Pain, Creativity, and Secret Notebook Excerpts

If you own (or used to own) a diary, have you ever looked through your past entries in an unsuspectingly good mood and found yourself offended by your own depressive writings? Don’t worry, you may not quite be the Negative Nancy that your diary paints you out to be, or a person who is perpetually bummed out. You don’t necessarily have to look back upon the works of your 15-year old self and cringe at your 67th “I’m am so alone” entry; as silly as you think they may sound now, these feelings were real at the point of time they were written, and every bit valid considering how circumstances were back then. Some researchers have proposed a link between pain and creativity (think Virginia Woolf, or van Gogh), and perhaps this is true to some extent. We feel compelled to document our sadness and distress. That is, when we are happy and feeling on top of the world, we hardly ever to stop and question reasons for that being the case; in contrast, we seek incessantly for answers to “whys” when in grief — and not all of these can ever be found. Additionally, and perhaps an important mechanism driving the link between pain and creativity, we become hyper-sensitized to the pain of others and the sadness going on around us. You see the man without a home on the street and wonder about his story. You hear about the suicide of an old lady in the news and you hurt for the experiences that drove her to the point of ending her life. For many writers then, as for artists i...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Children and Teens Creativity Grief and Loss Inspiration & Hope Motivation and Inspiration Self-Help Diary Introspection Journaling Personal Growth Source Type: blogs