Group Therapy Can Help Creative People and Performers
by Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Psy.D, LMFT
Known Challenges
While creatives and performers live fascinating lives, they also face challenges unique to the arts and entertainment field. They can:
- Become isolated, lonely, and disconnected
- Encounter rejection, conflicts, and unpredictability as just part of the game
- Be haunted by feelings of not being enough
- Face worries about their career, despite past successes, can easily take over
- Deal with performance anxiety or creative blocks
- Experience self-esteem and confidence destroyers lurking at every corner
- Be subjected to abuse just to maintain their work
Powerful Benefits
Group psychotherapy can be quite powerful and effective in helping creatives and performers navigate their complex challenges.
By joining the group, creatives and performers discover that they are not alone. The sense of ‘I am not alone,’ will quickly translate into feeling a sense of belonging and community, which can be rare for creatives and performers.
Consequently, the group becomes:
- An emotional support, motivation, and inspiration platform
- A place to find solutions that address challenges strategically and constructively
- A place to understand their feelings and learn how to use them for generating growth, more authentic connections, and opening new doors
- A safe base from which they can go in the world and face their challenges
Creatives and performers as they start connecting more authentically with the group – feeling safe, understood, seen, valued, encouraged and reassured – they can go out in the world experimenting with new ways of being, taking on new challenges, and using the new emotional tools for their benefits.
As for my role in a group, I am like the conductor making sure that what I just described unfolds.
Like a symphony, when all instruments are played to full effect and in the right way, the music is harmonious and beautiful. As the members interact in the group, they benefit from the authentic and supportive connections, and then transfer their group learning into the real world. Interacting more fully and in the right way in the real world helps them create and enjoy more beauty in their lives.
