How to Reconnect With Your Creativity

To reconnect with your creativity, start with something you loved before anyone graded you. Do it in private, with no rules. Skip the class at first, because true creative energy comes from play. Walk into any kindergarten class and they're having a blast. Stay rule-free for a while, until you remember the joy instead of the critic.

What stops most women isn't a lack of skill. It's the conditioned voices telling you how it should look. Work with those voices, and the creative part of you comes back.

I remember her standing next to her first painting grinning like a teenager who'd snuck out and gotten away with it. It was hanging on a wall. Where people could see it. That grin took a while to get to. When she first came to me, she hadn't painted since she was a little girl. And the first real assignment I gave her sounds like terrible advice. Do not take an art class.

I'm Perry Janssen, a psychotherapist and coach, and I've spent more than 30 years working with women. I see her story everywhere. With paint, with writing, with the dance class, with the pottery class she keeps not signing up for.

Why so many women stop making things

She grew up in a family of successful creatives, and the house rule was simple. If you can't be the best, don't bother. She got other crazy messages along the way too. Art meant starving. She'd end up on the streets. She'd be waitressing the rest of her life if she chased a creative dream. So she went every direction but creative.

Most women don't stop because they lost interest. They stop because somebody handed them the rules. Be good at it or don't bother. Be practical. Don't waste time on things that don't pay. Take care of everyone else first. That's conditioning, and it gets in so early it sounds like common sense.

Then there's time. Women still have less of it for themselves. Reporting on the American Time Use Survey found women get nearly an hour less leisure time than men each day. When the hours you do have go to everyone else, the paintbrush is the first thing that gets set aside.

The itch you keep talking yourself out of

When she came to me, she couldn't quite name what was wrong. She felt an itch. A longing. Her work and her world had gone flat. So she numbed it. More sweets. More busy. A 5:00 happy hour she suddenly needed.

If you've felt the itch, you probably know your own version. The scrolling. The extra project at work. The calendar so full there's no room left to feel anything. That itch is information. Something in you wants out.

So we did the very thing she'd been avoiding. We went digging under the itch. What we found was a little girl who loved to color. Who painted with her hands. Who could barely sit still, she was so excited to show off her newest creative inventions.

The part of you that loved to make things never left. She's been waiting for you to come back.

Why taking a class can be the wrong first step

My students call me the Passion Pusher. I love it, and I wear it proudly. When I hear a passion in a woman, I grab hold of it, and we are off to the races.

Her first assignment was small and a little sneaky. Get some paints. Tarp a wall. Tell no one, especially your family. And do not take an art class. Do NOT look on YouTube.

She was already smothered in shoulds. A class at that point hands you a fresh stack of them: how composition should work, which colors belong together, what good looks like. A new creative impulse is like the first trimester. You protect it. You don't announce it yet.

The research backs a no-rules start. In a Drexel University study, 39 adults made art for 45 minutes with no directions and whatever materials they chose. Cortisol, a stress hormone, dropped in 75 percent of them. Just under half had little art experience, and experience made no difference. You don't have to be good at it for it to be good for you. She came back that first week with a twinkle in her eye. And she began to blossom.

When the Greek Chorus shows up

Then she signed up for an art class, and her Greek Chorus showed up in full force. The Greek Chorus is what I call the voices in your head that comment on every move you make. In the old Greek plays, a chorus stood at the side of the stage and passed judgment on the hero. Ours got conditioned into us so early that they sound like common sense. Wah wah wah.

Hers sounded like a perfectionist, a critic, and a comparer all talking at once. The composition should be like this. The colors should be like that. It shouldn't be so pretty. The shoulds went on and on until she could barely pick up a brush. Then her family's voices came in like a tsunami.

A lot of advice says to silence your inner critic, or just tell it to go away. It doesn't work. You can't get rid of your Greek Chorus, and fighting it is one more attack on your own system. So we worked with hers, together.

Then I gave her new assignments. Paint, but no brushes. No color grid. No rules. I think she hated me for a while. She was the quintessential rule follower, and the rules were sucking the life out of her. And she remembered the girl who painted with her hands, and she went and got her back.

It's never too late to start something new

Her story is paint. Yours might be the novel in a drawer, the guitar in the closet, the dance class, the trip. The pattern is the same. Something you loved, the rules that moved in, and the voices that show up the second you reach for it again.

"Too late" is one of the Chorus's favorite lines. It doesn't hold up. In the Creativity and Aging Study, led by Dr. Gene Cohen and sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, adults ages 65 to 103 joined weekly arts programs led by professional artists. Compared with a control group, they reported fewer doctor visits, used less medication, and kept up more activities. Creativity was never a young woman's game. You get to come back to it whenever you're ready.

How to reconnect with your creativity this week

You don't need a plan. You need a start.

Name what you loved before anyone graded you. Think back to being seven or eight. Coloring, building forts, making up songs, writing stories nobody asked for. That's your doorway.

Start in secret. Don't announce it, don't post it, don't ask anyone's opinion. A new thing needs a little privacy before it can handle an audience.

Make the rules impossible to follow. Paint without brushes. Write with your other hand. Dance with the lights off. When doing it right isn't an option, the perfectionist has nothing to grab.

Expect the voices. The minute you start, the critic, the comparer, or the one asking who you think you are will pipe up. That doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. It means you've started.

Want to do this with other women?

This is the heart of Reclaim Your Wilde, my six-week cohort for women ready to remember what they want and take a real step toward it, with a circle of women beside them. The next cohort is coming this winter. If this stirred something, come.

Join the Reclaim Your Wilde waitlist

Frequently asked questions

How do I reconnect with my creativity after years away?

Start with what you loved as a child, before anyone told you whether you were good at it. Do it in private, with no rules, for a few weeks before you add classes or feedback. The goal at first is the feeling of making something, not the result.

Is it too late to start painting or writing in midlife?

No. In the Creativity and Aging Study, adults ages 65 to 103 in weekly arts programs reported fewer doctor visits and used less medication than a control group. The "too late" voice is a conditioned fear, not a fact.

Should I take a class to get back into art?

Eventually, maybe. At the very start, a class can bring a flood of rules about how things should look, and that can shut a new impulse down. Many women do better with a few weeks of private, no-rules making first.

Why do I feel selfish or silly making things just for me?

Most women were conditioned to put everyone else's needs first, so time spent on yourself can trigger guilt. That guilt is a learned voice, not a verdict on you, and you're allowed to want something just for you.

What is the Greek Chorus?

The Greek Chorus is Perry Janssen's name for the conditioned inner voices that comment on everything you do: the critic, the judge, the perfectionist, the comparer, the shamer. Like the chorus in an old Greek play, they stand at the side of the stage and pass judgment. You can't get rid of them, but you can learn to work with them.

Do I have to be talented for creativity to help me?

No. A Drexel University study found that 75 percent of adults had lower cortisol after 45 minutes of making art, and prior art experience made no difference. You don't have to be good at it for it to be good for you.