Our Childhood And Being A Creative Person
Experiences in childhood can endure for us as adults, deeply impacting our lives and creative expression.
“During our childhood, we are much closer to our authentic selves. Even if our memories of childhood may be filled with challenge and discomfort.” Sensitivity therapist and author Julie Bjelland of Sensitive Empowerment
“It’s an often complicated part of being a young performer…being taken advantage of by someone with ulterior motives and intentions.” Actor Jamie Lee Curtis
“You are born to feel curiosity, wonder, and a desire to explore. If these qualities were not nurtured when you were young, however…” Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz of Creative Minds Psychotherapy
“My mum brought me up very strictly…criticized me more than she complimented me…It’s funny, but I think that I’m more of a child now, exactly because I’m no longer afraid of being one. I’ve more freedom.” Actor Milla Jovovich
Most of us have a wide variety of emotional experiences as a child, often including some degree of hurt, even trauma or abuse, and these experiences can endure for us as adults, deeply impacting our lives and creativity.
This article includes:
quotes from psychotherapists on understanding emotional challenges such as childhood trauma
quotes from artists including Alan Cumming, Sally Field, Halle Berry, William Jackson Harper, Bryce Dallas Howard, Stephen King, Ben Kingsley, Ellen Pompeo, Milla Jovovich.
resources to help with trauma, self-esteem, and gain emotional wellness
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Thanks to Jamie Lee Curtis for articulating some of the all too common exploitation of young actors, in the description on her Facebook page of an early photo of her {topless, but mostly showing her back and arms]:
“A pre Halloween shoot. Back then there was no Internet and once in a while a photographer contacted you and said that they wanted to take pictures of you.
“You were excited by the opportunity of having some new images and the attention. The truth is they were just going to sell them to publications in Europe, and around the world.
“Of course, now, I look back at it and there is something very creepy about their intentions, which I mistook for interest in me.”
She adds that this kind of attention is “an often complicated part of being a young performer, and me ‘a child of’ performers, wanting to be seen and hoping for more work opportunities and if we just look back at any of our current big stars you will find images of them similar to these of me, a young person being taken advantage of by someone with ulterior motives and intentions.
“Live and learn and lucky for me this was about as bad as it got.”
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Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz helps creative people in TV/Film, performing and fine arts with “life struggles, depression, anxiety, creativity, relationships, PTSD, and addictions – to become their own best version.”
The image at top is from one of her articles addressing how childhood experiences can dictate our emotions later in life, our perceptions, and capacities for developing creative thinking.
She writes, “if you felt loved enough as a child, you internalized a feeling of love. You tend to see people as loving and the world as an inherently loving place.
“But, if you didn’t feel loved enough as a child, the world becomes the realm of the ‘unloved child’ and you find yourself on a never-ending search for acceptance and approval.”
Dr. Holtz also finds childhood experiences “shape the way you experience feelings like trust, hope, and determination.
“You are born to feel curiosity, wonder, and a desire to explore…Depending on your early experiences, you may not even know how curiosity feels.
“If you did have access to such feelings, where would they take you? Maybe you’d build a career that makes you happy or embark on a journey to discover your true talents and gifts.”
She uses EMDR (or Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) therapy to help people “process feelings and experiences and enables you to have an emotional understanding of how you feel and interact with the world…
“You are able to make more empowered decisions and access your creativity as a result of this powerful form of internal healing.”
Read more in her article:
How to Connect With Your Productivity and Creativity
In an article of hers on the topic of child actors, she writes:
“For some, their lifelong artistic endeavor took them on a path of self-discovery and self-creating.
“They have been an active participant of their own artistic path, supported and encouraged to be their own person and artist.
“For others, self-discovery and being an active participant in their artistic life was not an option…
She asks, “Are you the artist whose self-discovery and active participation in your artistic pursuit was not an option? You’ve lived just about your entire life as a performer.
“Somehow, somewhere in your childhood it was very apparent that you had an innate talent and that it could be channeled into a widely recognized success.”
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A highly sensitive childhood
In an edition of her HSP Podcast, Julie Bjelland notes:
“During our childhood, we are much closer to our authentic selves. Even if our memories of childhood may be filled with challenge and discomfort.
We are often very clear on what is most important to us and many of the gifts we rely on today were present.
For those of us born with the trait of high sensitivity and high sensory intelligence we typically experienced the world in a particular and often profound way.
It is quite common for us to have been misunderstood and for our emotional sensitivity to be seen as a disadvantage.
Yet it is often the challenges we faced and the way we saw the world back then that shape us to specialize in a particular area of life.”
You can listen to this podcast episode “Highly Sensitive: The Gifts from our Childhood as an HSP with Julie & Willow” in the original article - see link below.
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> Hear many other episodes of the HSP Podcast at Julie Bjelland’s site Sensitive Empowerment – where you can also learn about other resources and courses to understand the trait and thrive as a Highly Sensitive Person.
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The writer of a 2006 interview article noted Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo “was so emotionally hamstrung by her early experiences that she drifted through dead-end acting jobs and relationships into her 30s.”
But Pompeo commented about some of the value of living through a difficult early life:
“Clearly my life hasn’t been easy, but a lot of people’s lives haven’t been easy…
“In fact, I’m really grateful for my life. It has given me the strength and tenacity.”
Ellen Pompeo: strength from a challenging early life.
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The search for acceptance and approval
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”
– Psychologist William James.
Our needs for attention and appreciation may be basic, and grounded in survival as a child, but for some people, those needs are especially potent – especially if they have not been met well enough.
Ben Kingsley has commented about being a performer as a child, and like so many other people, experiencing some hurtful responses from his parents.
“I had always been the song-and-dance man of the family,” he says.
“I remember my father referring to me as ‘our little Danny Kaye’ when I was about seven. That was the only remotely positive comment I remember from them.
“They never praised me or acknowledged a gram of talent in me. Their way was to mock – ‘when are you going to finish with this acting lark’, that sort of thing.
“My mother, far from being proud, was very jealous of my success.”
From article Our Need To Be Appreciated.
In another interview, Kingsley talks more about his childhood:
“I never really felt nurtured and protected.
“Everything happens for a reason…I created perhaps my own bubble in which to live and flourish with my own imagination and that I think was a was a major major factor in me becoming an entertainer.”
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Continued with quotes by Amber Tamblyn, Milla Jovovich, Stephen King and others, in my original article Your Childhood And Being A Creative Person.