Creative Shame 😳

No Creative Expression = Depression

Hello everybody,

Struggling with your creativity?

I am.

Perhaps you feel a bit lost and aimless.

I do.

You may be experiencing creative shame.

Yeah, me too.

This is normal.

Our creative identity is wrapped up in expressing ourselves.

When we can’t, we experience shame.

TLDR

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

We NEED human connection.

This explains our distaste for small talk and our craving for deep conversation.

Mainstream society labels this as oversharing; I call it connecting.

Being creative is an act of spiritual generosity. By sharing our stories, we help others not feel alone.

We connect through stories.

If we don’t exercise our creative power, we feel lonely. Not just on a human level but deep in our souls.

If we don’t express ourselves creatively, we suppress our true selves. When we’re not aligned creatively, we get depressed.

We dim our lights. We isolate. We smother our creativity inside a box

Creative shame isolates us emotionally. Creatively. Spiritually.

Our inner critic fabricates stories.

Shame is an old Saxon word for “covering” or “hiding.”

Our inner critics LOVE this.

They gorge on our insecurities and spew relentless bile on mental loops.

This is true of all creative people.

The more successful they are, the less worthy they feel and the bigger the creative blocks.

“When you’re living for the approval of strangers, and that’s where you derive all of your joy and fulfilment, one bad thing can cause everything to crumble.” — Taylor Swift

“I had enormous self-image problems and very low self-esteem, which I hid behind obsessive writing and performing. I really felt so utterly inadequate.” — David Bowie

For me, it’s creative overwhelm.

I create intuitively from curiosity or anxiety.

If something doesn’t feel authentic, I don’t post it.

I start an article on Monday morning. I write for a couple of hours every morning, creatively pottering about. Then I edit on Friday or Saturday and post it.

The world is on fire.

Monday, I’m anxious about the war, so I start writing about that.

Tuesday, I’m anxious about AI, so I flip to that.

Wednesday, I’m anxious about the national UK Meningitis B outbreak.

Thursday, I meet up with a former client (Hi Suze 👋) who’s super positive, and I feel like writing an inspirational article.

Friday, I’m anxious about the war again.

Our sensitivity is what makes us creative, but it’s harder to live in the world.

When the world is on fire, we’re all over the place emotionally. I don’t know which emotion to channel.

If I’m overwhelmed emotionally, I’m overwhelmed creatively.

So I shut down.

I need to work on this.

When stuck, it’s almost always because of shame or fear. Write about the shame wound to liberate yourself from it.

When you have writer’s block, write about the writer’s block.

Talk about it. Write about it. Make songs about it. Paint about it. Make videos about it

Purge the shame.

Once it’s spoken, it’s no longer shameful. It’s no longer hidden, and you can move forward.

It works.

It gets us out of our heads.

It gets us unstuck.

I’m doing it right now!

If you resonate with this, you don’t need to publish your work. Simply journaling morning pages style will help you process emotions.

If you don’t, you’ll end up with the same shame loops.

Go create.