Creativity and Mental Health: How to Accept and Embrace Your Creative Mind

Having a Creative Personality vs Being A Creative Person

When you have a creative nature, you’re different from a creative-minded person, someone who seeks creative pursuits, and even different from someone who has a highly creative brain. Some people may seek ways to incorporate creative thinking into their lives or become more artistic, but when you have a creative personality type, it’s built into your nature and a part of who you are. Having a creative nature relates to something we’re born with and is inseparable from our core, is something we need to thrive; being more creative is something that you’re acquiring or that you can live without. Accepting and embracing this truth is vital to your mental health as a creative and artist.

Creative Personality Traits and Qualities

You are born with a lightning rod protruding from your skull like a horn. You don’t seek out creativity; creativity seeks out and finds you despite your best attempts at hiding from it.  You live in the midst of a fierce and endless storm with thunder constantly rumbling through your life and lightning flashing and blinding you, lightning striking and surging through you in spite of your best attempts to keep from being its most desirable target. You are a conduit of electrifying ideas and energy. But all that voltage can be lethal. All that lightning can cause surges that fry your circuits and strain your health.

Too Much Creativity and Mental Health

Having a creative nature that defines your personality is both a blessing and a curse–highly powerful but there’s too much chaos to keep in order. Creative people are messy, and our personalities often have a negative impact on mental health. Because for us, our impulses are not just creative pursuits. Our drive, our ability runs through every cell of the body so that there’s no chance to run away from it without unplugging yourself from the source that keeps your brain powered on and your heart feeling alive.

For the creative soul shrivels up when we stop believing in the power of the arts and ideas to change the world.

But few, if any, would choose this path. For it is a life of suffering and responsibility. Creativity takes courage. Who would willingly volunteer to walk out into a storm wearing a suit of iron? Few, if any, would choose a path, a way of life that rarely financially compensates you for your work or even respects your vocation. But we have no choice. It is rooted in our DNA. An individual with a creative personality has drives and pursuits that must be fulfilled daily or they’re left feeling empty. 

Embracing Creativity and Accepting Your Creative Personality

But suffering and joy–or even happiness–are not incompatible. All gifts can be curses if they’re not developed, used, or thought to have a purpose. For the creative soul shrivels up when we stop believing in the power of the arts and ideas to change the world. Our artistic souls dry out when we think we can escape the rain and pain of the storm by abandoning our creative self and spend our lives in the warmth of the sun. 

That doesn’t mean we are destined to be miserable, joyless creatures with crippled mental health the rest of our lives. But we can’t escape the creative brain we were blessed with. There’s a whole lot of light and rejuvenating power living among all this lightning. And yet, life for us will not be easy. And that’s ok. It’s not meant to be. 

Creative Self Actualization: Your Imagination Matters

Despite how tough living with a creative nature can be and how much courage it requires, remember that your imagination matters. Remember that your gifts can heal and change the hearts and minds of the world. But the creator must create. Not creating doesn’t change the fact that you are a highly creative person with a creative brain, a creative heart, and a creative personality. 

Remember that your gifts can heal and change the hearts and minds of the world.

Reaching self actualization and thriving with this creative self requires you to learn how to harness and ride the lightning rather than running through the storm of our life wallowing in self-pity and wishing we could find shelter to get out of the rain. 

Creatives, artists and writers everywhere–you are powerful and special and the world needs your imagination regardless if it recognizes it or not, whether it ever pays you for your time, or thanks you for your contributions. You who were born with this beautiful creative personality–create. Pick up and wield your artistic weapon with fervor and keep fighting the good fight.

You can find my books of poetry here https://alongthebarrenroad.com/poetry-books-by-justin-farley/