Tending Wounds (Part 2): Were You A Sensitive Kid Too?
2/18/23
If you’ve landed here without reading BLOG 10 first, this post is just going to be adding on to what was addressed there. In short, my realization was that all of us humans have developed off of what we have experienced in childhood. Our childhood determines what our personality traits will be, how we choose the things we do, and even the reality we choose to see. The behaviors of how we think, feel, and see amalgamates to who we really are. Until something or someone gets us to step outside ourselves to objectively observe the causes and results of our behaviors, we’re likely stuck in this autopilot of repeating cycles…cycles that stemmed from childhood events. In the last post, I used the analogy of us all emerging into adulthood with our inner child situated in some sort of hole. The size and depth of that hole just depend on our genetics along with the traumas and experiences we had growing up.
So what do we do about it and how does this impact us as creatives?
First, let’s imagine we are on some sort of tropical island, maybe like that Moana movie. If that was our environment for our formative years, we grew up never seeing snow and we learned things that were relative to surviving in our environment. Fast forward to adulthood, we would only be prepared or comfortable in this environment that we’re accustomed to. If we take a plane to Canada, how would we be prepared for that environment? How would we know how to dress, where to go, or even what to eat? Would we even own a winter coat?
Our lives then would have to go into a series of trials and errors to learn things on our own–or we would have to look towards others who can pass the knowledge onto us. Because we never saw snow, we wouldn’t naturally know how to engage with it. Because we never drove a car, we would not know what to do when someone tossed us the keys. We might be excellent swimmers, but that doesn’t equip us with the necessary skills to succeed in a different environment.
Though this may seem like an extreme circumstance, there are aspects of this that hold true with each and every one of us, especially in America. Growing from childhood to adulthood can even feel like going from Hawaii to Canada–or the shallow end of the pool where we can stand, to the deep end where we must tread water. Some kids may get thrown into the deep end by their parents early on and barely escape from drowning, while others may have never gotten the motivation to venture outside of the comfortable shallow end. These analogies are just meant to provide a visual for how our different upbringings result in different preparedness for adulthood survival. One thing reigns supreme: none of us are perfect and none of us are totally prepared.
So how does this relate to creativity and a path to artistry?
Artists are observers…like journalists. We communicate through our various creative fields to connect. I try to communicate in multiple ways–engaging with audiences in live performances, honing into emotional expression by making music, discussing experiences with others on the podcast, and sharing the things I learn in these blogs/vlogs/other content creations.
Creatives often have an innate sensitivity to their emotions and surroundings in order to express their intense observations through art. DR. GABOR MATE TALKS HERE about how sensitivity often leads to creative outlets for gifted people that are highly tuned to their process of pain. Our sensitivity can be used as a gift for creative expression, but there’s a darker side that can lead to detrimental cycles if gone unnoticed.
Sensitivity in childhood also leads to a stronger sense of empathy.
Growing into adulthood, empathic people have the ability to tune to the energy of others with a higher sense of noticing nonverbal cues, understanding the needs of others, and feeling the pain of others as if it were their own. THIS ARTICLE FROM PBS cites the more common traits of sensitive children are being empathic, observant, thoughtful, inquisitive, and lastly…creative.
Artists use these strong, super-powerful traits to engage in their creative process and concoct their resulting genesis of expression. Another trait that links sensitivity to artistry is the ability to engage with vulnerability. When artists showcase their creations, they are likely doing so by opening themselves up in a vulnerable way to either receive connections or criticism from others…which likely puts them in a sensitive state, similar to childhood.
Now getting back to our preparation for society, what really sucks is getting older with these traits and finding out that society will be tough on us. In fact, empathic lifestyles are arguably not rewarded as much as that of narcissistic lifestyles. In America, successfulness seems to align with selfishness. Individualism and capitalism base growth on scheming and exploiting rather than collectivism or community prosperity. I mean hell, the folks with the most money often get the biggest tax breaks here, but I digress…
Artists can often have no clear path to success, or even to survival in this society.
Knowing this (and without complaining about how current industries are set up), I circle back to a similar thing I talked about in BLOG 7: why do we do this? Tying in the aspects of childhood sensitivity, super-powered adulthood traits, and a society that often works against us:
I believe that a lot of us artists are creating what we seek to experience.
We create the music that we want to hear, draw or paint the art we wish to see, perform the theatrics we wish to experience, and most of all, express the aspects of ourselves we want to share with others (vulnerably). Through any creative medium (even online content creators), connection and understanding are everything–even criticism is connection and an attempt at understanding on some level. Most of us are likely giving what we wish to receive.
Now, I’ll conclude here with the final takeaway from all of this: awareness. As creatives, empaths, artists, performers, or even us social outcasts, we must all be aware of how we got this way and what to be mindful of going forward. For some, this will require more work than others and unfortunately, sometimes we have to hit a really rough point to see exactly where we need the work (and what we’ve been on autopilot about).
Life is a cycle…and in that our lives are made up of our own cycles. To unplug from whatever unconscious ride we are on right now, we must realize what is the cycle we are currently in. Personally, I had to hit a real low at the end of 2022, but that broke my cycle to start this healing journey that I am on right now (and I give more insight on that in my new VLOG series).
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