Therapy For Creatives

Years ago I was sitting at the pool half-watching my kids (good swimmers, don’t worry) when I opened a book a writer friend had given me. At the time I was struggling to write yet another draft of yet another novel I was feeling terrible about. I stuck one hand in the Tostitos bag and read the first sentence: “Do you treat your talent the way you were treated as a child?”

I blinked, read the sentence again, and burst into tears.

(The kids kept swimming.)

I was not misused as a child, but, like a lot of creative types, I hadn’t felt very understood. Crying, feelings — my speciality — were … annoying. In my competitive family, a “save the flies” campaign mounted by a sensitive 8 year-old received more derision than endorsements. (TBH, that might have been fair.)

When, in my 40’s, I published my book, someone asked me at a reading what it was like to write a novel. I said (hardly hesitating), “Sometimes it’s great, and sometimes it’s like being in a room with someone who knows me really well … and hates me.”

And I got knowing nods from many others — all creators — in the room.

Back to the Tostitos. This idea, about treating your talent, was a revelation to me. I had a talent? I was supposed to be relating to it in some way? And I had a choice about how to treat it?

And so I spent the next 10 years or so working in therapy (and out) on this new idea — that I could be loving, compassionate, and nurturing, — a good parent — to my “creating part.” I found out that we can’t make our inner critic go away (damn), but we could deal with it in a way that quieted it down and let us go forward. I stopped writing, to allow myself to heal from the trauma my psyche had inflicted on itself. I was happy, not writing … and so, of course, I started writing again. This time in a very different way.

But I had been so changed by Dennis Palumbo’s Writing from the Inside Out, that I became a therapist myself. I wanted to share this amazing work with other creators. I found that this idea — how you relate to all your parts deeply matters — could profoundly change nearly every aspect of a person’s life. Those of us called to artful expression need a therapy particularly attuned to helping us manage the painful doubts and fears of writing, painting, making music, or films, or whatever the creative gods are telling us to make (without necessarily telling us how to do it).

Internal family systems therapy (IFS) is a therapeutic orientation that focuses on the very process of befriending your “internal family” — all the parts, shining and shadow, that make up who you are. Your humiliated child, your ashamed teenager, your drunken aunt and your critical parent. When you learn to accept, offer compassion to, and nurture these parts, and as they quiet down, you will feel freer to take chances, to make bold moves, to appreciate instead of judge — and let yourself off the damn hook. And I believe that as we do this internal work, our growing confidence, deepening curiosity, and more compassionate connection with the world around us will be reflected in our external work as well. The external work flows from the internal.

If you’re interested in this transformative journey, I’d be honored to accompany you on it.