Challenges for Creative People
Creativity is a tremendous gift that is so important in our world today. At the same time, I would argue that our society is relatively poorly set up to support and nurture creative people. Highly creative people have to wrestle with a number of challenges that, in my view, are not talked about very often and are not well understood. When we’ve been in the dark for so long, merely hearing these issues articulated can be valuable. The sooner that we understand them and start dealing with them, the further we will be on our path toward all the clarity, fulfillment, and success that we want. The purpose of this article is to help you think about these issues so that you can fulfill your purpose, reach your full potential, and maximize your contribution.
A quick note on definitions: I hesitate to draw this distinction between “creative people” and others, given that, as Sir Ken Robinson points out, we are all creative. Nevertheless, some people do have more creative temperaments than others and this has significant implications for their well-being and the realization of their potential. To be clear, I am not saying that these people are better than anyone else. We all have gifts and challenges in different places.
Creative People and Systems
Many of the challenges that creative people face stem from the fact that creative people don’t fit well within systems. Systems by definition cannot evaluate creative people and they cannot nurture them. That’s because creative people do new things. And they engage in all of the behaviors that go along with this, like questioning authority and sticking out from the crowd. In contrast, systems channel people towards doing existing things.
Unfortunately, creative people can’t avoid being processed by systems.
Every child is required by law to attend the school system. But for creative people, the school system can be very destructive.
We’re also born into another system known as the family system. Families have multigenerational trauma and often very rigid cultures. Creative people often have a greater awareness of these things, and sometimes have the courage (and need) to question and challenge them. Creative people often are seeing and experiencing the world around them at a level of depth that is not seen, tolerated, or nurtured by their family environment.
And if a creative individual has issues with either of these systems, they will likely be forced to interface with the mental health system. This is another system that doesn’t fit creative people very well, in my opinion. In particular, the mental health system will take these very nuanced issues that creative people are dealing with (that have to do with their interactions with their environment), and slap a diagnostic label on them - essentially labeling them as diseased or disordered. By medicalizing and decontextualizing our experience, we are disempowered from actually dealing with our true situation. This also stigmatizes and silences us, which marginalizes and limits our contributions.
In general, systems tell people what they must do and define the reality they occupy. They delineate things like how to get rewarded and what the punishments for non-compliance are. Thus, systems channel people into already existing pathways of living. They tell people pretty much exactly what they need to do. This doesn’t work for creative people because creative people do new things. They might create new systems, but they won’t thrive in old ones.
Something that may obscure understanding of this issue is that, in our culture we often have sterilized ideas of creativity. This can ultimately serve to confuse and marginalize creative people. Creativity often gets defined quite narrowly. For example, there might be art classes in the school system. This then allows authority figures to say that creativity is valued and fostered, even if, say, the art classes themselves, like the rest of school, are about obeying orders. But true creativity isn’t really about what you do, in such a narrow sense. Creativity is about doing new things. It’s about discovery. So, here is an example where systems have defined even creativity, in a way that doesn’t necessarily work for creative people.
Because creative people stand outside of the status quo, they often face a dilemma between following their true selves and getting along in the world as it exists. In other words, they grapple with: “Do I be who I am and not survive, or do I abandon who I am and my soul will die?” If this describes you, don’t worry, there are ways to work through this.
Because of this issue, free and tolerant societies are those that are able to foster creativity well. More repressive societies are horrible for creative people. And as you can see, even many of the systems in relatively free societies can be very repressive. For example, the school system is extremely authoritarian.
Additionally, the level of awareness of the environment matters when it comes to fostering creativity. Environments that have more awareness around dealing with emotional reactivity and becoming conscious of underlying pain are better for creativity. Environments characterized by denial in this regard are worse for creativity. This is because when creative people do things in the world that displace or challenge existing systems or ways of thinking, they trigger emotional reactivity in people. When people have invested their whole lives into some kind of paradigm, their egos are invested in it and will defend it. Therefore, if people have the awareness to transcend this reactivity when it arises, they will be less likely to attempt to suppress creative people. If they are in denial of that emotional reactivity in themselves and suppress it, then they will make their feelings about the creative person, and try to deny and suppress them. It will just be their automatic, conditioned response. This kind of self-awareness or “spiritual” work is important for both creative and non-creative people. Check out more articles on this here.
It’s important to understand that institutions and systems function well, at least in the short term, when humans are highly standardized. Many intellectuals have remarked that our school system is designed, not to truly educate people, but to fashion them so that they fit into the status quo. They create standardized human resources, to be inputs for other systems. Creative people can only survive in these systems if they abandon who they are, and exert an enormous amount of effort to modify themselves to fit in the system. But doing this makes them die inside and squanders their potential.
Creative people achieve their potential when they claim their own inner authority. When they decide for themselves what is true, what is worth doing, etc. Systems tend to reject this and force people to accept an external authority’s claims over these domains. Not only do you have to accept another’s idea of what is true, but you also have to obey their orders.
Creative people are also at odds with systems because they question authority. How can you explore and articulate the unknown if you can’t question the known? You can’t. But if you grow up in a school system, for example, where this is practically criminalized, then you can’t step into your potential as a creative person.
Creative people and the Mental Health System
Another challenge for creative people is that, when they are forced into systems that are harmful to them, they can have a variety of negative reactions. This variety of ways that creative people manifest their not fitting into existing systems that they are forced into is wildly misunderstood in our culture. These manifestations are arranged into constructs that help to perpetuate the status quo of those systems, rather than meeting the true needs of people.
The mental health system plays a central role in this phenomenon by labeling the suffering individual as inherently disordered. It does this, as opposed to understanding and dealing with the underlying issue, which would implicate the environment. This approach stigmatizes and marginalizes the creative person, while shoring up the status quo and making life easier for those in charge.
For example, in my view, ADHD symptoms are a common manifestation of creative people not fitting into (outdated) systems. In my opinion, there is a very large number of situations that can lead to so-called ADHD symptoms, including:
A dysfunctional family, where the creative person is feeling the truth of what’s going on, that people are in denial of.
Being forced submit to the school system, which can be very painful when it squanders our potential and dumbs us down.
The existential panic of being misunderstood by one’s environment.
Or a creative individual might be diagnosed with “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” because their difficult emotions haven’t been mirrored properly. Thus, the individual struggles to sufficiently self-soothe difficult emotions. Even though that emotional depth is a very valuable gift in many ways, if you don’t have parents that can attune to you, it can lead to issues like anxiety or depression.
Or one could get an “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” diagnosis. This might not really be oppositionality, but rather a person reacting to being forced to act against their own interests. Is it really pathological to resist an authority figure in such a situation? Should we really accept authoritarians’ explanation of such a situation?
The story here is that the mental health system often doesn’t work for creative people because it doesn’t reflect the truth of what’s going on for us. And this dynamic alone can cause anger and reactivity because there are people with power over us who lack the awareness or insight to understand what’s actually going on for us. I describe this phenomenon in more detail here.
Particularly as children, these diagnoses can make us think there’s something wrong with us, when in reality we’re just coming up against a world that doesn’t understand us nor is suited to us. And as a creative person, your task is, in part, to validate yourself, heal yourself, empower yourself, and, possibly, help to build new systems that serve people better.
As you can see, the people that more seamlessly fit into and perpetuate the status quo erect these stories about creative people based on a complete misunderstanding of them. These people may see all the things the creative people do as a part of something wrong with them – the not wanting to merely conform to systems, the thinking differently, the questioning things, the possible mental health symptoms of alienation. And with these narratives, they often project their own shame, that they’re in denial of, onto these creative people. The most dangerous thing for a creative person is to buy into these stories and accept these peoples’ authority. We can get very brainwashed by this if we don’t have anyone around us to validate the truth of it.
Other Challenges for Creative People
Connection to one’s gut feelings is incredibly important for creative people. Creativity happens largely by following one’s intuition - and intuition is a feeling-based faculty. The challenge is that we live in a world where disconnection from one’s feelings and body is the norm. Our society is very much focused on cognition, thinking, and ego. Creativity, on the other hand, is about feeling, intuition, and the heart. These are dismissed and belittled in our culture. Thus, this is another important area in which creative people are likely not supported or understood by their environment. It can also be scary to step into this way of operating in the world, because it’s different from the social norm, and nonconformity can be very difficult.
Along with this, if we can’t be with our feelings and nurture them, we can get hurt. This can then be misunderstood and pathologized by our mental health system.
A pattern for creative people is that they often need different frameworks and paradigms for life than their environment offers. This is a central aspect of what makes being a creative individual difficult. One key paradigm in our culture is that health and wellbeing are defined in terms of conformity. It’s about conforming to the narrow metrics of your environment. And the mental health industry largely functions to help people adjust to the status quo.
This is a phenomenon that Erich Fromm wrote about in his magnum opus, The Sane Society. The mental health industry will, for the most part, make the situation about why there’s something wrong with you for not conforming. It will assume that you not fitting in is evidence of your pathology, when the truth is that being forced to fit in is the cause of your “pathology”. But creative people by definition don’t conform. Rather than fitting in and conforming, creative people fulfill their purpose when they realize their uniqueness and then find belonging that follows from this. They don’t find true belonging by finding a corner of the status quo to fit in, abandoning who they truly are to do so.
As a creative person, you are by definition seeing the world differently. It could be in a deeper way, a more comprehensive way, a more holistic way, a more critically thinking way, or maybe a more truth-seeking way. While this is a huge gift, it can create problems for us that we need to heal. If as a child, there are people with power over you who can’t mirror who you truly are, and maybe are invalidating or trying to have you conform to how they think, then you will be hurt.
Creative people have to navigate a world that, in many ways, can be soul-killing. The current social order and culture is not particularly helpful for creative people (worse in some places than others). Yet for the sake of the future of our species, we need to work towards changing this. It is through creativity that we will solve the massive challenges we face as a species.
