Over the years I have worked with many practicing artists as regular clients at my psychotherapy office. If you are one of them, forgive me this enjoyable general write-up about serving the mental health needs of the artistic community.  I do love to.  If you are not one of them, may you still find some illuminating reading here.  If you want to be one of them, what are you waiting for?  Let’s care for your muse! Actually, let’s care for your muse no matter who you are, because I’ll bet on it that you have one.

You have one, because there are, of course, many ways to be “creative”.  Even restricting creativity to formal expressions of it in “The Arts” is a bit misleading about the role daring self-expression plays; can play; and best plays in everyday life.  But the great thing about working with Artists who more or less identify with that title is that their chosen practice of creativity puts the general principles of all creativity into high relief, the better to examine, emulate, and encourage in everyone.  I have banked a lot of time with artists as a teacher and counselor.  I ended up in those roles by first being an artist myself.  

What does all that connection to the art process show me? Firstly, that the art process is in fact exactly that: a process. For the muse to inspire most, it requires an orientation of deep involvement.  One does best to love the process itself.  One must train oneself to prioritize the experience of making the art as the paramount concern, not secondary to reaching the results.  Imagine if you behaved that way in your daily life. Imagine the flow of ordinary experience as captivating and meaningful, just because it is happening, not because it leads anywhere or resolves anything.  With that point of view, you are likely to hear the joyful laughter of your muse in your heart, and laugh along with it.

Artistic practice also accelerates or refines one’s contact with the obstacles we all have to face if we want to find personal growth and well-being. It is a precious crucible in this fashion.  The things we all put in our own way on the road to contentment come sharply into focus in the pure reflective surface of regular artistic activity.  Artists promptly and inevitably grapple with the deepest human questions pertaining to self and the world.  Am I good enough?  How do I fit in overall? How is it possible not to and why is that interest valuable and necessary? What purpose do I serve?  Who and what am I underneath what I presently assume about myself?  That last one is where art admits its own purpose as a spiritual quest.  I suggest it is one, if we are calling it Art.

This suggestion is ultimately why creativity and psychotherapy marry so well.  As artists build real commitment to their craft, they meet its chief  requirement to open themselves more and more deeply.  These openings are not incremental for the personality, but typically dissolve it to varying degrees. That clearing function is liberating, but also daunting, and it operates best with good company to support and affirm it.  The artist is not going through something other people never will or never can, but often going there faster, and much more unmistakably.  When artists know and embrace that aspect of their situation, the stakes then multiply further.  So too does the creative contact with life.