Therapy for Creative People

3/8/2022

POV: Smart, Artistic, Creative

You get bored easily. You are independent. Authenticity and meaningfulness are important to you. You appreciate the beauty in things. You like to learn about things that interest you. You are passionate. You can be flexible and open-minded when presented with new information. You are innovative and smart (though this may be based off the opinion of others). You prefer to find the answers to questions yourself rather than be told what to do. You are driven and motivated to matter. You have powerful feelings. You have a creative personality. You are my type of person, and I know all about your strengths and your struggles.

Creativity Counseling Serving an Important Need

Oftentimes, to have a creative personality is to be misunderstood. This is both because of your powerful drive to live authentically, and the lack of information available about your powerful personality. If you grew up in a strict environment where many of your options are dictated for you, and not aligned with your sensibilities, this can be quite problematic and downright depressing for your creative personality. This was certainly the case for me. I struggled to thrive in an environment with a lot of rules that didn’t understand me. I struggled to recover in a mental health system that also didn’t understand my creative personality and ultimately failed me.

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Creativity Counseling Designed by an Artist for Artists

My personal struggle led me to the field of psychology in an effort to understand myself better. At the same time, I studied studio art because my soul demanded it. I learned two vital things: my answers didn’t exist in current psychological practices, but working in the art studio was the best medicine I ever had.
I went on to graduate school for counseling and wrote a thesis on creativity and mental wellness and discovered:
“The more creative you are, the more you need to be creative to stay well”. I found this robustly. With high power. Across a high sample size. With a lot of foundational research into creative personalities and mental health.
I spent the next decade plus in mental health practice developing for myself, and my clients, a toolkit for highly creative personalities to be fully supported and live a life of success and ease. I called this practice, Creativity Counseling.

The Transformation of Creativity Counseling

Because I have watched my own life transform from struggle to flow across many levels, I passionately believe in the power of your creative personality. Because I am practicing from a foundation of my own personal research and life experiences, I know without a doubt what I am sharing with my clients works. This is the best, most authentic, feeling in the world. I personally blossomed from burnout to wish fulfillment. Now I own my own business, and have time to actively pursue my creative work and recreational interests. My life is full. And I want to share my knowledge with you.

Passionately Counseling for Creatives and Ditching Overwhelm

I said “The more creative you are, the more you need to be creative to stay well.” We need to redefine what we mean by overwhelm. We know creative people are driven by authenticity and meaning making. We know creative people have big passions. You may feel overwhelmed in your life, but you are not overwhelmed by doing. You are overwhelmed by doing the wrong thing. Your creative personality has supplied you with the energy and passion to pursue your goals. Your overwhelm is from not doing enough of what lights you up. It leads to aimlessness, meaninglessness, and drudgery.

Creativity Counseling asks, “How did We Get Here?”

How did we get to where we are, bogged down and painted into lives that feel overwhelming with meaninglessness and disappointment? Fear, obligation, social norms and expectations are all possibilities. Lack of direction and knowledge are also likely culprits, or the “spaghetti” approach. I also firmly believe that you, as a Creative Person, have been gaslit as to the importance of your creativity.

Creativity Counseling asks, “How do We Fix it?”

The simplest assumption is we got here “somehow” so let’s reverse engineer. Don’t take anything away at first. At very first, we will add something meaningful. Yes- a challenge can be identifying just one thing, or anything at all. But let’s start with brainstorming as your first step. I give most of my clients “creative sketchbook journaling” as a reboot to get to know themselves and spend time being creative every day.

Creativity Counseling says, “Keep Doing It”

Great work! Now add another thing. Then another. Running out of time in the day? Now it’s decision time. You will naturally start to feel your energy shift away from the meaningless, and towards the meaningful. This begins to force you to make tough decisions. This is where the work and real change start to happen.

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Creativity Counseling and Seeing your North Star

In Creativity Counseling we focus on the entire creative person, all your qualities, strengths and obstacles, and use them in your care to help you be well. We zoom out from symptoms and focus on long term solutions to include your health as a human being (we treat colds to prevent sneezes!) As you make changes in your life, it is important to set a clear picture for yourself of where you want to go. It will become clear to you what a healthy version of yourself looks like through counseling and coaching. The next logical question is, what life does that person live? What dreams have I been afraid to actualize, because I didn’t think they could be mine? It is time to put those back into your field of focus, because, then you can begin to make aligned decisions to live the life that you have always wanted.

Creativity Counseling: Next steps

If you are interested in real, impactful and lasting life change for your creative mind, I would love to help you. Let's connect and launch your life to the next level! I have three steps you can take, right now from my site if you are ready to take an important step forward in your life:
1) Join my Artists in Residency Program. This is a Free, Online Community of Artists where you can build support, accountability and a network of Creative People as a stepping stone towards reconnecting and committing to your authentic, creative self.
2) Book a Free Consultation. All new clients to Creatively, LLC are entitled to a 15 min, free consultation to sit with me and discuss your needs, services available, and we can problem solve and hand-pick best next steps to help you succeed.
3) Book a Coaching Package. Are you a working Creative in need of specific support? I offer a range of Coaching Packages- let's get started with one that is right for you.