THE NEGATIVE AFFECTS OF DENYING YOUR CREATIVITY

Many, many years ago, I walked away. from a dance career and ultimately my creativity when I left an audition for the Academy Awards in tears. I had blown the audition. Claude Thompson – master instructor and choreographer, was in charge of the audition and choreography of the awards show. 
I had taken many master classes with Claude and I knew his technique and style.  He even looked at me quizzically afterwards. I stumbled out of the audition blind from the tears that coursed down my face. 

Many years later, I am feeling the affects of denying my creativity and the many gifts God bestowed on me.  Fear, rage, and depression have kept me from drawing, teaching and choreographing dance, and singing. The only creative thing I have done was write; which is not enough for me.  As a result, I have experienced swollen glands and throat, tooth and gum problems, and pain in my jaw, and stuttering.

Chakras are energy centers that are spread throughout the body. There are seven chakras that interact with one another.  When they are out of sync, they can impact us negatively - emotionally, physically, and psychologically. Each chakra is associated with particular functions within the body and with specific life issues and the way we handle them, both inside ourselves and in our interactions with the world. As centers of force, chakras can be thought of as sites where we receive, absorb, and distribute life energies. Through external situations and internal habits, such as long-held physical tension and limiting self-concepts, a chakra can become either deficient or excessive—and therefore imbalanced.

The throat chakra governs self - expression, communication of feelings, speaking the truth, and holding secrets.  When the throat chakra is out of whack; it can affect your creativity, open the door for addictions, and negatively influence your decision, faith, and criticism monitors.  Anger is also stored in the throat.

Fear of retribution often kept me from expressing myself at my work and living situations.  Now I am more honest with myself and others, I journal, blog, and express my self more creatively.  I am planning a space in my new apartment that I am moving into just for my creative projects.  Do not deny your creativity!  Express yourself.  Do not allow depression, rage, and fear stop you from being an authentic, creative, and purposeful human being!

SOURCES:  www.eclecticenergies.com

                     www.mindbodygreen.com

                     www.healing.about.com/od/chakratheseven/a/study7chakras

                     www.threeheartscompany.com/chakra

                     www.yogajournal.com

          

 

The Blog, Black and Blue is not a substitute for direct, personal, professional mental medical care and diagnosis. None of the advice, or natural therapies and supplements mentioned should be used without clearance from your physician or mental health care provider. The information contained within this blog is not intended to provide specific physical or mental health advice, or any other advice whatsoever, for any individual or company and should not be relied upon in that regard. I am not a licensed mental health therapist and nothing on this website should be misconstrued to mean otherwise.

THE DARK SIDE OF BEING CREATIVE AND GIFTED

Singer Phyllis Hyman

 

Psychologists have been fascinated by the link between creativity and mental

illness. The earliest and most rudimentary studies examined eminent people across fields including literature and the arts.  These studies found that creatives had an unusually high number of mood disorders. Charles Dickens, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O'Neill all appeared to suffer from clinical depression. So too did Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy and Virginia Woolf. Sylvia Plath famously took her own life by sticking her head in an oven while her two children slept. 

Research has found that people working in creative fields, including dancers, photographers and authors, were 8% more likely to live with bipolar disorder. Creativity is often part of a mental illness, with writers particularly susceptible, according to a study of more than a million people. Writers were a staggering 121% more likely to suffer from the condition, and nearly 50% more likely to commit suicide than the general population.  They also found that people in creative professions were more likely to have relatives with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anorexia and autism. Artistic women such as Janet Jackson, Halle Berry, and Beverly Johnson dealt with depression. Phyllis Hyman was also known to suffer from manic depression and ultimately committed suicide.

Mary Rocamora, who counsels gifted people and heads a Los Angeles school that attracts gifted and talented adults, says those "who are passionately engaged with their talent,but are constantly separated from the creative experience by relentless self-criticism, self-doubt, and feelings of inferiority often suffer from depression and the periodic shutting down of their spontaneous creative impulses. "The drive to express their inner creativity is heightened in many gifted individuals, and when the drive to create meets the wall of shame, it implodes into numbness, rage, depression, and hopelessness."

Phyllis Hyman

                                                  

Sources:

www.cnn.com

www.bbc.com

www.thecreativemind.net

The Blog, Black and Blue is not a substitute for direct, personal, professional mental medical care and diagnosis. None of the advice, or natural therapies and supplements mentioned should be used without clearance from your physician or mental health care provider. The information contained within this blog is not intended to provide specific physical or mental health advice, or any other advice whatsoever, for any individual or company and should not be relied upon in that regard. I am not a licensed mental health therapist and nothing on this website should be misconstrued to mean otherwise.