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Creativity is for everyone.
You are a creative professional.
You are an artist, a designer, an architect. An actor, a performer. You are a filmmaker, a director, a producer, a screenwriter. You are a musician, a producer. You’re a builder, dream maker, or a creative entrepreneur.
You may work in a creative industry or creativity may be the key to what you do in your industry. Plastic surgeons, real estate developers, and lawyers are creatives in their own way.
Maybe you’re on the cusp of a new opportunity or are ready to create one.
Or maybe you’re ready to take on that project you’ve been waiting on.
You’re ready to make some big changes, and you need a thought partner.
In the realm of the creative, the interplay between inspiration and reality, between passion and pragmatism, is a delicate dance that often teeters on the edge of profound expression and existential crisis.
For many artists, creators, and entrepreneurial spirits, the pursuit of a life built upon the foundation of your own imagination is both exhilarating and completely exhausting.
It’s a world where vulnerability is currency and where self-doubt is a constant companion as the art you confidently share with the world.
In this way, therapy for creatives not only makes sense but is critical to sustained success and true personal growth.
Creative minds can be working in art, music, writing, design, building, and performance.
Yet artists exist not only in traditional art forms but also in law, medicine, business, and other fields. Lawyers, physicians, entrepreneurs, executives, and other professionals hold immense creativity, either integrating it into their work or yearning to explore creative pursuits outside their usual roles.
Confidence and Creativity
For many creatives, the block is confidence. Specifically, there can be the persistent thought that “I am not good enough.” The proof for not being good enough is that there is no “success.”
Success is then defined solely by outcomes and outcomes that are mostly outside of your control: money, profits, social media followers, etc.
Yet the myth about confidence is that it comes before action. With confidence, action comes first. Experimentation comes first. Failure comes first. Belief comes later.
According to Rick Rubin, “Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not. It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it. It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.” You are either living as a monk or you’re not. We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.”
Unique Struggles of Creatives
Artistry is often seen through a romantic lens: the myth of the tortured artist, the ‘genius at work’, the soul laid bare in hues of myriad emotions. The reality, however, is far more complex.
The creative process can be isolating, and the road to acceptance and recognition is fraught with challenges. Creators are perpetually on the tightrope, balancing their innovative visions with the harsh light of criticism and, often, the reality of sales and marketing.
For those in creative fields or those who want to pursue a new opportunity in a creative field, the struggles can be real.
Anxious Pursuits in Passion
The pursuit of creative ambitions can be a double-edged sword. On one edge, there’s the exhilaration of chasing a muse, translating the intangible into art. On the other, there’s the gnawing anxiety of relevance, of financial insecurity, and of one’s own self-worth.
Self-doubt and the Inner Critic
Creatives are often their harshest critics. Each piece of art created is a reflection of the artist’s soul, and with it comes the crippling question – “Is it good enough?”
Finding Inspiration in Isolation
The quest for unshakeable inspiration can be a solitary one. In moments of doubt, isolation, or purposelessness, the creative well can seem to run dry.
Therapy serves as a nurturing ground for the creative mind, a safe space for exploration, excavation, and, more importantly, rejuvenation.
Therapy can help you design your inner compass–the compass for one’s life that is marked not by our values.
When you establish your values for creativity–how you want to behave as a creative–you can make decisions so much more strategically and sustainably.
Fostering Inventiveness through Emotional Intelligence
Along with the inner compass, therapy can fine-tune the creative’s emotional compass, enabling them to tap into a broader spectrum of experiences and translate them into art more authentically. With success, comes failure. The default rule for the brain is to avoid pain. Failure is experienced as pain, so it is perfectly normal to want to avoid it. However, until you can master your fear of failure, you can’t embrace all of the learning that comes with failure.
Without failure and experimentation, there can be no learning.
After all, FAIL stands for First. Attempt. In. Learning.
Confronting the Inner Critic
Therapy provides tools to navigate the minefield of self-doubt, turning the inner critic from an adversary into an advisor. Ofen that voice just wants to keep you safe, but like an overly helpful friend can tell you all the bad things and reasons why so you won’t get hurt. Trying to suppress the voice or hate it backfires. It’s all you.
Establishing a Resilient Mindset
Therapy instills resilience, enabling creatives to weather the inevitable storms of their careers without sacrificing their emotional well-being.
The Creative Journey Through Therapy
For creatives, the decision to incorporate therapy into their daily lives not just about addressing issues but about evolving their art and integrating it into their lives. It signifies a profound understanding that the artist is as much a work-in-progress as the art they create. And works in progress are stunningly beautiful.
By integrating therapy into their lives, creatives can expect:
Increased Work-Life Balance and Integration
Therapy can help you integrate creativity throughout your life. Many creatives describe feeling siloed in their lives–maintaining friendships with people who do not support them or their art and engaging in activities that they really don’t like. In therapy for creatives, you can learn how to make values-based decisions about your work and relationships.
Heightened Productivity and Creativity
Therapy can open new pathways in the mind, enhancing creative problem-solving and unlocking reservoirs of inspiration.
Enhanced Clarity and Focus
Through therapy, creative individuals can achieve a greater degree of clarity, enabling them to hone their focus on their craft and long-term artistic goals.
Sustainable Career Longevity
By developing a robust mental health regimen, creatives can enjoy sustained career longevity, sparing themselves from the burnout that so often plagues the industry.
At Momentum Psychology, we offer therapy for the modern creative.
That is why we offer online therapy for our busy clients who want to tap into high quality services from rockstar psychologists from afar.
We have worked with clients nationally and internationally for years Online therapy works best from therapists who have training and experience in providing therapy in this format. It is not for everyone, but no worries–our skilled therapists will assess whether online therapy is a fit for you if that is a concern.
Loss of relationship or job or artists or writers block
With creative professionals and entrepreneurs in Charlotte, North Carolina, and online throughout the United States, our therapists use techniques that are rooted in the most current research in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral science including:
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT),
Trauma-Informed Therapies including Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE), and Trauma-Focused CBT (TF-CBT),
Exposure & Response Prevention Therapy (ER)
Radically-Open DBT (RO-DBT).
Our goal is to collaborate with you, so you can master positive coping skills, and change your behaviors. We will work together to figure out what’s been keeping you from feeling fulfilled. As a busy lawyer or law student, you might be wondering how long therapy may take?
The answer is, it depends. It depends on what you need to gain from our work together. It’s important that while we are creating meaningful and lasting change in your life that we are talking about your successes. By measuring and observing the change you are making, we can make a clear plan on how to move forward in therapy. I hope that when you have met your goals that you will feel a sense of peace. I want you to feel like you’re more efficient, have a clear plan for your future, and feel better about your job and personal life.
We occasionally offer skills groups and classes for entrepreneurs, including parenting classes. These can be very powerful experiences to work through skills and situations with others who are in your shoes. If you’re interested in my group offerings, please complete our group interest form.
You deserve to have the life you’ve always wanted. Therapy can help you achieve this. I will work with you to help you achieve success in all areas of your life. To begin therapy online, please follow these steps:
Complete this form or call our office at 704-444-0087 to request an appointment with me. Then, you will be contacted by our client care coordinator to make an appointment.
Schedule an intake appointment with the therapist of your choice. (Please note that Dr. Newman typically runs a lengthy waitlist, but we have other qualified therapists for you to choose from).
Begin therapy for high-performing professionals to break through the barriers that keep you from having the life and relationships you want.
As an online or virtual therapy practice, our mission is to offer a variety of online therapy services to help you focus on your needs. We take the stress out of getting the treatment you deserve with our flexible, convenient, and easy-to-use therapy and assessment services. We offer online therapy in several states including North Carolina, Alabama, Colorado, Washington DC, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennesee, Texas, Virginia, and Utah, and all PSYPACT states, and we new states added to our list on a regular basis.
We specialize in working with high-performing professionals, executives, lawyers, entrepreneurs, physicians and other healthcare professionals, creatives, athletes, and students (college, graduate, and professional programs). We will soon be offering for high-achieving teens who want and are a good fit for online or virtual therapy. Our therapists are all doctoral-level psychologists. Depending on the therapist you see, we can offer help with stress and burnout, anxiety, trauma and PTSD, ADHD, and depression as well as vicarious trauma, life transitions, and relationship problems. Learn more about the cost of online therapy on our investment page. Getting the best therapist for your needs no matter where you live and being able to fit it into your busy schedule might be the secret. Online therapy may be the answer you’ve been looking for! We use evidence-based treatment methods including ACT, DBT, RO-DBT, CBT, ERP, and trauma-informed therapies.
Please contact our office and request an appointment to hear about the many ways we can help you thrive and be successful in work and life, and hopefully all the way around.
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References
Very Well Mind. The Link Between Depression and Creativity
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