How Adverse Childhood Experiences and trauma affect our lives and creativity
“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
“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
“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.” Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz
"Because of that household dysfunction, our brains do a couple of really significant things: they begin to give us the message that we're not okay." Science journalist Donna Jackson Nakazawa
Also perspectives of Keira Knightley, trauma recovery physician Aimie Apigian, Halle Berry, Ben Kingsley, and others.
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Also enjoy related
This audio is an AI-generated "podcast" with the "speakers" doing a great job of covering main topics and quotes in the article.
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Most of us have a wide variety of emotional experiences as a child and teen, and as adults, of course, often including some degree of hurt, even trauma or abuse.
These experiences can endure for us, especially when not addressed or healed, deeply impacting our lives and access to our creativity.
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This audio is an excerpt from a longer interview with Meg Haworth talking about her adverse childhood experiences that led to her own healing and developing a mind body process that has helped many people gain clarity, health, and recovery.
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Keira Knightley on “privacy taken away.”
In an interview, she commented:
“It’s very brutal to have your privacy taken away in your teenage years, early 20s, and to be put under that scrutiny at a point when you are still growing.
“Having said that, I wouldn’t have the financial stability or the career that I do now without that period. I had a five-year period between the age of 17 and 21-ish, and I’m never going to have that kind of success again. It totally set me up for life.
“Did it come at a cost? Yes, it did. It came at a big cost. Knowing the cost, could I, in all good conscience, say to my kid, you should do that? No. But am I grateful for it? Yes. But then that’s life, isn’t it? Luckily, my kids are completely uninterested.”
[From In ‘Black Doves,’ Keira Knightley is a mother and an assassin: ‘My teenage self is thrilled’ By Meredith Blake, Los Angeles Times Dec. 5, 2024. Image is from article Toronto: Keira Knightley, Benedict Cumberbatch Talk Fake Twitter Accounts, The Hollywood Reporter September 9, 2014.]
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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 images at top (young woman or girl on bench touching stuffed animal bear), and above, are from one of her articles addressing how childhood experiences can influence 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 (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 on her site:
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.”
See her article Healing an Artist’s Lost Childhood.
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Adverse Childhood Experiences
At least some of the comments above are referring to the kinds of trauma considerd ACES.
What are Adverse Childhood Experiences?
“Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… a) Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? or b) Act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?
“Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often… a) Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? or b) Ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?”
From article How attachment styles and trauma impact our lives and relationships.
Article includes ACES Score image from Prevent Child Abuse Utah Facebook page, and questions from the ACEs quiz presented by American Society for the Positive Care of Children.
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Journalist Donna Jackson Nakazawa writes about the wide variety of potential impacts:
"Studies over the past 30 years show there is a greater likelihood of autoimmune disorders, mental health concerns, depression, anxiety, bipolar, cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, and heart disease.
"There is almost not an illness, or medical concern, or mental health concern that is not tied to a history of Adverse Childhood Experiences." -
View post with video and links to her books and programs:
Donna Jackson Nakazawa is an “award-winning science journalist, author of six books, and an internationally-recognized speaker whose work explores the intersection of neuroscience, immunology, and human emotion."
She comments more about Adverse Childhood Experiences:
"Because of that household dysfunction, our brains do a couple of really significant things: they begin to give us the message that we're not okay.
"Our little brains are so active and so busy trying to help us, but instead of saying 'My situation is not okay' - our developing brain doesn't have the wherewithal to do that - instead we go, 'I am not okay in who I am, in my body, in my being - I'm wrong, I'm terribly terribly wrong.'
"And that begins to shift the action of our nervous system, and our self-beliefs and how we see ourselves, and how we respond to ourselves in adversity for the rest of our lives."
From podcast:
See links to her books and programs in the Resources section at bottom.
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A belief that we are different
“Trauma results in this belief that we are different, that we’re not enough, that there’s something about us that pushes people away or that we’re too much for other people."
Trauma healing specialist Aimie Apigian, MD continues: “And so if they were to truly know us – all parts of us – then they would leave us, then they would kick us out, then they would reject us, abandon us.
"And those feelings of being abandoned and being different are so painful that our system responds in a self-protective way…”
Resources by Aimie Apigian, MD, MS, MPH. include:
▶️ TheFoundational Journey: 21 Day Journey + Intro to All Parts of Me, for addressing stored trauma in the body.
▶️ The Essential Sequence - How to Release Stored Trauma - free guide
▶️ Thumbnail image for this video ("Alone in a crowd") is from Attachment Pain: A Roadmap for Healing - free guidebook.
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One example of an artist who has experienced feeling “wrong” due to childhood trauma is Halle Berry:
“I think I’ve spent my adult life dealing with the sense of low self-esteem that sort of implanted in me. Somehow I felt not worthy.”
She was talking about being abused as a child by her violent father, who also assaulted her mother. From post:
[Larger photo above of Halle Berry is from MasterClass The Magic of Menopause With Halle Berry and Leading Experts.]
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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.”
From Episode 55: Highly Sensitive: The Gifts from our Childhood as an HSP with Julie & Willow of the Sensitive and Neurodivergent Podcast on the Sensitive Empowerment site of Julie Bjelland, LMFT - where you can find many more of her articles, books, courses, Sensitive Community and other resources.
Above photo: 2 children - W. Eugene Smith, The Walk to Paradise Garden, 1946.
Also used in post:
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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 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 an interview for The Talks, he was asked, “Is there anything in your artistic life that you regret?”
“No. Because life is good now, it is beautiful. I think we have to face the fact that everything in the past has brought us to me sitting here with you now.
“And if I had any regrets, it would be regretting the journey that brought me to this table. I don't regret that journey, because I am so happy to be here now. I love the now, it is all we have.”
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In a British TV 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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RESOURCES
Learn about multiple programs by Donna Jackson Nakazawa, including “Your Healing Narrative: Write-to-Heal With Neural Re-Narrating™” and “Breaking Free From Trauma.” | One of her books is Childhood Disrupted [Bookshop.org] [Amazon]
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See videos in Playlist: Emotional Health
Sensitive and Neurodivergent Podcast by Julie Bjelland, LMFT
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Older version of this article with perspectives by Amber Tamblyn, Milla Jovovich, Stephen King, Halle Berry, Ellen Pompeo, Jennette McCurdy and others: Your Childhood And Being A Creative Person.
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