Creative People and Trauma

By Douglas Eby

All of us experience some kind of trauma in life. How does creative expression help people heal and recover, and how do they make use of traumatic experiences in their creative work? I think Ive spent my adult life dealing with the sense of low self-esteem that sort of implanted in me. Somehow I felt not worthy. That quote by Halle Berry about being abused as a child, indicates how much impact trauma can have. See more quotes by her below, in the section on healing and creative expression. Several years ago, I did an interview with psychologist Stephen A. Diamond that probably started my interest in this topic of trauma and creativity. [Hear my comments in the radio program excerpt under Resources below.] He writes about a number of prominent and accomplished artists who express their demons, their inner and outer conflicts, in positive ways. One example he gives is French sculptor, painter, and film maker Niki de Saint Phalle (du san fal, 1930-2002). He noted her famous shooting paintings resulted from firing live ammunition at paint-filled balloons mounted on canvas. Dr. Diamond commented that rather than becoming a crazed killer or vengeful victimizer of men, de St. Phalles fury some of which stemmed from having been sexually abused by her father fostered a fecund creativity, that served her well throughout her prolific career.

He talks about how rage, when channeled into their work, gives it the intensity and passion that performing artists such as actors and actresses seek. He also mentions that Picasso was also someone who prolifically expressed much violence and dark emotion through his work, but was, Diamond points out, also quite destructive, especially regarding the women in his life. From The Psychology of Creativity: redeeming our inner demons, an interview with Stephen A. Diamond, Ph.D. [website] Also listen to our audio interview: Stephen A. Diamond, PhD on Anger and Creativity [Photo of Niki de Saint Phalle shooting from Child of the Moon site; sculpture from 3D Research Blog.] Stephen A. Diamond is author of the book, Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity. In his brief foreword to Diamonds book, psychologist Rollo May introduces and defines the classic Greek conception of the daimonic or darker side of our being, noting that the daimonic (unlike the demonic, which is merely destructive) is as much concerned with creativity as with negative reactions. For more on the daimonic, see post Creative Passion and Gifted Adults: Prodded by Our Angelic and Demonic Muse. Psychiatrist Alice Miller said in a lecture that in her book The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness, she mentioned the severe trauma that the child Pablo Picasso underwent at the age of three: the earthquake in Malaga in 1884, the flight from the familys apartment into a cave that seemed to be more safe, and eventually witnessing the birth of his sister in the same cave under these very scary circumstances.

She adds, However, Picasso survived these traumas without later becoming psychotic or criminal because he was protected by his very loving parents [and] he was later able to express his early, frightening experiences in a creative way. From article: Alice Miller: The Childhood Trauma From a lecture she gave at the Lexington 92nd Street YWHA in New York City on October 22, 1998. Examples of artists who have experienced trauma J. K. Rowling says, I came from a difficult family. My mother was very ill, and it wasnt the easiest. When Rowling was fifteen, her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She has said her father frightened her. I did not have an easy relationship with my father Weve not had any communication for about nine years. [From a 2012 interview, quoted in post: Traumatic Childhood, Creative Adult] She was teased about her name, with schoolmates calling her Rowling Pin, she says I know what it is like to be picked on, as it happened to me, too, throughout my adolescence. Being a teenager can be completely horribleI wouldnt go back if you paid me. [From post: J.K. Rowling: an ordinary and extraordinary childhood.] Ashley Judd (a Phi Beta Kappa grad, by the way) became a hypervigilant child raising herself under unpredictable circumstances, becoming lonely, depressed, isolatedall feelings she kept under wraps for years, according to an article. [Follow link from her name to her site, where she has a post on recovery from PTSD.] In her New York Times bestselling memoir All That Is Bitter & Sweet, she reveals being sexually abused. She also noted about her family: We have come far. In our individual and collective recoveries, we have learned that mental illness and addiction are family diseases, spanning and affecting generations.

There are robust strains of each on both sides of my family manifested in just about everything from depression, suicide, alcoholism, and compulsive gambling to incest and suspected murder and these conditions have shaped my parents stories (even if some of the events did not happen directly to them) as well as my sisters and my own. [From post: Ashley Judd: If I engage in perfectionism, I am abusing myself.] Gwyneth Paltrow said she was in the throes of despair for a really long time after the death of her father. But she said it also gave her strength and made her realize that, Wait a minute, nobody is ever going to be able to take away my problemsit has to be me. "I mean, I have to love myself more than anybody else. I have to take care of myself, and I have to find the answer. [From interview: Amanda de Cadenet and Gwyneth Paltrow on Fathers, by Amanda de Cadenet.] Actors who have been suffered from being bullied in school include Zooey Deschanel, Lily Cole, and Viola Davis. Lady Gaga was bullied, even thrown into a trash can. She said, I was called really horrible, profane names very loudly in front of huge crowds of people, and my schoolwork suffered at one point. I didnt want to go to class. "And I was a straight-A student, so there was a certain point in my high school years where I just couldnt even focus on class because I was so embarrassed all the time. I was so ashamed of who I was. James Dean reportedly once told Elizabeth Taylor that he was sexually abused by a minister two years after his mothers death. Shia Labeouf started acting at age 12 to support his mother when his heroinaddicted father abandoned the family. LaBeouf has said he was subjected to verbal and mental abuse by his father, who once pointed a gun at him during a Vietnam War flashback.

Musician will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas often went hungry as a child. He had to leave home at 5 a.m. every day because he went to a school in a better area of Los Angeles than where his family lived and that meant he often missed meals. See more quotes in post: Traumatic Childhood, Creative Adult. Jennifer Lawrence ['The Hunger Games' and 'Silver Linings Playbook' says she was "a pathological liar as a kid and in elementary school, "I told everyone I had a leg problem and it required a lot of attention, my imaginary leg problem." When her mother found out about her lying she made her purge, "and I had to wrap myself up in a blanket and go underneath my bed and I had to spill out all my liesAnd now I can't lie, I get anxiety over it." [vanityfair.com and other sources] Helping recovery from trauma using creative expression Halle Berry said she recalls being terrified that her violent father, who physically abused her mother, would turn on her, adding, I think Ive spent my adult life dealing with the sense of low self-esteem that sort of implanted in me. Somehow I felt not worthy. She commented about acting in her intense movie Gothika (2003): Although physically I would feel exhausted and tired, my back would hurt, my arms would hurt and my feet would be raw from running through all the stuff, there was still something about it that felt good, like I had a cathartic experience. I got a lot of stuff out of me that was pent up in little corners of myself, so I felt good at the same time. Her comments are very meaningful to me: My fundamentalist Christian mother on several occasions became angry, even enraged over something I said, or the tone of voice I was using, that violated her standards. At least once, she whipped me with a belt, and a more than once washed my mouth out with soap as she put it: jamming a bar of soap in my mouth, while demanding something to the effect, Dont every say that again.

I am not writing about this to condemn her, or take away from all the years of loving care and support she and my dad provided but that was abusive punishment, and as with many people, it has had enduring impacts on my self esteem. As a child, Andrea Ashworth and her sisters suffered emotional, physical and sexual abuse from two stepfathers. Her memoir recounts her experiences. She went on to become one of the youngest research Fellows at Oxford University, where she earned her doctorate. In our interview, she talked about how writing the memoir Once in a House on Fire was a real sanitysaving exercise and a way to deal with her past, and then be able to move on to writing fiction. [Halle Berry and Andrea Ashworth quotes from post Creative Expression and EMDR to Deal With Trauma, PTSD and Abuse.] Roxanne Chinook is a Native American painter and has found her art helps in healing from the traumas of her past. She said The process of creating strengthens and restores my spirit, and has rendered me a relationship with the sacred. Marlene Azoulai was introduced to Art Therapy while in a psychiatric institution. She had Dissociative Identity Disorder: DID/MPD, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. I am also bipolar. I do not consider my being a multiple to be a disorder, however. I see it as an elaborate system that my/our psyche devised, in order to deal with severe trauma. She quotes Persian poet Rumi: Be a full bucket, pulled up the dark way of a well, then lifted out into light. and comments, This is what telling the truth means to me. Her site: sacredmonster.com [Above two artist quotes from the page Healing & art.]

Charlize Theron, as a teen, saw her mother shoot her father in self defense. She said in a 2004 interview that her work has helped her deal with it: I think acting has healed me. I get to let it out. I get to say it and feel it in my work and I think thats why I dont go through my life walking with this thing, and suffering. In a later newspaper interview she added more perspectives: People want to think that I am this tortured soul, that my work is drawn only from this one well. And though I would never sit here and say that it didnt mark me, or mold me into the person that I am, my life has had many painful journeys and heartbreaks since my father died, many of which I draw on for my work. Like Andrea Ashworth, many writers express traumatic experiences in their work. In her novel The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold recounted a disturbing rape scene in great detail, an experience Sebold had personally experienced herself as a young woman. In her interview article Above and beyond (The Guardian, 23 August 2002), Katharine Viner noted that the director of the movie, Peter Jackson, chose to omit this section of the book, feeling that the reenactment of the ordeal would have, not just overwhelmed the film, but been too traumatic a sequence for the young Saoirse Ronan to endure. Before the novel, Sebold had published a memoir about her rape, title Lucky and Viner comments, It is understandable that Sebold fights analysis of the parallels between getting over rape in her own life and getting over grief in The Lovely Bones artists often resist the idea that their work is informed by their experience, fearing it belittles the imagination. The suggestion some have made that The Lovely Bones is working out her rape infuriates her. First of all, therapy is for therapy, said Sebold. Leave it there. Second, because youre a rape victim, everyone wants to turn everything you do into something

therapeutic oh, I understand, going to the bathroom must be so therapeutic for you! After Id started The Lovely Bones, I decided to break off and write Lucky, to make sure that Susie wasnt saying everything that I wanted to say about violent crime and rape. OK, there arent that many women who come out and say theyve been raped who also write a novel about violence. But when people discover youre a rape victim, they decide thats all you are. As part of her recovery from a water-skiing accident and brain surgery, actor and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg [in French something like 'ganz bur'] was evaluated with MRI scans, which can involve weird mechanical noises up to the intensity of a jet plane taking off. Her album, developed with Beck, is titled IRM derived from the French for MRI. Read more in post: Charlotte Gainsbourg: MRI scans and vulnerability. When actor Charlotte Rampling was 20 years old, her elder sister Sarah killed herself after giving birth prematurely and losing her child. Rampling was devastated by this loss, which she experienced as an abandonment by her sister. Many years later she made a film in which her character was named Sarah. SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) is an artist and bestselling author of fifteen books. She is an acclaimed speaker and teacher, and CEO and founder of Planet SARK, a business that promotes empowered living, and her writings and artwork. Im a survivor of incest. That was a period of seven years and it pretty much, at that point, destroyed my life. Then, from the ages of 14 to 26, I had 250 different jobs because I was trying to figure out what I was supposed to do [with my life]. During that time period I was also living a very selfdestructive life and I wasnt at all creative in any kind of physically manifested way. At 26 I finally turned to dedicate myself to art and writing, and proceeded for the next ten years to be rejected in every way that you could be. She said she knows that art is healing because of how it heals me and how I see it healing other people every day. Through art, we come alive through the deep connections to our souls and spirits.

From post: Healing and art: SARK and others on abuse and creativity. Director Allison Anders made her film Things Behind the Sun as a way to deal with her rape. The late actor Charles Durning killed a German soldier in hand-to-hand combat during World War II. After killing the boy, who may have been 14 or 15, Durning said in an article, he held him in his arms and wept. He said the memories never left him, even when performing, even when he became, however briefly, someone else. There are many secrets in us, in the depths of our souls, that we dont want anyone to know about, he told Parade magazine. Theres terror and repulsion in us, the terrible spot that we dont talk about. That place that no one knows about horrifying things we keep secret. A lot of that is released through acting. [From Charles Durning, Prolific Character Actor, Dies at 89, by Robert Berkvist, The New York Times, December 25, 2012.] Jonathan Safran Foer: A colourful and yet sensitive child, Foer attended Georgetown Day School, where he was injured at the age of eight in a classroom chemical accident. 'The accident resulted in something like a nervous breakdown drawn out over about three years, which left him wanting nothing but to be outside his own skin. From Biography on his site jonathansafranfoer.blogspot.com Photo also used in post: Dealing with self sabotage: Getting beyond impostor feelings. More sensitive more vulnerable Being highly sensitive probably increases our vulnerability to anxiety. Im sure that has been the case for me, and I have had varying degrees of anxiety for most of my life.

Elaine Aron, PhD thinks high sensitivity increases the impact of all emotionally tinged events, making childhood trauma particularly scarring. [From the post Elaine Aron on High Sensitivity and the Undervalued Self - about her new book.] That is a helpful concept, I think: that being highly sensitive increases the potency of any experiences with emotional elements. In her book The Highly Sensitive Child, Aron notes that some sensitive adolescents may drink and use drugs to try to overcome anxiety or depression through self-medication. Also see my article Gifted, Talented, Addicted. But even if anxiety doesnt get so extreme we feel a need to self-medicate or get professional help, feeling anxious adds to our unease and general discomfort with situations and other people and ourselves. Read more in the post Sensitive to anxiety on my Highly Sensitive site.

Things can happen to you, but they dont have to happen to your soul. Jennifer Lawrence [imdb.com] Photo: Jennifer Lawrence as Tiffany, and Bradley Cooper as her bipolar friend Pat, rehearsing for their dance competition in Silver Linings Playbook a wonderful, nuanced movie about, among other things, people using therapy,

medication, creativity and positive attitudes to deal with their traumas and mental health problems. You can get the DVD on Amazon.com. Read comments about the author of the novel Matthew Quick in my post Can Depression Help People Be More Creative? Part 2. Getting past pain to be more creative In her article Affect Regulation and the Creative Artist, psychologist Cheryl Arutt writes that Many creative people carry the belief that their pain is the locus of their creativity, and worry that they will lose their creativity if they work through their inner conflicts or let go of suffering. Learning how to regulate internal states, how and when to use self-soothing techniques, and how to know when we are actually safe these are key to emotional well-being for anyone, but for artists, they are especially useful. The ability to self-regulate provides an all-access pass for traveling the internal world, allowing the artist to mine for the gems that can be found there . . . without losing touch with the light of day. Articles by Cheryl Arutt Cheryl Arutt, Psy.D. : her specialties include creative artist issues and trauma. Site: www.drcherylarutt.com // Facebook.com/DrArutt Podcast: Psychologist Cheryl Arutt on Creative Artist Issues Excerpt from newer and much longer audio interview: See more about the long [48'] interview in post: Psychologist Cheryl Arutt on Mental Health and Creative People. Trauma in fiction In her article 3 Things To Learn From The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo A Gifted Trauma Survivor, Lisa Erickson, MS, LMHC writes about Lisbeth Salander the fictional heroine of Steig Larssons trilogy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest.

As the heroine, Lisbeth Salander embodies certain characteristics of giftedness, and these characteristics help her survive terrible, long-term physical, sexual and emotional abuse Lisbeth Salander survives traumas that might lead to addiction or the suicide of a less resilient character. "Giftedness contributes to her resiliency by aiding her problem solving, which increases her ability to cope. ~~ Resources Radio show: CHANGING DIRECTION [formerly "YOUR LIFE AFTER TRAUMA"] a weekly radio program hosted by Michele Rosenthal. I was a guest on the show, in the episode Creativity & Trauma: A Powerful Combination. Follow link to hear the full length program. The other guest was Dr. Marlo Archer, CP, PAT, a psychologist who uses psychodrama. Related articles on expressive arts therapy by Natalie Rogers, PhD: Giving Life to Carl Rogers Theory of Creativity Person-centered Expressive Arts Therapy Books: Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy, by Francine Shapiro, PhD. Before the World Intruded: Conquering the Past and Creating the Future, A Memoir) by Michele Rosenthal. Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, SelfImage, and the Capacity for Relationship, by Laurence Heller Ph.D., Aline Lapierre Psy.D.

Articles etc: Traumatic Childhood, Creative Adult. Dealing with trauma and abuse to live a bigger, more creative life Tips of Helping Gifted, Highly Sensitive Teens & Kids Cope with Trauma by Sharon M. Barnes, MSSW, LCSW, on the SENG site. Post: Psychotherapist Sarah Chana Radcliffe on technologies for growth. Building Your Confidence from Scratch (a Personal Confession) By Emilie Wapnick - Ive written before about my experiences with childhood bullying. Its something that a lot of multipotentialites seem to have experienced (apparently when you do origami at recess and play violin in an orchestra, other kids think youre weird) Actors and Addiction Art Saved My Life The Alchemy of Art SARK on Healing and Creativity

Lily Cole and gifted kids being bullied Creative Expression and EMDR to Deal With Trauma, PTSD and Abuse. If Youre So Smart, Why Do You Need Counseling? by Deborah L. Ruf, Ph.D. On The Couch for More Creativity Facing Our Demons And Creating Art Mental Health posts

>> Also see my Scoop.it collection on Mental Health & Creativity Trauma posts The One Thing Your Psychiatrist Wont Tell You About Mental Illness, by Neseret Bemient. - Your psychiatrist may give you a diagnosis of anxiety, depression, bipolar, personality disorder, schizophrenia, eating disorder, addictionand the list goes on. The truth of the matter is underlying all of these and thousands of other psychiatric diagnosis is trauma. Main site: Talent Development Resources