Designer Charles Eames warned of an emerging cultural obsession with the creative process:
Recent years have shown a growing preoccupation with the circumstances surrounding the creative act and a search for the ingredients that promote creativity. This preoccupation suggests we are in a special kind of trouble — and indeed we are.
I am guilty as charged. I regularly enroll in art and writing classes and hope to discover something other than focused and consistent efforts lead to exceptional work. I doubt there is much harm in the desire for a creative edge. Rather, the constant pursuit of the “ingredients” of creativity can become a defense against the inevitable shadow side of the creative process.
To master a craft or an art, you can’t avoid shadow emotions — fear, anxiety, competitiveness, shame, loneliness, self-doubt — that threaten even the most talented creatives to waver at times in their commitment and question their abilities. Without learning how to deal with the shadow side of creativity, there’s greater risk of failing to reach one’s potential, if not worse: completely abandoning creative pursuits.
Many of us are preoccupied with the creative process and for good reasons. There’s lasting transformation and a deep sense of accomplishment when we master a craft or an art form. Yet reaching the point of mastery isn’t easy, and the journey is littered with emotional obstacles most of us prefer to avoid.
If you have a history of childhood trauma or adverse childhood experiences, it can be particularly difficult to deal with feelings of fear, shame, and self-doubt sparked by the creative process. These feelings often resonate with past traumas, which is why creating can also transform painful memories. Through creative acts, difficult emotions can be given expression in non-threatening ways that lessen their grip on our minds and bodies.
Yet emotions can also get in the way of mastery when we fail to make peace with shadow emotions that are inevitable aspects of living as a creative. However, rather than avoiding such emotions, or even overcoming them, we must learn to work with them.
In what follows, I share a few resources that address the shadow side of the creative process. They helped me learn to treat self-doubt and discouragement as part of reaching mastery rather than as evidence I wasn’t ready to create—or worse, that I should give up my dream to live a creative life.
Janna Malamud Smith’s An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery
The best book I have read on dealing with the shadow side of creativity is Janna Malamud Smith’s An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way To Mastery. The title of her book comes from Henry James’ Roderick Hudson:
True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one’s self; but the point is not only to get out — you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.
Malamud Smith is a psychotherapist specialized in the role of emotions and the unconscious for the creative process. She believes mastery of an art or craft is the best way to be fully alive, even though the path, at times, is emotionally arduous. In An Absorbing Errand, Malamud Smith discusses the shadow aspects of mastery, including fear, anxiety, self-doubt, shame, and ruthlessness, as well as the desire for recognition, the need for creative solitude, and the problems encountered when going public. While she gives helpful advice, Malamud Smith also looks at the lives of artists who lived rather tragic existences and how adversity impacted their creative processes. She understands the centrality of unconscious, emotional influences on the struggle for mastery:
Particularly, you may be unaware of how the necessary struggles of your own unconscious mind, if misunderstood, will bruise your heart, arrest your efforts prematurely, and prevent your staying absorbed in your errand. Yet the same struggles, appreciated, will enable your creativity and the larger process of mastery.
Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way
When it comes to healing the wounds of the would-be artist, Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way is a classic. Whether your interest is music, writing, dance, or visual arts, Cameron’s book revives the artistic spirit by healing the “child within” shamed from a life of creativity. I read Cameron’s book over 20 years ago and still commit to two of her recommended creative habits: daily morning pages and “filling the well” through a weekly creative excursion.
Martha Beck’s Finding Your Own North Star
Martha Beck is another guru for devotees of creative, authentic living. Her book Finding Your Own North Star is particularly helpful if you feel stuck living other people’s dreams for you rather than your own dreams for yourself. Being authentically yourself is the fertile ground of mastery and sustained work. Furthermore, it is the “real” you — warts and all — that is likely the source of your best creations.
Beck is particularly adept at teaching how to listen to one’s innate wisdom and create a life centered on passion. She suffered through severe childhood abuse and has gone on to create an extraordinarily creative life, including being credited with founding the profession of life coaching. Finding Your Own North Star is a thoughtful, action-oriented guide to the process of learning to trust your gut.
Kenneth Atchity’s Write Time
For writers, I recommend Kenneth Atchity’s Write Time. Atchity’s book is great for working with the inner critic. We all have inner critics, but for persons with histories of adverse childhood experiences, the inner critic can be particularly harsh, if not paralyzing. A harsh, inner critic contributes to shame and fear of criticism and rejection, which can stall efforts to bring creative projects to the public.
When you have a harsh inner critic, it is crucial to learn to accept mistakes and messiness as a natural part of the creative process. Atchity teaches how to work with the inner critic in constructive ways, including taking advantage of its critical gaze.
I still hope to discover a special “ingredient” that would save me the struggle with my fears and self-doubt. But I am also realistic about the hard emotional work that is an inevitable part of creating and reaching mastery. Like Malamud Smith, I believe the creative life, despite all the emotional storms it entails, is the best way to be absorbed in living.
References
Atchity, Kenneth. 1995. Write Time. New York: W. W. Norton Company.
Beck, Martha. 2002. Finding Your Own North Star. New York: Three Rivers Press.
Cameron, Julia. 2002. The Artist’s Way. New York: Penguin Putnam.
Malamud Smith, Janna. 2013. An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint.
Originally published 2013/09/16
Revised 2022/03/21
©Laura K Kerr, PhD. All rights reserved (applies to writing and photography).
