Overcoming Creative Blocks

Sometimes in my work as a therapist I come across a client with passion and a sense of calling: they desire to live the productive life that God created them for. I love this, and I want to help them achieve this end! Perhaps they want to start a non-profit or publish a blog. Perhaps they want to thrive in their parachurch ministry, or in their demanding but rewarding career.

The Block

But then something gets in the way for my client: a set of emotions that seem to be an unwelcome obstacle to their productivity. A “mental health” problem so to speak. It’s a block of some sort that seems to quell creativity and erode the client’s ability to function optimally.

Perhaps it’s grief over past trauma or present suffering. Perhaps it’s the nagging depression that threatens to drag them into a downward spiral they will never recover from. Perhaps it’s the burden of caring about a family member who is suffering emotionally or physically. Whatever the situation, it appears to the client to be an unnecessary and inconvenient entanglement. The client wants to shed this “extra weight” of pain and be free to focus on the present creative project.

Suppression and Depression

My heart goes out to such clients when they walk into my therapy office. They long to draw from a deep well of creativity but cannot seem to see past their pain.

Slowly and gently, I have to help the client understand that what’s wrong is not their emotions, but their approach to their emotions.

Too often, we think that getting rid of our feelings is the solution. But getting rid of our feelings is an illusion; at most we can disconnect from and suppress them. Do you know what this results in? Depression. The depressed version of ourselves has cut off our ability to feel the deepest pain and grief. But in doing so, we have chopped off a part of ourselves. And now we are trying to be creative with only a truncated personhood. We have handicapped ourselves.

Emotions as Creative Fuel

I want something different for my clients: creativity and wholeness IN suffering.

The solution to a creative block isn’t getting rid of confusing emotions. It’s bringing them up to the surface to be examined and tenderly attended to. It’s figuring out what is at their root and crying out to God for a renewed mind and a heart of flesh rather than a heart of stone (Ezek. 36). It’s settling into a new way of being that is humble and broken and capable of connection. it’s feeling through them to the empathic connections that can be made with others in their suffering: a depth of feeling that fuels creativity rather than quashing it.

Only then will our whole selves be online to be at our creative peak.

Some life situations that cause us pain are fixable, others are not. It takes wisdom to know the difference. But to reach our callings while living in this broken world, we must allow ourselves to be present to our suffering and feel the Holy Spirit’s wind beneath our tattered wings.