As 2022 is settling in, how are you feeling? Do you have a sense of enthusiasm about your hopes, plans, and visions for the new year?
The new rush of emotional energy that came in with the new year likely gave you a boost of hope and inspiration. Beginnings feel fresh and full of possibilities. January is a time for renewal and shedding old parts that don’t serve you anymore.
In such new-beginnings moments, the readiness for growth and transformations feels so real. Your whole being opens up so the best parts of yourself can emerge into the forefront of your being. You’re connected with your authentic real self – the core and the essence of who you are.
If only you could stay here, in this authentic, creative emotional space!
In that emotional space of intimate connection to your true self, you can see a glimpse of what life may be, if you could stay forever grounded in the truth of who you are. Everything feels right, clean, and clear. It’s nearly effortless to express the essence of you. You believe in yourself and trust you can bring your full self to the world. You are ready to express your own vision, your own voice, your own creativity and artistry. You shine with your own sense of agency because you really know who you are. 
You deserve to be out there in the world in your fullest human expression. You have a right to step out, allowing all your strengths and beauty to co-exist with your pain, struggles, and imperfections. This is what it means to be fully expressed and alive in this life.
Deep within, you feel you have to show up and lead a creative, fulfilled existence. Living your fullest life is not just an option or a possibility. It is what you deserve.
But, what happens when you lose your momentum and inspiration and a new beginning starts feeling just like just another string of days?
When unhealed parts of you interfere with your ability to show up and create your life , you start repeating the emotional conflicts, patterns, and stories from the past.
Past trauma can disrupt the connection with your true self and you begin to feel like you are in conflict with who you are and what you want. This is when you start avoiding your life. What seemed so possible and attainable starts fading away. The excitement about the new year and new beginnings is just a memory…
When a new beginning ends too soon you become discouraged and afraid you’ll never be able to create the life you want. All those dreams about being connected with your creativity, experiencing fulfilling relationships and having meaningful success seem to evaporate.
Here’s the reality: what you haven’t healed yet will continue to hold you back from being in touch with your core self.
You’ll continue to sabotage your connection to yourself, your relationships, your career, and your sense of agency when you have unresolved emotional conflicts inside of you. If you haven’t done the emotional work to clear the trauma that keeps you from creating an intimate and authentic connection with yourself, you cannot expect the next “new beginning” to take root and lead to a transformed life.
Yes, “emotional trauma” may sound a little heavy, but in my work, anything that doesn’t allow us to be in touch with the essence of who we are and create an authentic fulfilling life is emotional trauma.
Emotional trauma may look and feel like:
– issues with shame, rejection, or abandonment
– a tendency to rely on outside validation
– fears and doubts that take over
– feeling uninspired, emotionally numb, or unmotivated
– feeling anxious and/or depressed
– addiction to something (including drugs, shopping, food, or another person)
– unfulfilling relationships
– feeling lost and confused
– feeling unseen and unimportant
– not knowing and being connected to your self-worth
– feeling creatively stuck
– feeling an overall sense of “I can’t”
All these are signs of unhealed emotional trauma that interfere with your ability to access your core self. These traumatic ways of being and living lead your way and cause you to lose your connection with your truest passions, desires, and skills. Instead of actively creating your life, you’re stuck in a wish or fantasy land.
Doing the work of emotional healing offers you the freedom to live a fulfilling life connected and grounded in your own self-worth, emotions, beliefs and ideas, dreams and goals, purpose and meaning. You can make your wish and actively invest yourself toward creating your life, one wish at at time, your life becoming your own story. Although not all our wishes become true, most important is our authentic connection to our life journey. And, the discovery of what actually may become reality, is part of the mystery and the beauty of life. 
How do you do the work of emotional healing to turn a new beginning into several seasons of growth?
The only way to do emotional work is to show up in life to face yourself, discover who you really are, and create your life based on who you really are.
You may not know what that means until you actually show up and see what is holding you back. As you live, create, and connect with others, you can see what gets brought to the surface and then you can actually face yourself and make shifts toward healing and growth.
Life is created when you show up and work with what you have before you in your present. Facing your fears, doubts, limitations. Making your mistakes as you discover your true path. Feeling stuck and trying to “unstuck” yourself in both successful and unsuccessful ways. Experiencing the pain of putting yourself out there. Doing the hard work to develop a relationship with your emotions and make your passions and dreams into your everyday experience.
Here’s another important reality: you can’t do this work alone.
You don’t just “show up” to do the work all by yourself. Yes, you are the one who has to do the work because no one else will do the work for you. But, you need to find people who can be there for you to help facilitate your growth. You need to be in an emotional relational supportive environment with the right people for you. You also need professionals trained in how to help you heal and make changes: a psychotherapist, coach, or other mental health professional.
As you set out to make this year into something different than the past, the right psychotherapist (or mental health professional) can offer you a safe space so you can allow yourself to:
- start chipping away at the resistance that keeps you from really looking inside
- discover who you really are
- embrace yourself for who you are
- unfold your authentic self so you can see yourself and feel this connection to yourself
- wrestle with the truths inside you
- use your inner truth to create your life
This is work that is meaningful and fulfilling. It will help you create a more solid and beautiful inner- world so you can, in turn, create a life that reflects the beautiful, grounded inner you. This process will take you into the most challenging raw places, but also you’ll also experience profound inner shifts that help you make your intentions for this year into something tangible and real.
What can you expect from Creative Minds Psychotherapy in 2022? What can you expect from yourself?
In 2022, I will continue to write and share about what I have witnessed and learned from my two decades as a clinician who has helped so many to transform their emotional trauma into fulfilling lives full of authentic creative endeavors and meaningful relationships.
Trauma manifests in loss of authentic and intimate connection to yourself, others, your creativity, and sense of agency. It can appear as creative blocks, performance anxiety, relationship issues, depression, anxiety, and/or addictions.
This year, it’s my hope that you can start to heal your past trauma and say “no” to living an old story that doesn’t reflect the fullness of what you really can be.
You can do the emotional work and live with emotional freedom to create and live your life from your core self – the essence of who you are.
My California-based psychotherapy practice specializes in the unique needs of artists and creatives and healing emotional trauma. Psychotherapy is a powerful journey that can help you develop true intimacy with your own true self. And, therapy can help you reclaim your creativity and sense of agency so you can build a meaningful career and develop authentic relationships.
Working with creatives for over 20 years now, I know that psychotherapy is a science and an art at the same time. Every creative, performer, or artist is unique as every piece of art, performance, or creative act.
I will help you explore your unique life experiences and use them to create your unique self through a combination of in-depth psychodynamic/psychoanalytic approaches strongly informed by the neuroscience of psychotherapy. Additionally, CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) will to give you tools to cope with current challenges while you’re making shifts, and EMDR which is very effective way for trauma work, but that can enrich your creativity and strengthen your sense of agency
Creating your beautiful fulfilling life and inner world is in itself a powerful form of art. It’s scientific, emotional, and spiritual, all at the same time.
Contact me to set up a free 15-20 minute consultation to see if psychotherapy can help you further your career and your personal life.
I am Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Doctor in Clinical Psychology. I help creatives face and shift emotional trauma, depression, anxiety, performance anxiety, creative blocks, and addictions – to be and live their own best version. You can read more about Therapy for Creatives and Performers here.
