Creativity and Trauma Healing

Post-traumatic growth has a glow and vibrancy to it. Food tastes better. The world looks more colorful. It feels good to be alive. But with the flood of goodness that comes with trauma healing, one area is often overlooked.  

We expect our relationships to get better, and they do.

We anticipate how good it will be to feel safe and at home in our bodies, and it does.

We look forward to all the things we’ll experience, with our newfound inner peace and happiness.

The journey has remarkable rewards. But one area we tend to neglect is the return to creativity.

We tend to shrug off the impulses to create, to make messy art, to dance ridiculously with our friends, or do anything that's not productive.

It's easy to ignore the parts of us that long to paint something (we don't know what), to write a poem (it might be bad), or sing (we might sound terrible). In this new terrain of healing, creativity of any kind can feel a little too risky.

The Inner Critic part of us doesn’t want to do anything that makes us look foolish or waste our time. But when we let this part lead, we silence the quiet urge to spend hours cooking our favorite meal, to spend the afternoon coloring or reading books, or ambling outside with no destination.

"Better not to risk it," we say inside. "Things are going so well. Don’t ask for too much."

We might settle for the existing goodness — and it's good. Our relationships deepen. We fall even more in love with our partner. We find new purpose in our work. We have more fun with our friends. We give ourselves more time to enjoy life.

But we tend to neglect our creativity, because this part of our self-expression doesn’t feel safe enough.

How the Stress Response Impacts Creativity

When we’re in a stress or trauma response, our creativity is starved of life force and attention.

With unresolved trauma, it's easy to neglect creativity entirely. Our nervous systems are in overwhelm and it feels like too much to do anything fun or creative.

Of course, some of the best art comes from the pressure of personal challenges. The creativity forged from the fire of intensity can be a powerful path to healing.

But the creativity I'm talking about is the kind we do just for fun — like fingerpainting, decorating an elaborate cake, or writing a short story. There's no purpose or end goal for this kind of joyful self-expression, which is why it’s often sacrificed for more practical purposes.

Most of us aren’t aware that, when we want to be creative, our nervous system activates a stress response. Creativity is edgy and uncertain, so our nervous system interprets it as danger.

For those of us with unresolved trauma, the stress response reminds us of the overactivation of a trauma cycle. It's the same pattern, with less intensity. But to the nervous system, danger is danger. 

The fight, flight, freeze, and appease stress responses all interrupt our creativity. And as part of trauma healing, we can navigate these stress responses to recover our creative joy.

If we don't, we miss out on a beautiful part of post-traumatic growth. We bypass the chance to revisit and recover the things we used to love. We neglect to explore the things we've always wanted to try, the things that feel intimidating or out of reach.

How to Work Through a Creativity-Induced Stress Response

When a stress response interrupts our creativity, the best thing to do is move through it. We can work with the nervous system to get to the other side. We don’t want to fight it, but rather find ways to complete the cycle and return to our center, where we feel safe and empowered to create.  

1.   The Fight Stress Response

The fight stress response shows up as the Inner Critic that kicks in when we get close to creativity. The voice of the Inner Critic broadcasts loud and clear to our inner system, "What do you think you're doing? Who do you think you are? Do you think anyone will care what you make? You're not creative. What you make won't ever be special..." And on and on and on. Once we start identifying the voice of our Inner Critics, we often find they have predictable things to say.

The Inner Critic is threatened by creativity because it sees creative self-expression as risky. This part of our psyche is trying its best to protect us from humiliation and ruin. When we’re in full creative flow, we’re in a place of uncertainty, following our instincts and our vision, wherever it takes us. This scares the Critic part, who is trying to maintain control and safety.

Instead of fighting the Critic, we can ask it to give us space, a little at a time, until it can see clearly that we’re safe. This inner dialogue requires you to see the Inner Critic as a part of you, separate from our conscious awareness. Sometimes it takes a minute to update its narrative, but it only wants the best for us.  

2.   The Flight Stress Response

The flight stress response makes us avoidant of anything that resembles creativity. We procrastinate. We leave no time for our creativity. Whenever we get close, other things suddenly become more important. Often, we won't even let ourselves taste creative self-expression because we’re afraid we might lose control. It feels safer to avoid creativity entirely. Even if it means neglecting our joy.

Not making time to be creative is common, with the flight stress response. This is painful for our creative parts. We might have our paints out on the desk but never use them. We say we want to draw, but we don't make time to do it. We tell ourselves we're too busy or have too many responsibilities. But what about our responsibility to what brings us joy?

The way through the flight stress response is to schedule extremely short periods of creativity. Write a three-line poem. Sing for one minute. Dance for 30 seconds. It won’t seem like “enough,” but that’s not the point. We’re showing our nervous system we can be safe and creative at the same time, so it can update with the new experience.

3.   The Freeze Stress Response

The freeze response in often described in creativity as being blocked. Our nervous system kicks in because the freedom and flow of self-expression feels dangerous after the confines of trauma. The excitement we feel at creating something fun can read as stress and anxiety to an undifferentiated nervous system.

But freeze is just a sign we don't feel safe. The project or activity feels too risky. And if we don’t coax our nervous system through the freeze, it takes over. It's too much for our nervous systems, so we shut down.

Instead of making this wrong, it's more effective to work with the freeze by undertaking creativity in the smallest possible doses. Draw for 30 seconds, no longer. Write a poem in three lines. Dance for only one minute of a song. Slowly, gently, show your nervous system that expressing your creativity is not going to hurt you.

4.   The Appease Stress Response

The appease (or fawn, or people-please) stress response looks like perfectionism and is an easy one to get stuck in. We let ourselves create, but only if what we create is immediately perfect (which is impossible).

The appease stress response starves creativity of its flow and life force. It judges, it fusses, it worries what other people will think. It looks like we’re giving ourselves permission but there’s no room for play, error, or messy art.

When we let this stress response impact our creative self-expression, we cut off our enjoyment of the process. We feel like nothing we do will ever be good enough, because nothing we make can be perfect. The only solution to this is to embrace the dance, the noise, and the mess. The journey is the destination.

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If we don't explore creativity as part of healing, we miss the self-exploration that’s a rewarding part of post-traumatic growth.

Trauma shuts us out of life. Healing lets the wonder and the adventure in again. And it can be fun.

What activities did you used to love that you no longer do? What have you wanted to try but not given yourself permission to do? What feels a little scary, but also exciting, at the same time? Explore things you never thought you would.

Reading a community center's course catalog can be a great way to jumpstart this. So can searching Instagram for "lessons” on the topic you want to learn online.

Make messy art. Play with no goal in sight. Create for the joy of creating. Get messy, have fun, lose track of time. Letting ourselves be imperfect is healing.

Although the creative part of us might feel like it's disappeared, it's never gone. Once we learn to anticipate and navigate the stress response that comes with creativity, we’ll discover it’s been waiting for us all along.

Happy creating

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