Creativity
Creativity adds color and vitality to life, but it can be hard to achieve in the context of responsibilities and self-doubt. I help people nurture their creative side, find courage when they feel stuck, and weave creativity into their day-to-day lives.
I enjoy helping people dig into their creativity. I also like helping them figure out how to wrap the rest of their lives around that creativity. It brings so much light and color to life; I can’t imagine life without creativity … and don’t really want to.
I confess that I don’t have a Creativity Development Program or an Integrating Creativity Into Straight Life program! I just have a lifetime of valuing it and doing my own experiments. Music has been my main hobby since high school—voice, guitar, writing, etc.—though never my full-time gig. I’ve played in a lot of bands and love singing with my talented wife and friends. I love writing humorous prose, including screenplays, and serious prose as well, including my first book, Emotions: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Feeling Better.
So, with that love and respect for creativity, I support clients as they play with how to enjoy being creative, how to get unstuck when stuck, how to find courage and self-kindness when self-critical or intimidated, how to find time for both creative life and straight life, and how to harmonize the wildness of the creative life with the responsibilities of daily life.
I see therapy as being about healing and growth. A lot of people don’t think of creativity as a typical therapy topic, but I think healing the junk that holds us back and growing into being alive, bold, and engaged is a great recipe for fostering creativity. Growth certainly can include growing into our expressiveness. Therapy supports creativity, and creativity makes therapy both more productive and more fun. In my experience, therapy and creativity go together like a red wine and dark chocolate.