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:
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