organization that helps women who escape violent homes.
She recalls being terrified that her violent father, who physically abused her mother, would turn on her.
One of the consequences for many people who suffer abuse and trauma is a corrosion of their self esteem. Recovering can be a long, even ongoing process.
Berry explained, “Before I’m ‘Halle Berry,’ I’m little Halle…a little girl growing in this environment that damaged me…I’ve spent my adult life trying to really heal from that.”
From my article Creativity and Therapy Can Help Us Deal With Trauma.
An article reports, “Though her father never raised a hand on her, she was forced to see her sister being beaten.”
“The hard part for me was he never abused me.
“I was dealing with a lot of guilt because I saw my sister go through terrible beatings,” said Berry.
From article Having Witnessed Abuse By Her Father As A Child, Halle Berry Grew Up In An “Environment That Damaged Me In Some Ways”, Lessons Learned in Life, February 28, 2020.
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In an interview for The Envelope, The L.A. Times podcast, Halle Berry “details how intergenerational trauma informed the way she approached “Bruised” [she directed and stars in the movie]; why she has “great compassion” for people struggling to get it right; and how she had to fight for roles even after becoming the first Black woman to win an Academy Award for best actress nearly 20 years ago.”
Here is part of the transcript, in which she talks about her trauma experiences, thoughtful perspectives on dysfunction, and her compassionate attitudes about abusers:
MARK OLSEN: You’ve talked in the past about your own experiences with domestic violence. And I’m wondering how did those experiences impact the way you approach some of those scenes in the movie?
HALLE BERRY: It viscerally impacts me. I’ve seen this. I grew up with a very abusive father who was alcoholic, very much like our Desi character.
I know that man. That could have been my father or my uncles. You know, I’ve seen it.
But what I also know about these people is they’re not bad people. They’re good people with bad problems.
They’re hurt people. And when you live in an inner city and you don’t have access to mental health, which many people in the inner cities don’t have.
One, they can’t afford it. And two, they don’t believe in it. It’s just culturally how we’ve developed.
And so you stay stuck in your dysfunction and you operate out of brokenness and out of fractured places.
And that’s what I understand about alcoholism and drug addiction and abuse and domestic violence. It’s fractured people who are trying to survive, and they just don’t have the skills. They don’t know how. And this is what it looks like.
MARK OLSEN: Your understanding of this seems so evolved. How did you sort of come to this place that you’re in now? I’m sort of wondering how you sort of worked through those experiences to sort of become the Halle Berry you are today?
HALLE BERRY: A lot of therapy, and I say that most sincerely. When I was 10 years old, my mother saw that my father had become so abusive he was beating up my sister. He was beating up my mother.
At one point he took our dog and he smashed our dog against the wall and our dog bit its tongue off. And blood was everywhere, and you couldn’t think of anything more traumatizing.
And I remember I was the kind of kid that ran in the closet and hid. And I had a lot of guilt growing up because I saw what happened to my mother and our sister and our dog, and I was spared.
But watching the abuse happen to the others, and feeling like I couldn’t do anything, or that I was afraid to do anything had me also traumatized in the same way.
So my mother at 10 years old knew that I needed to get into some therapy. I needed to talk about what I had seen. Things that, you know, 10-year-olds shouldn’t have to see. And she was worried about how it would materialize in my life and what I would become after living through these kinds of experiences.
And luckily, she had the forethought to get me some mental health [counseling] so that I could process, you know, all of this that I was being asked to experience at such a young age.
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A resiliency of spirit
Playwright and actor Heidi Schreck stars in her play, “What the Constitution Means to Me,” nominated for both a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award.
In her interview with the artist, writer Jessica Gelt notes: “If it weren’t for her twin daughters, Heidi Schreck says she wouldn’t have wanted to get out of bed for a few days after news broke that the Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe vs. Wade.”
“I felt so depressed and sad,” Schreck says.
Gelt continues: “If her emotions about this moment in American history were raw after the leaked Supreme Court decision a month ago, they are doubly so now.
“She expressed feelings of grief, rage and despondency but maintained a resiliency of spirit in the face of those emotions.
“She hewed firm to a belief that it is necessary to continue working for change — that activists she admires do it every day and that small actions by many can build into a movement larger than the sum of its parts.”
From article Heidi Schreck returns to her searing play on the Constitution. It’s never been timelier By Jessica Gelt, Los Angeles Times June 2, 2022. (Photo from Amazon Studios.)
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Recovering from Stress and Trauma
Elizabeth Stanley PhD is creator of Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT). She has engaged in years of research on resilience, and teaches people “how to build it — especially people facing highly stressful situations.”
This is an excerpt from a much longer free video about her course:
“Wild animals go through traumatic events all the time but they don’t develop PTSD. Why?” And why do humans?
Dr. Stanley notes, “I used to be a firm believer in ‘powering through.’ As a U.S. Army veteran with a PTSD diagnosis who thought it would be cool to pursue two graduate degrees simultaneously, I was a pro at it—or so I thought.
“It took losing my eyesight—one outcome of ignoring my body through decades of chronic stress and trauma without recovery—to realize that I needed to learn another way.
“Since then, I’ve spent twenty years studying the neurobiology of stress, trauma, and resilience—initially as a way to save myself, and then to help others heal too. There’s nothing I teach that I haven’t learned from personally in my own mind and body.”
Register for Free Learning Session from Sounds True: Why Your “Survival Brain” Knows How to Face Trauma and Heal.
“Sounds True and pioneering resilience researcher Elizabeth Stanley present this FREE video learning session sampled from the Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training® online course.
“In this free video session, you’ll learn about:
- A Closer Look at the “Fight-Flight-Freeze” Response – Why animals in the wild experience traumatic events all the time, yet never suffer from PTSD afterward
- “Ignore the Stress and Just Keep Pushing” – How our human thinking brain thwarts the survival brain’s natural ability to recover from stressful events and situations
- Corrupted Memory Capsules – Why unresolved traumatic memories can cause chronic anxiety, depression, insomnia, and other symptoms—as well as how we can resolve these memory capsules
- Reclaiming Your Ability to Thrive Under Stress – How to turn on your innate ability to recover and stop your thinking brain from overriding the process…and more.”
Note – the title “Wild animals don’t get PTSD but humans do. Why?” – does not reflect some research that Dr. Stanley may not be aware of.
But her programs are designed to help us humans better understand and deal with stress and trauma – which is the point of this short video.
One research study: Predator-induced fear causes PTSD-like changes in the brains and behaviour of wild animals https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6685979/
The polar bear photo is from World Wildlife page https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/polar-bear
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Healing Trauma Resources – How To Understand And Recover
This page includes summits, books, courses and other material based on neuroscience research, body-based therapies, mindfulness and meditation programs, and other therapeutic approaches to help regain health.
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Free Mindfulness Audio Teaching
Learn How to Reduce Stress, Relieve Anxiety, and Enhance Your Focus
Taught by Jon Kabat-Zinn and two senior mindfulness professors, Dr. Saki Santorelli and Florence Meleo-Meyer. See videos and more about this program in article How To Reduce Stress with Mindfulness.
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Healing Trauma by Peter A. Levine
“A complete course on somatic experiencing—a revolutionary method for releasing trauma.
“Are you experiencing physical or emotional symptoms that no one is able to explain? If so, you may be suffering a traumatic reaction to a past event, teaches Dr. Peter A. Levine. Medical researchers have known for decades that survivors of accidents, disaster, and childhood trauma often endure life-long symptoms ranging from anxiety and depression to unexplained physical pain and harmful acting-out behaviors.
“As a young stress researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, Levine found that all animals, including humans, are born with a natural ability to rebound from these distressing situations.”
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Free class:
Secrets to Reduce Stress, Overcome Anxiety, and Improve Sleep
By Emily Fletcher, Creator of The Ziva Technique – “a modern approach to meditation, made for people with busy minds and busy lives.” She has taught at Apple, Google, Harvard, and more.
“I used to go through life gripping everything so tightly, I also had terrible stage fright. Since learning Ziva meditation, everything shifted. I rarely have performance anxiety anymore. Even during The Sound of Music performing live for millions of people, I wasn’t nervous.” Laura Benanti, TONY award winner and star of NBC’s The Sound of Music Live.
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The Vagus Nerve’s Pathway to Power: Ease Stress, Improve Sleep & Balance Your Nervous System
A Free Video Event With Dr. Melanie Smith
The Shift Network summarizes this free event:
If you’re suffering from trauma, PTSD, heart rate variability, or other stress-related symptoms, it’s likely that your vagus nerve has been compromised — resulting in imbalances in your system.
To restore good vagal tone, Dr. Melanie Smith will lead you through three self-care techniques you can use anytime, anywhere to reduce stress, calm your nervous system, improve sleep, and ameliorate your digestion…
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Creative work, healing and unmetabolized trauma
Therapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Psy.D., LMFT addresses topics that impact creative people in multiple articles on her site. The image at top comes from her article “How Trauma Affects Creativity.” She writes:
Our creativity is there at all times. It’s a flicker ready to be ignited by our life experiences and turned into a great flame. It wants to guide us along the quest to create a life inspired by our dreams and goals.
All these – our imagination and passion, vulnerability and courage, curiosity and playfulness, trust and determination, talents and skills, exploration and commitment, and our sense of agency – come together to make up our creative emotional space.
The creative emotional space is a beautiful, powerful space that every artist and creative hopes to be in just about all the time.
Unfortunately, it can be diminished or destroyed by our unhealed backstories.
Unresolved emotional trauma can hold us back and take us off track.
Creatives and Artists Respond to Trauma in Different Ways
Some remarkably productive creative people can actively transform their pain into creative endeavors. Their creativity becomes a vehicle for healing.
Their internal healing and growth continues to inspire and motivate them to be more creative. Their creativity and emotional healing work together in a synergistic relationship.
They are healed and transformed by their creative work, and become more and more creative as they face their pain.
Some people can be very creative despite trauma, but they are not engaged in a healing process.
They can access their emotional creative space and make music, movies, novels, books, paintings, fashion, or build businesses, and consistently turn their ideas into reality.
But, when they move outside that creative space, they live with unmetabolized emotional pain. This often shows up as with anxiety, depression, and/or addictions.
Read more in article How Trauma Affects Creativity
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The Wisdom of Trauma movie and Talks on Trauma series
Sia is one of the people interviewed in the Talks on Trauma series
Singer, songwriter, voice actress and director Sia (Sia Furler) has talked about having complex PTSD from a number of childhood, developmental and adult traumas.
In a 2020 magazine interview, she commented:
“I got married, got a divorce almost as quickly. That was super devastating. It brought up a lot of developmental trauma…
“I had a lot of suicidal ideation over the last three and a half years. I couldn’t get out of bed.
“I thought I’d been living with bipolar two, and then I was actually correctly diagnosed as having complex PTSD from a number of childhood and developmental things, and then a bunch of adult trauma as well.”
She adds,
“And then I also think that getting famous should fall under a traumatic category, and I think that’s why a lot of our celebrities are in rehab and killing themselves.”
She mentions one form of therapy that has helped:
“I have an attachment injury, or I had an attachment injury. And what I needed to do was three years of extreme attachment repair work, which is the newest kind of psychology.”
(From article Sia Opens Up About Dealing With Suicidal Thoughts And PTSD.)
The image above is from her video conversation with Dr. Gabor Maté for the Trauma Talks series of The Wisdom of Trauma event.
Here are some excerpts:
Sia: I’m a trauma baby, as is, I think, pretty much everyone in Hollywood.
Gabor Maté: We find out over and over again, [movies are] created by really traumatized people.
Sia: Yeah
Gabor Maté: So I’m wondering what connection you’ve made between trauma and Hollywood and creativity?
Sia: Well, I can tell you that I’m grateful that I had the childhood I had – which is something I could never have said two or three years ago. I was still upset and angry and resentful. Now I’m grateful because I know that it informs my work and it allows me to attune to other people who are in pain.
Sia’s conversation is titled “Sensitivity, Creativity and Pain in a Traumatizing Culture.”
Learn more about the movie and video interview series with Dr. Gabor Maté and multiple speakers:
The Wisdom of Trauma movie and Talks on Trauma series
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Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz helps creative people in TV/Film, performing and fine arts.
In one of her many articles on her site addressing emotional health and creative power for artists, she talks about dealing with our past.
- She writes:
As an artist, you need to access your emotions to make your art, perform, or accomplish your goals. Emotions are your creative power.
And, you are the creative instrument that channels all the emotions in their pure form, tones, or meaning.
When you are in touch with your emotions you can use them to make your art or to perform.
You can communicate the full spectrum of your emotions and to create art that a connects to your audience.
But, sometimes, your past emotional experiences can hijack your feelings in the present; thus, interfering with your creativity or performance.
Unfortunately, your creative instrument has a tendency to slip out of tune.
Though your goal is to stay connected and grounded in your emotional experiences, your feelings can take over. Unable to direct your emotions to fuel your art, you lose your creative power. …
Though you might want to escape your past, your past has an imprint on you.
The stories that you lived are part of you. The lessons you’ve learned or not learned are part of you.
Read more in article Healing your Past with EMDR Therapy to be More Creative and Productive by Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Psy.D., LMFT.
One kind of trauma many of us experience is bullying
Dr Holtz notes in another article:
Many highly creative people have been bullied as kids. Are you one of them?
Perhaps you loved singing, writing poems, dancing, making fashion, or being innovative in other ways as a child.
When you were young, you invested in yourself fully in a creative endeavor.
Those early years were the foundation of the creative life and work you enjoy today.
Though these aspirations brought you joy, they also made you the target of bullies who made fun of, mocked, or ridiculed you.
You felt humiliated, alone, and scared.
In some cases, bullying can leave a lasting legacy of depression, anxiety, or PTSD.
A Psychotherapy Approach Called EMDR Can Help
In my clinical experience, I have found that many adults can trace their current emotional challenges back to being bullied as children.
Being bullied is traumatic and can have long-lasting effects on you.
- See more in her article What To Do When You Can’t Leave Childhood Bullying Behind
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Jurnee Smollett talks about playing characters who are experiencing trauma.
(The photo is a scene as ‘Leti’ from the HBO series “Lovecraft Country.”)
“We ask our hearts to break,” she says. “You go to work, and sometimes what is demanded of you is that you break your heart.
“And at the end of the day, you hope that the spirit can help you put it back together. It’s a very mystical thing, artistry. But it’s absolutely therapeutic for me.”
But, she adds, “There are for sure moments that it’s just like, even after ‘Cut,’ even after they wrapped, I’m still on the floor of my trailer crying.
“But because I still believe in the art of storytelling, and I do believe in bringing your body and your spirit and your mind to the altar, it’s a part of the sacrifice.”
(And following such episodes with a long bath and some music—“putting on Rihanna and fucking dancing”—also helps.)
From article Jurnee Smollett’s Storied Road to ‘Lovecraft Country’ + Making Art With a Message By Diep Tran, Backstage March 10, 2021.
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“Your pain is your wound or your weapon. I wanted to make it my weapon.” Lupita Nyong’o
Writer Lisa Rosen comments about Lupita Nyong’o and her journey “from ingénue to powerhouse,” noting:
“Nyong’o came to fame in Hollywood when roles for black actresses, particularly those with dark skin, were, as they still are, too rare.
“She has fought against that bias, talking about the effect colorism had on her growing up in Kenya in a now-famous speech for Essence magazine in 2014, and writing about it in her bestselling children’s book, “Sulwe.”
“Flooded with requests to turn the speech into a children’s story, she thought that would make for dull reading. It wasn’t until she was working on “Black Panther” that an idea for the story came to her.
“I saw what you can do when you make something fantastical and aspirational and imaginative, while still tapping some very tough issues,” she says. “So I realized, this is the gateway for me to tackle colorism for a young generation.”
“Nyong’o brings that intelligence and vulnerability to all her work. After all, “Your pain is your wound or your weapon,” she says. “I wanted to make it my weapon.”
Ballet helped Lupita Nyong’o unlock the mysteries of Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ by Lisa Rosen, Los Angeles Times, Nov 5, 2019.
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Like many of us, Sally Field experienced “some trauma” in her childhood, which had deep impacts on her life.
She said in an interview that years of emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, from about ages 7 to 14, “left me with an inability to look toward the future.”
In this interview, she talks about her powerful memoir ‘In Pieces’ and how she has learned to understand more about her survival skills, and how to thrive as an artist.
*Note – The above is an affiliate link (and also some others on this page), which means the company pays me a commission – at no extra cost to you – if you choose to make a purchase after making a free visit to their site. See details in note below the end of this article.
Video interview – Why Sally Field is ready to share her own story, q on cbc, Nov 25, 2018 with host Tom Power.
“I love Gidget, she was incredibly important to me and still lives within me – that aspect of me is joyous and gleeful and finds fun in things.
“And yet there are aspects of me that aren’t that – that are dark and sad and furious…” – Sally Field
She talks about another of her popular roles when she was young, her TV show “The Flying Nun” as being “a hugely important time in my life” but also said the work became very depressing.
“I hated it every day. I hated the garbage. I felt it was just trivia that I had to say.”
Finding herself through acting
She recalls that “Madeleine Sherwood, who played Mother Superior, recognized my depression and how difficult this was for me and she recognized why, and she took me to The Actor’s Studio.
“I didn’t know that’s where I needed to be, and it came a huge turning point in my life.”
In an interview for Variety, she said training at the Studio “really began to form who I was not only as an actor, but helped me be who I became as a person.
“Because it gave me…acting tools, that I can go into myself and if I can call on those pieces of myself as an actor, then I can call on them as a human, and I couldn’t do that before.”
From my article Creative Expression and Healing.
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Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz helps creative people in TV/Film, performing and fine arts.
She writes about this topic of trauma in an article on her site.
Here is an excerpt:
Your art offers you a way to express your deepest emotions, thoughts, and life experiences.
It allows you access and communicate stories that you’d otherwise never tell.
It’s almost like you have a creative treasure buried deep in your mind, a place you’d not dare to touch or go to without your art.
Your art is the key that unlocks that treasure, and it also gives you the courage to dive deep.
Through your art you can transform what’s in that treasure box…
It gives you the power to change the stories and rework the characters in any way that you want.
The story of the survivor with the mysterious secret powers.
The story of the hero with a dark side. The story of the villain with a human heart.
The story of the lost child who becomes the king and saves the world.
You need that secret part of your mind to tell the stories.
When you go there, it feels real and surreal at the same time… You’re also scared of what’s there.
That treasure box holds those memories you’re trying not only to make sense of, but also to protect yourself from.
As much as it’s a treasure of creative material, it’s also a dark and dangerous place that controls you in ways you can’t fully understand.
Unhealed Trauma and Its Relationship To Your Creativity
Many artists live with unhealed emotional trauma.
Some decide to seek help. Some speak publicly about their challenges.
Some even use their own healing journey to encourage other creatives to take the leap and seek help.
And, there are those who feel their creativity is their healing power.
Through the art that they create, they can see their painful experiences from a safe place, so they can make sense of them and transform them into healing stories.
There are also the artists who stay silent, trying to cope alone.
While some doubt that there’s help, others are just afraid that they’ll lose their creative side and their ability to access that treasure of raw memories and experiences…
Some artists get stuck in a re-traumatizing cycle, telling the same traumatic story over and over again, not allowing themselves to heal or to evolve as humans or as artists.
And some get so stuck in their trauma that they’re unable to access their creative or performing energy.
Trauma becoming the wall that stays between themselves and their art.
Artists who live with unhealed emotional trauma often feel that life feels too real and too unreal all at once.
Are you one of them? Are you an artist who lives with unhealed emotional trauma?
If you feel emotional pain that you can’t escape, it may be you.
If you feel like a child in an adult world, it may be you.
If you feel overwhelmed by shame, insecurities, and fears, it may be you.
If your relationships are so dramatic that you can’t find a place for love, support, and comfort, it may be you.
If you can’t feel the genuine love of those who care about you, it may be you.
If sometimes you feel out of control, scared, and exposed in a very vulnerable way, you may be coping with unhealed emotional trauma.
Emotional trauma is tricky.
It finds a hideout in your mind and it waits there in dark and silence, ready to strike when you least expect.
It will make you feel and act in ways you can’t understand or control.
It will make you want to ignore it.
It will make you want to avoid it.
Don’t fall into trauma’s alluring trap. Oftentimes, trauma doesn’t go away unless you face it.
The tendency to try to hide, isolate, and not want to talk about your traumatic experiences is normal.
At the same time, the more you avoid these fragmented memories, the more they control you.
What to consider when you’re thinking about getting help with past emotional trauma
There is no easy way to deal with trauma.
Trauma can be healed. You can live free.
But you need professional help.
You need someone who knows how to help you go at your own pace as you peek into the dark places within.
You need someone who can give you the emotional tools and strengths to overcome what you see, feel, and experience one step at a time, until the old memory loses power over you.
If you are a creative with emotional trauma that controls and ruins your life, relationships, and your ability to feel happy, you need help.
You don’t have to live with pain to be creative.
Read more of the article by Dr. Holtz:
Emotional Trauma: A Treasure of Creative Inspiration or A Place of Darkness?
Therapy for healing trauma
As Dr. Holtz notes, you may need professional help to live free of the enduring impacts of trauma.
Sally Field made effective use of therapy for healing, and nurturing herself as a powerful actor.
An article notes: “Guided by a therapist years later, Field was asked to name the different parts of herself, and replied:
“I call them pieces… No one had seen me like that before, as a divided person, and at the same time I hadn’t yet begun to see it clearly myself.
“But, as if it were a question I’d answered before, I immediately, without hesitation, named all the pieces of who I am.”
From article In Pieces – Sally Field’s Long Road to Becoming Whole by Alexandra MacAaron.
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In a review of Field’s memoir “In Pieces” a therapist writes:
“In spite of her immense suffering, there is a great deal of compassion and self-reflective capacity in her writing.
“I was not surprised to learn towards the end of the book that Sally has kept journals all her life and been in therapy for many years with Dr Dan Siegel (one of my heroes).
“Sally has done things that we as therapists often suggest to our clients/patients to enhance their healing and integration.”
From article In Pieces, a wonderfully integrated autobiography by Andrea Szasz, Brave Therapy.
[Related book: Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and Brain by Daniel J. Siegel M.D., Marion Solomon Ph.D.]
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Childhood trauma takes many forms and impacts many of us.
Patrick Stewart is one of many artists who have been deeply impacted by trauma in early life.
An interview article notes he “was for decades a man plagued by fear and stifled by rage. The roots of his struggle go back to a difficult childhood, marked by poverty and abuse that took him years to understand.”
“I have been inclined to be solitary in huge chunks of my life,” says Stewart. “I don’t think that’s a good thing anymore. I think the interaction of being with people, especially people you like, is very important for keeping you sharp, alert, active, connected.”
He notes that when he returned from military service, his father became “a weekend alcoholic who beat up my mother and terrorized the house. For years I thought of him as the enemy.”
From article Trauma and Creative Work: Patrick Stewart.
Getting help from therapy
In another article, Stewart said:
“It wasn’t until I came to California and people would say, ‘You’re not in therapy? Let me recommend somebody.’
“I was introduced to a brilliant woman with whom I did therapy weekly for about six years. It was thanks to her that all this stuff came out and I realized that acting was an escape for me.”
Sir Patrick Stewart had six years of therapy By Celebretainment Jul 27, 2020.
Related video: Sir Patrick Stewart’s BBC Lifeline Appeal for Combat Stress – BBC One
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As an addition to using therapy, or to learn more about this complex topic and further help yourself, here are some more resources:
Healing Trauma Resources – How To Understand And Recover
This page includes summits, books, courses and other material based on neuroscience research, body-based therapies, mindfulness and meditation, and other therapy approaches to help regain health.
article: Traumatic Childhood, Creative Adult
article: Dealing with trauma and abuse to live a bigger, more creative life.
See more Creative Mind articles on trauma.
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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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