Therapy for
Musicians & Artists

Creative life is beautiful, meaningful, and deeply nourishing. As a lifelong artist and musician, I know first hand what it feels like to be inspired by an idea, a vision, a feeling, a meaning, and to take that inspiration and turn it into something that can be seen, heard, touched, and felt. Art pushes people to imagine, to open their minds, to see the world differently, to appreciate and to love and to understand things in a way they hadn’t before. Same with music. Music opens our hearts, uplifts us, reaches out and grabs us with a feeling, oftentimes helping us understand ourselves better than we would have otherwise. I know I’m not alone when I share that music taught me how to grieve and how to feel. Few things are more sacred than allowing ourselves to be moved, inspired, and touched by music and art.

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I came from an artist family. My dad was a signed musician at 18 years of age and later became an award winning commercial artist, creating slogans such as Numero Uno’s “One bite and we got ya,” TWA’s “Fly the Friendly Skies,” The United Negro College Fund’s “A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” and “This is your brain on drugs,” with the fried egg. In his later years, my dad traveled to Santa Fe to do oil paintings of adobe architecture. My mother was also an artist and textile designer who became quite successful. Because of my artist parents, I was painting and drawing before I could walk. I spent most of my early childhood drawing, painting, dancing, listening to music, and making music. In grade school and beyond I began writing poetry, lyrics, songs, short stories, articles and playing drums and guitar.

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But being an artist can be a difficult path. Not only are many of us misunderstood, we often walk alone, unseen, and oftentimes spend years struggling with certain themes, experiences, old memories, and yes, even trauma. Just as in mental health, many therapists enter the field to discover and to heal themselves, many artists do the same. It’s not just the idea, the inspiration, that nags at an artist to bring something to life, to create, it’s often old pain. Our art and music become the medium through which we try to make peace with what we’ve been through.

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That was true for me as well. I had a very difficult childhood, like many artists and therapists. It took half a lifetime to heal. I was in my 40s before I finally released most of my childhood suffering from my heart. Therapy saved my life.

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My right brain was so overdeveloped, my left underdeveloped, and this, combined with some very difficult childhood experiences, meant I barely got through high school. The only reason I graduated was because of two teachers who genuinely cared about me. Ms. Dulemba, my 11th grade English teacher, liked my creative writing and encouraged me to keep doing it. Jerry Sawitz, my AP art teacher, encouraged me to keep drawing and eventually helped me get into college. During my college days I played rhythm guitar in a popular band in the San Fernando Valley, and although I loved music, I didn’t have the courage and confidence to try to make a living from it. Had I the chance to heal my childhood wounds at an earlier age, I likely would have stayed in music professionally.

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All of that to say, the journey of an artist or musician gets better with therapy. True story. We don’t need to suffer, to remain stuck in our pain or mistreatment, in order to create. As we heal from the past, the ideas still flow, the inspiration still arrives, the creative power and the feeling still expand us with clarity and meaning, though the art certainly looks different. It shifts from expressing the darkness to eventually expressing the light, uplifting us with good feelings. Why? IMHO, it’s because when we’ve healed from the past, we are finally able to let go of our pain, of our suffering, of the intense and extreme feelings and beliefs we carried for so long. In this new space, we find new feelings of appreciation, gratitude, laughter, playfulness, joy, optimism, love for ourselves and others, true confidence, clarity, intuition, purpose, and powerful creativity.

This last one, creativity, is something many artists misunderstand. They believe their creativity can only be fueled by their pain. But this isn’t so. Once an artist or musician has healed from the past, unburdened the extreme feelings and beliefs they’ve carried, and released the old painful energies from their body, they can tap into powerful creativity, the likes of which they were previously unable to imagine. In some ways, the occupational hazard of the healed artist is that there are too many ideas to act on.
 

So this is why I beckon you, as an artist or musician, to do your inner work. The journey, the art, the inspiration, the creativity, it all gets better. Imagine creating out of love, instead of fear. 
 

If you are an artist or musician who feels burdened by the past, stuck in old pain, hard on yourself, or hungry to feel more free, more alive, and more fully expressed, I want you to know that change is possible. You do not have to choose between healing and creativity. In my experience, healing opens the door to even deeper creativity, deeper feeling, and a more meaningful connection to your art, your music, and your life. If that kind of inner work calls to you, I’d be honored to support you in that journey.