She is a forensic and media consultant, and a frequent psychological expert on CNN, HLN, truTV and Fox News.

Topics in our interview include:

“Bad boy” images and acting-out

Actors and actresses with “bad boy” or “troubled” images, or problems with issues of anger and acting out, have included Christian Bale, Shia Labeouf and many other talented performers.

Dr. Arutt comments about this kind of behavior, and the underlying emotional challenges, that so many people have – not just actors and performers.

“Life without pain isn’t real at all.”

Shia LaBeouf  started acting at age 12 to support his mother when his heroin-addicted father abandoned the family. LaBeouf has said he was subjected to verbal and mental abuse by his father, who once pointed a gun at him during a Vietnam War flashback.

From my post Traumatic Childhood, Creative Adult
.

A difficult childhood and trauma

Actor William H. Macy once commented, “Nobody became an actor because he had a good childhood.” Dr. Arutt agrees that is a provocative remark, and thinks that actors and other artists who are willing, in their creative work, to delve into the really “messy” feelings of being human (shame, devastations, disappointments, betrayals, traumas and more), probably have a relationship with those feelings.

The Shadow Self

Dr. Arutt next talked about the concept of the Shadow Self that psychologist Carl Jung addressed in his therapy and writings. She notes that our emotional health and balance, perhaps especially for artists, may depend on having at least some understanding and acceptance of the darker sides of ourselves – and this also gives us more power to make choices rather than just react to life unconsciously.

Also see my post Dancing With Our Shadow to Develop Creativity.

Creativity and mental health

This is a favorite topic of both of us, and Dr. Arutt talks about the fears many artists have about treating their depression, anxiety or other challenges, and then numbing or losing their creativity.

Dr. Arutt points out that certain forms of psychotherapy and techniques such as EMDR can be very effective in helping creative people get past the emotional pains which interfere with their creativity.

She notes that sometimes medication can be helpful for disruptive symptoms when prescribed by a medication specialist, a knowledgeable psychiatrist or psychopharmacologist. Unfortunately, many people are prescribed psychiatric medications by their general physician who may not be informed or trained well enough about this class of medications, resulting in people getting drug treatment that interferes rather than helps them.

Here is brief excerpt from our long audio interview:

Topics in the full-length (48 minute) interview include the above plus these:

Emotional self-regulation

Dr. Arutt refers to her TEDx video – “That Good Feeling of Control” and notes the title comes from TV host Fred Rogers who wanted to teach kids how to deal with the “mad” they felt inside, and be able to decide what to do with these kinds of strong feelings, and that what he was talking about was self-regulation and affect regulation that can help us as adults, too.

She thinks most forms of mental illness “can be traced to some form of dysregulation, either over-control or under-control.”

[You can view the video in the post Channeling Intensity Through Creative Expression.]

Artists need to safely access challenging emotional “places”

She notes our “flaws and quirks are some of the most interesting things about us” and that when actors can be free to play and risk, and trust they can safely return from extreme states of mind, they can immerse themselves in their characters, and sublimate or channel difficult or challenging emotions, and this can be one of the great gifts of working in a creative field.

Mariska Hargitay has talked about finding it hard to “shake off” some of the horrific stories portrayed on her TV show (“Law and Order: Special Victims Unit”), and Dr. Arutt says something similar happens with therapists who work with victims of trauma.

Recovery from trauma

One of her areas of expertise is trauma therapy, for about twenty years. Dr. Arutt says people who have experienced trauma have had “more coming into their system than they are designed to cope with” using our hardwired fight/flight/freeze responses.

She finds that when people experience trauma and don’t understand well enough what is going on, they often feel “crazy” and don’t realize millions of others have had similar experiences.

Trauma can also lead to self-blame and very negative beliefs about the self, which can endure a lifetime if they aren’t addressed. Dr. Arutt notes that “each person’s hell is their own” and that what is traumatic for someone does not have to be just a “major” event like rape or being in a war, surviving a car crash or hurricane.

“We are not really in a position to judge what is going to traumatize another person.”

She is ‘very excited’ by the technology of fMRI, functional MRI, a form of brain scanning that shows how the brain is functioning, in addition to its anatomy.

She notes this can show the changes in the brain from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), and its healing, using therapy such as EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), which she describes.

After I comment that Highly Sensitive People may react more to traumatic experiences, Dr. Arutt agrees, and adds that high sensitivity is correlated with creativity and giftedness: “These things can overlap substantially.”

She says that whether or not they have the trait of high sensitivity (sensory processing sensitivity), creative people experience things in “such a deep, profound way” and that is why so many artists call other people ‘civilians’ who don’t really understand.

[Photo: Halle Berry said she recalls being terrified that her violent father, who physically abused her mother, would turn on her, adding, “I think I’ve spent my adult life dealing with the sense of low self-esteem that sort of implanted in me. Somehow I felt not worthy.” - From post: Traumatic Childhood, Creative Adult.]

Being courageous to be authentic and follow our creative talents

Dr. Arutt recites part of a wonderful poem she often shares with her creative professional clients who may be struggling with “the issue of talent and self worth,” and questions such as ‘Am I a real artist’ – as well as with family responses that may or may not be supportive.

The poem is “For the young who want to” by Marge Piercy. It starts off:

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Self-care and staying healthy

Dr. Arutt concludes that creative people need to show self-compassion and take care of themselves – that you “can’t protect the art without protecting the artist.” She also emphasizes that whether or not you use difficulties in life for art, “Your pain is a part of you, but you are not your symptoms; you are so much more.”

She urges creative people to “allow permission to be thriving and healthy. To be able to go out and dare to write or embody all that the artist wants to do, really starts with learning how to settle down” and quiet the mind and body.

“The sensitivity and the ability to go there, to create – wherever ‘there’ may be – is a gift and a talent. But getting stuck there is no fun for anyone, and is not required in order to do good work. If you can take good care of yourself, and then visit there, everybody wins.”

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Audio interview :
Psychologist Cheryl Arutt on Mental Health and Creative People

MP3 download  [48 min]  – $4.00 PayPal or debit/credit card

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Related:

Earlier audio interview: Psychologist Cheryl Arutt on Creative Artist Issues

Articles by Cheryl Arutt:

Affect Regulation and the Creative Artist

The Artist’s Unconscious and the Metaphor of Birth

Site: www.drcherylarutt.com

~~~

Musician Sting

Cheryl Arutt, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, specializing in creative artist issues, trauma recovery, and fertility. She is a forensic and media consultant, and a frequent psychological expert on CNN, HLN, truTV and Fox News.

[Links open in a new window, so you can keep listening.]

Site: www.drcherylarutt.com

Topics in our interview include high sensitivity, regulating disruptive feelings, destructiveness vs creativity, pain and creativity, being unconventional vs rebellion against the self, the fight-or-flight response, and other issues which can impact creative artists and other people as well.

Psychologist Cheryl Arutt writes in one of her guest articles on my main site: “Creating art has always been a way to channel emotional intensity…If you are an artist, you are your instrument. The greater access you maintain to yourself, the richer and broader your array of creative tools.”

From Affect Regulation and the Creative Artist.

In the interview, Dr. Arutt refers to this quote by musician Sting (which I added to the same article): “Do I have to be in pain to write? I thought so, as most of my contemporaries did; you had to be the struggling artist, the tortured, painful, poetic wreck. I tried that for a while, and to a certain extent that was successful. I was ‘The King of Pain’ after all. I only know that people who are getting into this archetype of the tortured poet end up really torturing themselves to death.”

Her other guest article: The Artist’s Unconscious and the Metaphor of Birth.

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Some related sites:

Main site: Talent Development Resources

Anxiety Relief Solutions – Multiple natural, non-drug products and programs to relieve social anxiety, stage fright, performance anxiety and other forms of stress and anxiety.

The Inner Actor

High Ability   /   High Ability-Facebook

Highly Sensitive  /  Highly Sensitive-Facebook

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Topics in our interview related to the creative mind and developing creativity include some of Dr. Carson’s seven brain activation patterns she discusses in her book; creativity vs ADHD; flexibility in thought, and mood states like anxiety and fear.

Responding to a question of mine about highly sensitive people, she says that usually she emphasizes the value of taking in more ideas and information to fuel creativity – but people who are already taking in too much information may need to cut down on their input, to “allow them to move forward in the creative process.”

Her site:  ShelleyCarson.com

Facebook page: Creativity in Action

Book:  Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life.

..

He teaches workshops on coping techniques for highly sensitive people and has taught stress reduction and insomnia management for over fifteen years at various hospitals and medical groups.

He has more than twenty years experience counseling sensitive people and has a private practice counseling HSPs in-person and by phone.

His site: www.drtedzeff.com

Books by Ted Zeff, PhD :

The Highly Sensitive Person’s Survival Guide: Essential Skills for Living Well in an Overstimulating World

Highly Sensitive Person’s Companion: Daily Exercises for Calming Your Senses in an Overstimulating World

Also see Video: nurturing our sensitive self: Ted Zeff, PhD on strategies

high sensitivity personality, highly sensitive people, highly sensitive books, high sensitivity resources

In our interview, she talks about some of the challenges we may face in taking care of ourselves and living our purpose, such as being overly self-critical or not setting good self-care boundaries.

She also talks about her new project of interviewing creative visionaries about how they stay on track and make more effective contributions.

Her main site, where you can sign up for her newsletter, and learn more about her Embrace Your Essential Self program and other resources:
http://highlysensitivesouls.com

Also see her Sensitive Professionals Network site http://www.sensitiveprofessionals.com

Jenna mentions an HSP Conference with Jacquelyn Strickland – listen to our podcast interview

Also see the Highly Sensitive site http://highlysensitive.org/

high sensitivity personality, highly sensitive people, highly sensitive person, HSP, HSPs, sensitive souls

See links to her books and sites below.

Here is a short Q&A email interview with brief answers by Dee Wallace – which she answers in more depth in the podcast.

1)  On your blog, you say “You can’t JUDGE the ‘business’ or the ‘jerks who won’t let you audition’ and expect to successfully get in a room to do that very thing!

Do you think many actors have that kind of “battleground” attitude?  What are some other examples you have noticed in your students – or even experienced actors?

> Dee Wallace. Yes, I do.  It’s a defense mechanism.  If we can make them wrong, we don’t need to address the things in us that need to be healed, ie, beliefs of low self worth, powerlessness, beliefs that the worls “owes us.”

..

—–

2)  You also mention other kinds of self-limiting judgments, such as thinking “I really want to act BUT I can’t make enough to support my family/am too old, fat, or the wrong type.”

How do you help others change that kind of thinking?

> Dee Wallace. I help them uncover those beliefs in their way so it is easier to focus all the energy on the outcome they desire.  If you are vigilantly aware of how you think/talk about the industry and the “business”, it will be blatantly clear what your beliefs are.  I help uncover the harder ones.

——

3)  In your new ebook The Big E, you talk about some common sayings such as “Up a creek without a paddle.” What may be limiting about that saying?

> Dee Wallace. Well – you need a paddle to steer your course or you veer off, overturn the boat, etc!  The creek is the journey of life, the paddle is your clear direction.  If you aren’t consciously creating your life, you are definitely “up a creek without a paddle.”

—

4)  In your book Conscious Creation you talk about a production manager who wanted to advance to producing, but found rejection, lack of success and bitterness because his “intention energy” had switched to something that didn’t work. Would you explain more about that?

> Dee Wallace. Saying what you want while holding energy against it doesn’t work.  That is what most of us are doing with the Universe.  We’re giving it conflicting directions.

It’s like a director saying to me “cross stage left but don’t move.”  I’m stuck.  I can’t complete both directions because they cancel each other out.  He was trying to become one of the very people he was judging.  Can’t happen.

—

5)   On her MySpace site, your daughter Gabrielle Stone has a great quote: “When I stand before God at the end of my life… I hope that I have not a single bit of talent left and can say, “I used everything you gave me.”

Do you find that many young actors have multiple talents and a passion to be of service, not just “movie stars”?

> Dee Wallace. Yes.  I think many of our young people have been raised with a deep sense of responsibility to themselves, their country and their world.  Gabrielle does the healing work with me – which is not to say she can let loose like any 20 year old!

—

6)  You have commented that “we often talk ourselves out of one of the most important aspects of creation: taking action. We let that pesky little ego come in and convince us we’re not safe.”

Is getting past that just a matter of rational thought, or is there more to helping ourselves be fulfilled and creative?

> Dee Wallace. It all begins with loving yourself.  Love Yourself – love yourself – and love yourself more.  Then you choose to do what is best for you, what gives you joy, what creates happiness and freedom in your life.  When you do that, you have to serve others – because it is Truth.

~ ~ ~

Links

Contact Dee at  consciouscreation101@yahoo.com

Her site: www.officialdeewallace.com

Her book: Conscious Creation: Directing Energy to Get the Life You Want.

Site for her new book with Jarrad Hewett “The Big E”

Photo from Official Dee Wallace blog.

Gabrielle Stone site

Related posts:
Brad Swift and Dee Wallace on purpose, ego and creating
Dee Wallace on acting passion and limiting beliefs.

developing creativity, creative potential, creative personality type, creative experience characteristics, psychology of creativity, creative mind

His books include :

The Psychology of Creative Writing

Creativity 101.

Topics in the interview include the use of mood-altering substances by writers and other artists; the genius myth stereotype; how the idea of a creative muse impacts creative self-direction, and the influence of gender and ethnic factors.

James C. Kaufman site

Journal: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

Also see Creativity enhancement articles :

and my article Gifted, Talented, Addicted.

She synthesizes traditional medicine with intuition, subtle energy, and spirituality, and provides in her book strategies to transform strong negative emotions to help achieve inner peace and better access to our creativity.

[Links open in new window]

Transcript of interview: Transforming Strong Negative Emotions

Her site: drjudithorloff.com

Multiple videos: YouTube / Judith Orloff, MD

Introduction to Emotional Freedom (Audio)

Book: Emotional Freedom

Article: Am I An Emotional Vampire? How Do I Know?, by Judith Orloff MD

More articles by Judith Orloff.

Also see my earlier (text) interview with Dr. Orloff.

Read more about supplements Dr. Orloff suggests to relieve anxiety at Anxiety Relief Solutions.

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Her students include some of the top young performers in film and television.

In our interview, she addresses a number of questions, including :

How important is it for your students to have fun?

Do you find your students also get a kind of therapeutic benefit from acting?

How much is your work about helping young actors understand themselves, not just acting techniques?

[Photo: with Emma Roberts (right) on the set of the TV series "Unfabulous."]

Cynthia Bain says of her approach to teaching, “You can’t create in fear. I disagree with that methodology of teaching where you have to be critical or shaming. I don’t think people do their best creating in an atmosphere of fear.

“I’m challenging, I have high expectations, I want them to work hard, to be in it to win and do their best… I’m honored that they trust me with their emotions, and that this is their desire, their passion.”

Find our more about her classes and training on her site:
www.cynthiabain.com

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Also see the related Talent Development Resources section: The Inner Actor.

[Links open in new window.]

In our interview, Summer, who made the film at age 18, and is now 20, talks about a number of her perspectives on her work.

“Acting is a way for me to just kind of work through whatever I’m going through,” she commented.

“You do it in front of a camera, and it’s an art, so it’s constructive. But it’s also therapeutic.”

“One thing I’ve learned is to not make acting impersonal, not make the character impersonal, but to stay within the walls of their psyche. I don’t like to bring my own psyche into the character. I think that can get really confusing for the person, and the work.”

Summer Bishil’s imdb profile

Related post on The Inner Actor: Summer Bishil on the emotional toll of “Towelhead”

[Links open in new window.]

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