29 September 2025

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Working With Artists

When I’m not working as a Registered Psychotherapist, I make time for my creative practice, namely writing. I’m a published novelist, short fiction author and essayist, and I’ve been writing since I was very young (though, it should be noted, I only had my first piece published when I was in my mid-40s). Writing is very dear to me, as it has a lot to do with communicating ideas as much as it does telling stories. I mention this because having a creative practice is more than just scribbling. In short, there’s intent behind it; not necessarily to get published, have work shown in a gallery, or have one’s play produced. The intent is to get closer to what it is that you’re trying to distill, or “say.” It’s laborious, even if you’re talented.

In working with clients I kinda prefer the more neutral phrase “having a creative practice” rather than “being an artist” because the latter title can feel weighty and intimidating. Having a creative practice can be a way to make sense of the world around us, or to sort through our own thoughts in a way that is less tangled than what swirls through our heads when we aren’t attempting to articulate it. Some of what we create can be uplifting and supportive, other times it can be stormy and sullen. I think there can be a tendency among those to whom a creative practice is either new or has never been encouraged (say, when we were growing up) to ask ourselves “What am I even doing here?” In other words, a sense of lacking of purpose.

Having a creative practice is made more thorny, to put it lightly, by the constraints of our hyper-capitalist environment where we are constantly being told to lean in or be resilient in the face of economic precarity, smeared boundaries between work and personal life, and rising expenses without commensurate increase in free time or salary. One may ask “Who has time for art?” and that is not a small question, nor is the existential threat of generative AI and its imposition on those of us who just want to create without using a half-blind genie to help us along the way.

There can be so much pressure to succeed in our careers–even if “success” is just putting food on the table–that to speak with others (friends, family) and open up about art-making might seem intimidating, as if we’re talking about some arcane topic that no one can relate to. This is why I like working with artists, whether that’s with a capital-A or not. Artists regularly work with not-knowing: the blank page, the empty canvas, the DSLR sitting unused in the corner of the room. They create from nothing and bring forth shapes and forms, and ask questions that can be challenging to approach. Particularly given how streamlined the world would like us to be sometimes, doing the challenging, the weird, the provocative or vulnerably leaning into unapologetic celebrations of beauty can damn well be a form of rebellion.

But sometimes we need help. Sometimes it’s hard to accept what we’re creating, whether its because part of us attaches unhealthy language around it, like “selfish” or “unproductive”, or whether we have deeper doubts about what it is that’s being manifested; thoughts, messages, ideas that perhaps we’ve never given voice to, which might make us uncomfortable in some way. In the therapeutic space, we can look at this; not only the topic in question but most importantly how it makes us feel…and why. Therapy can sometimes be an artist’s tool to occasionally remind themselves that they’re actually on the right track when they’re experiencing doubt.

(a brief note: I’ve previously addressed the question of Will I Lose My Creativity If I Seek Therapy? for those who are interested)