Artists deserve support

                                              

If you were to ask artists how they started down the path of their artistic being, the question would doubtless be as revealing as asking them: “How did you become a person?”

 

Creatives are inextricably linked to their work. But it’s a mistake to assume this means that the persons behind the artists are therefore immediately discernible. On the contrary: the reason creatives are prepared to risk their social recognition, existential security, fundamental rights as workers, health, and, in some cases, even their dignity, is so personal that often they go to great lengths to protect themselves from the outside world and are sometimes even unwilling to reveal themselves at all. Artists have to defend this passion repeatedly throughout their lives from obstacles both external and internal – including their particular training and professional circumstances, but also self-doubt and identity crises.

 

Creatives have a particular burden to carry, no matter how successful they are. Alongside the need to develop their artistic skills, they are confronted with a variety of everyday challenges:

 

• recurring periods of unemployment

• the unpredictability of success and failure

• economic precarity

• the expectation of endless flexibility

• harmful power structures

• stress and tension

 

Many creative types are rightfully suspicious of what “healing interventions” to their personality might entail, given that extremes, contradictions, and enigmas form the basis of their work. But this can also set in motion a vicious cycle of doubts, unrealized desires, and seemingly ever-renewed evidence of one’s seeming inadequacy. Under the best of circumstances, successful work is needlessly hindered, and in the worst, self-destructive tendencies emerge. The truth lies not in the middle but rather in keeping these extremes in balance.

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 I offer support to creatives built on my training and experience and tailored to the needs of each individual. I am a licensed psychologist who also has forty years of experience within the artistic profession as an actress, singer and author.