Explore how childhood experiences shape creative confidence and discover practical strategies for healing artistic wounds in this vulnerable group discussion.

Greg
00:00 - 00:31
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative Work Hour Podcast. Today is May the 24th, 2025 and in the room today you have myself, Greg, we have Alessandra, we have Devin, Shadows Pub, Hillary and today's question, a really good question and something to think about. In what ways can creativity be stunted and how do we heal from that? Alessandra, Yeah,

Alessandra
00:31 - 01:09
What I love about this question is it is one of the preliminary things that brought us together as a group of creatives is in our creative lives we were all in some recovery journey. Getting over a stunted creative experience. It's a little bit like kind of like a cognitive limp. If there's something that you had a creative experience with, maybe a gift, not necessarily a gift, but something that you really enjoy doing, like writing.

Alessandra
01:10 - 01:30
or cooking or gardening, whatever it is. But if someone was in your life that was like, no, that's not a thing, or one of my personal favorites sucks all the fun out of it. How would you make money with that? Like any of those things are stunting, aren't they?

Alessandra
01:31 - 01:34
And what comes up for you with that, Greg?

Greg
01:35 - 01:52
What comes up for me? Well, you know, I always wanted to be a chef from a very young age. And when I was in high school, you get to pick a couple of subjects that you want to concentrate on. So I chose to do catering studies, but I was told you can't do that, there's not enough places.

Greg
01:52 - 02:13
So I said, okay, I'll do home economics instead, because they still did cooking and home economics. And I was told that's a girl's subject, you can't do that. Of course, that wouldn't fly now, but back then that was a thing. So they said you can choose religious education, or you could choose technical drawing, or environmental studies.

Greg
02:13 - 02:21
But if you don't choose one of those, we'll choose for you. So I said adios. Pretty much did away with school after that. But you know, after school, I used to go to army cadets.

Greg
02:21 - 02:48
Some of my friends joined the armed forces and went into the catering corps. And so I thought, great, I'll go into the Armed Forces, I'll go into the Catering Corps. But at the time, the conflict in Northern Ireland was on, and I was only 16, 17, and needed my parents' permission to join the army. My parents were worried about the conflict, and what if he gets, you know, sent to harm's way in Northern Ireland, and So they didn't sign off on that.

Greg
02:48 - 03:15
So my creativity was stunted with catering, right? And, you know, whilst I'm not doing that now, I did try to do it later on in life, went to catering school and again was stunted by one of my parents, my father. But that's a whole different story. But, you know, I might not be doing catering now, but I do do a lot of creative things, which I didn't think I could do.

Greg
03:15 - 03:35
And I've got a lot of confidence through being part of Creative Work Hour and all of you here listening to this and on today's podcast. You know, it's surprising what a little confidence will carry you a really long way. But how about you, Alessandra? In what ways can creativity be stunted and how do we heal from that?

Alessandra
03:35 - 04:00
Well, this is not a problem like global disruptions of the economy and lack of world peace. This is something really simple, but it was something I needed to overcome. I had this music teacher who loved that I could do one kind of thing with my music or another kind of thing with my music. But when I took an interest in singing, it was flat out, you can't sing.

Alessandra
04:01 - 04:09
And I believed that malarkey. I believed it. I walked around for years going, I can't sing. I can't sing.

Alessandra
04:09 - 04:32
But one day, I saw this course that was advertised in Lubbock, Texas, of all places, at Texas Tech University, and it wasn't in the School of Music as part of an academic degree program. It was open to the community, and I signed up for it. And this was the name of it. It was called Singers Anonymous.

Alessandra
04:33 - 05:15
And I got a spot in that little group of Singers Anonymous. And the whole idea was, look, We either really can't sing, we've been told we can't sing, or we're gonna let you know if we actually think that maybe you shouldn't sing, but that was not the case. Once we started singing and then brave singing individually, it was very nerve-wracking, but a lot of healing took place, because we were all in there with the same kind of self-talk that we picked up from some creative stunter out there. And it was really remarkable.

Alessandra
05:15 - 05:48
And I went on not that I became a great singer, but I did end up studying with a voice professor and discovered that I was a mezzo soprano, not that I'm not operatic, but I can carry a tuner in a bucket. And it healed a lot. And so, yeah, I would, you know, I would sing in church, I would walk up to a microphone, all by my lonesome, there would be, I don't know, 160 people in the room, not a huge crowd, but not for nothing. And I would sing, scared to death, but I would sing.

Alessandra
05:49 - 05:58
And I was trained to sing, and it healed something. And that little experiment is part of the DNA of Creative Work Hour.

Greg
05:59 - 06:06
Thank you, Alessandra. Shadows, what about yourself? In what ways can creativity be stunted? And how do we heal from that?

Shadows Pub
06:08 - 06:26
My mother was the one that did the number on me with the writing. The crazy part was she was a reader and insisted on her kids being readers. She never seemed to make the connection that In order for her to read things, somebody had to write them. So she called the idea of getting paid to write pie in the sky.

Shadows Pub
06:27 - 06:50
And even when I did get published in magazines and newspapers, if I showed her the article, she would just set them aside, just total disinterest. But it eventually got through to me that, you know, well, there's no sense pursuing that. So I didn't for a very long time. As I got older, I did, and now anybody wants to pie in the sky me, they can fuck off, put it mildly.

Greg
06:50 - 06:56
So Shadows, how long did it take in your instance for you to gain the confidence back to write?

Shadows Pub
06:56 - 07:00
That's probably in my 50s by then. That's when I started blogging. It really

Greg
07:00 - 07:01
can have a lasting impact.

Shadows Pub
07:02 - 07:02
Yeah.

Greg
07:02 - 07:09
I'm sorry to hear that. Hillary, in what ways can creativity be stunted and how do we heal from that?

Hillary
07:09 - 08:06
How can creativity be stunted? And it's not always stunted with malice. I remember for me, you know, as we've been going through this thinking back into like high school days, as you're kind of developing, you know, you know, who you are, what your passions are, and English is discouraged from being creative. But when it comes to the idea of pursuing something like a ceramics degree or something like that, the message comes across that it's hard to be successful in the arts.

Hillary
08:07 - 08:24
Most of the time, you are just getting by. Very few people really slingshot, blah, blah, blah. And there is no foundational information on how to pursue that if you wanted to. How to be a yoga instructor.

Hillary
08:24 - 09:07
and tarot card reader and to succeed a small business on your own. And in my opinion, that is its own form of squashing creativity, of just not having the support on how to accelerate it and to make it a substantial source, a lucrative source for somebody to contribute to society with. Because we know we want the arts around, We don't want to pay for them, but we don't contemplate what happens. Again, like you're saying, if nobody writes the material, how does that person who writes the material pay their bills?

Hillary
09:08 - 09:33
And that translates, you know, on and on and on. But I think there's definitely a shift now with social media and the concept of content creators. Now you've got a new platform to create something. You can get online support with a few people paying a couple bucks to keep watching you create whatever it is you want to create.

Hillary
09:34 - 09:38
You can really get lucrative off of that. And that's one of my

Greg
09:39 - 09:40
My

Hillary
09:40 - 09:52
The idea is that I want to do it, but again, where have I been squashed? What's stopping me? Where's my childhood trauma? And this goes back to the question of how do you work through that?

Hillary
09:53 - 10:12
Which I don't know. Therapy? Hypnosis? It's funny because actually, as we were thinking on the question, it actually is along the lines of what I am talking to my therapist about, which is reframing past events and how you view them.

Hillary
10:12 - 10:39
So what can I focus on in my past that stops me from taking the next step, reevaluate it, give it some hindsight review, reframe it. How else can I think of this? And that's where meditate or hypnosis comes in because then if you could get somebody to help you embrace easily the new thought, the new thing you're putting in that will help you solve it. I think we'll see.

Greg
10:39 - 10:55
Thank you, Hillary. Yeah, very interesting. It makes me think, you know, in the BSM five, there isn't a category for being uncreative and and yet being creative is so important, isn't it? Not just career wise, but it could be, you know, a hobby or a passion.

Greg
10:55 - 11:01
But Devin, in what ways can creativity be stunted and how do we heal from that?

Devin
11:02 - 11:36
Well, as a callback to Greg's discussion of the Northern Ireland Troubles, one of my favorite movies is The Devil's Own with Brad Pitt, and there's a line in there where he says, it's an Irish story, don't look for a happy ending. Well, this is going to be one of those. So, Alessandra used to belong to a charitable organization in Dallas, and every year they would put on this amazing show. Like, they had lots of resources, amazing, talented people.

Devin
11:36 - 11:52
And because I was with her, I got to be in the cast. You know, I can't sing, but I was enough that I didn't stand out from the chorus, so they could stick me in the chorus, and I wouldn't draw attention to myself. And I was just happy as a clam. I'm a total ham.

Devin
11:53 - 12:02
Give me a microphone, point me to the stage. You know, I just love that kind of thing. So I was for a couple of years. I just, you know, look forward to it every year.

Devin
12:02 - 12:19
And then one year they decided they weren't professional enough. A new person was in charge and they said, we're going to raise the bar on these productions and everyone who wants to be in one of these shows is going to have to audition. So I did. I stood in a room in front of a panel.

Devin
12:20 - 12:35
of three women who judged me on my singing ability, which I knew was not going to end well. And sure enough, it didn't. I was not invited to return. And I was bitter and angry and I never really went back to any kind of thing like that.

Devin
12:36 - 12:50
I mean, I was, it was stunting of any kind of ability to be in a singing environment. I just like, okay, my voice doesn't need to be heard. I'll do something else. And so, you know, I focused on other things like my writing.

Devin
12:50 - 13:11
I guess the way I heal from that is I focus on things where I'm very confident and That includes things like writing and publishing on various platforms. And it would be hard for someone to stunt me in my writing, because my confidence is so high. I would say, you obviously don't know what you're talking about, so I'm not going to listen to you. But yeah, these are great questions.

Devin
13:11 - 13:18
How do you heal from a major stunting event like that? It's a great question, Greg. Thank you. Some great conversation there.

Alessandra
13:18 - 13:45
Devin is right. He was really good in the years that he participated in that show. So much so that I will tell you this, you never know how you're gonna look in a pair of tight leather or pleather, because they weren't legitimate cowhide, leather breeches until you're cast in a show as Devin was to do Riverdance. He was so good.

Alessandra
13:46 - 14:03
He was so freaking good. Oh my God. So whatever about the audition and the singing and the bitches in the room, we don't care about them. But I got to see Devin Riverdance in Pluther.

Devin
14:03 - 14:21
It was called Lord of the Pants. Again, there's an Irish theme just throughout this discussion. Yes, and the pants weren't nearly as much as the pleather vest and only a pleather vest that went with the pants. So, yes, my theatrical apex, if you will.

Alessandra
14:21 - 14:26
Oh, if only I could find a photograph. If only. Well, what time is it, Greg?

Greg
14:26 - 14:33
It's that time again. But how about you? In what ways can creativity be stunted? And how do we heal from that?

Greg
14:33 - 14:52
Let us know at CreativeWorkHour.com but in the meantime, it's happened again. You've wasted some perfectly good time listening to the Creative Work Hour podcast when you could have been doing something else. Check us out on Creative Work Hour.com and come back next week and have a wonderful week.