Emotional Health, Neuroscience and Creative People

“Creating art has always been a way to channel emotional intensity…” Psychologist Cheryl Arutt

But, as she notes on her site,

“You don’t have to be in pain to do great work as an artist.”

She is a licensed clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, specializing in trauma recovery and creative artist issues, and is also a forensic and media consultant, as well as a frequent psychological expert interviewed on news media.

Hear the podcast episode (on the Creative Mind/Substack site): Psychologist Cheryl Arutt on Emotional Health and Creative People.

In our conversation in the podcast, I mentioned a quote by actor William H Macy that I really like:

“Nobody became an actor because he had a good childhood.”

I asked Dr. Arutt,

“How common is trauma or difficulty in childhood an issue for creative people like actors that you see?”

She notes that “People who go into a field where they really roll up their sleeves and get into the nitty gritty of the painful aspects of being a human being — shame and betrayal, and disappointment, devastation, all of these things that are sort of in the muck of humanity — people don’t tend to delve and want to delve into those really messy feelings, unless they have some relationship with those messy feelings.

“Someone who’s kind of, ‘Let’s just be happy and have everything be just fine’ isn’t going to be drawn to something like acting most likely.”

She adds,

“I think that the act of being creative allows people to take those deep, messy human feelings and act out in a way that is constructive…

Channel it into something that says something, enriches people and moves people and allows others to say, yes, that’s me too, to make a human connection.”

[From the transcript on the original Creative Mind Audio episode page.]

Another podcast episode on the Creative Mind/Substack site: [Psychologist Cheryl Arutt on Brain Science of Creativity](https://thecreativemind.substack.com/p/psychologist-cheryl-arutt-on-brain-f7b#details).

Artist Kate Shepherd interviews psychologist Dr. Arutt in a brief excerpt from an episode of the Creative Genius podcast.

*The episode summary on Shepherd’s site includes:*

“Have you ever wondered any of these: What the science is behind creativity? What causes creativity in the brain? What part of the brain is used in creativity? Or maybe even how to activate creativity in the brain?

“Dr. Cheryl Arutt works with actors, writers, directors and showrunners supporting their psychological well-being.”

See Dr. Arutt’s TED Talk video, other videos, links to her site, plus material about HSPs (highly sensitive or high sensory people — many if not most artists and creative people have this trait) and more in article Psychologist Cheryl Arutt on Emotional Health and Creative People.

Originally published at https://thecreativemind.substack.com.