Highly Sensitive Creatives

High sensitivity comes with many gifts and many challenges. There is perhaps no one who is more aware of this than the creative.

Rick Rubin notes in his new book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, that:

"The best artists tend to be the ones with the most sensitive antennae to draw in the energy resonating at a particular moment. Many great artists first develop sensitive antennae not to create art but to protect themselves. They have to protect themselves because everything hurts more. They feel everything more deeply."

This sentiment is echoed in the work of Dr. Elaine Aron, one of the primary researchers on the highly sensitive person (HSP). Dr. Aron says:

"Highly sensitive people are all creative by definition - because we process things so thoroughly and notice so many subtleties and emotional meanings that we can easily put two unusual things together."

Rubin & Dr. Elaine Aron both recognize high sensitivity produces a natural inclination toward the creative process. Rubin says, effectively, 'creatives become creatives in order to survive.' Dr. Aron says, effectively, 'highly sensitive people process the world in a way that is inherently creative, and thus, the correlation between high sensitivity & creativity makes sense.' Regardless of the chicken-and-egg determination of the link between high sensitivity & creativity, the continually seen relationship between these two traits has significant ramifications for those who identify with them.

Namely, those inclined to sensitivity and creativity must manage the simultaneous gifts and burdens of their inclinations. The same mechanisms that make highly sensitive people such gifted writers, artists, and performers also make highly sensitive people susceptible to experiencing high levels of emotional pain. As Dr. Aron and Rick Rubin both note, sensitivity means attunement. Highly sensitive creatives thrive when they are able to manage their attunement to the pain around them through their work or as part of their creative process.

The 'deep feelings' Rubin recognizes sensitive creatives have make for some of the most powerful & impactful art. But sensitive creatives must also manage their gifts carefully, knowing they are likely to be knocked down more easily by experiences like heartbreak, loss, and suffering. The mission, then, of a sensitive creative, is to manage the burdens of sensitivity, so that the gifts might take center stage more frequently.

Expansive Notions of Grief

I can recall when I first started to think about grief in a more expansive way. Initially, I thought grief was reserved for issues of death and loss. As I learned and experienced more, I began to understand grief as a normal response to less obvious events, such as transitions, breakups, the ending of friendships, the launching of children, etc. Now, I see grief all around me, all the time.

We tend to associate grief with things like:

• Death

• Loss

• Illness

We may also experience grief in response to:

• A divorce or breakup

• The end of a friendship

• A transition like graduating, moving, or launching children

If we let it, grief can be a unique and powerful teacher. It can illuminate the fleeting nature of what we once took for granted. It can show us, over and over, what we hold most dear. It can remind us to sit longer with what we have or move more quickly toward what we are still looking for.

The Courage to End a Relationship

Nourishing relationships can shelter us through difficulties and free up space for us to pursue what is important. Draining relationships can have the opposite effect. They can take up so much space that they distract us from our purpose.

Leaving a relationship that is not providing the security you long for is an incredible act of courage. Taking a leap of faith & trusting in the potential for more is admirable and celebratory.

With that in mind, one of the best ways to reframe a breakup is as an act of love towards yourself, rather than an act of malice against the person you are breaking up with. Often, the narrative around a breakup is more punitive -- it sounds like "I'm dumping them" or "they didn't deserve me." While this kind of language may fit for more scenarios, it may be misaligned with others.

Especially in relationships where there is still love present, walking away can have more to do with wanting something different for ourselves than harboring anger toward the person we are walking away from. In the aftermath of this type of breakup, it can be essential to continually return to the intention of self-love and self-care, so as not to slide back into a situation that is not serving us.

If the time is right, and you muster the courage to walk away, you can remind yourself that you are brave, not malicious. It may be helpful to replace the more traditionally punitive breakup narrative with something along the lines of "this was a step I needed to take" and "unfortunately, I am not able to move forward with this person, despite the fondness I have towards them."