Is Shame Destroying My Creativity?

For many artists, the creative process is not always easy. In fact, the American novelist, Flannery O’Connor, once described her creative journey as a “terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.” The part of this process that has been the most difficult for me has been the pesky presence of frequent creative blocks.

As creators, many of us have or will face moments when our creative wells feel dried up. Others might encounter entire seasons of complete drought. These dips in the creative process can be incredibly discouraging, especially for those whose art is their main source of income. According to an article from the Good Therapy website, these creative blocks have the capacity to cause anxiety, depression, and can have negative impacts upon one's identity and self-esteem. Most artists neglect to share this part of the process. If we do, we diminish the seriousness of these creative blocks, polishing it over with practical tips on how to move past them. While these suggestions are useful, they fail to dig deeper into the reasons why we are creatively dry.

There are some artists, such as Susan Denard, the author of The Witchlands series, who have explored the roots of our creative blocks. In her blog, she suggests that fear is the most common cause of a creative block. She does not mean the fear that is primarily entwined with your art, but, rather, as Denard writes, “the deep fears that have to do with yourself.” There are other writers and artists who have shared similar sentiments. However, I believe that the root of our creative blocks runs far deeper.

While I agree that fear plays a nasty role in impeding our creativity, I do not believe it is the main culprit. The true felon behind our seasons of creative drought is shame. This becomes so evident as we examine the things we fear amidst a creative block, but, especially, as we peel back the layers and examine the core of those fears. I hate to break it to you, but this all runs far deeper than you think. It goes beyond our creativity and straight to the very fabric of who we are.

The Problem of Shame

There has been extensive research on shame in recent years amidst the rise of mental health issues. The conclusion that this collection of research has come to is that shame is a more serious and prevalent issue than we often assume.

According to John Amodeo in his article from Psychology Today, it has become incredibly evident how shame stifles self-worth, relationships, and innovation. He claims:

“A deeply held shame is often the water we swim in. It’s an elusive, privately-held feeling that we don’t like to acknowledge - a nagging sense that something is amiss, that we are basically flawed, defective, unworthy, and less valuable than others.” (John Amodeo)

Brenè Brown, an author and professor whose research focuses on the importance of vulnerability, shares a similar understanding of the gravity of shame when she declared in a TEDTalk:

“Shame is an epidemic in our culture. To get out from underneath it, to find our way back to each other, we have to understand how it effects us…and the way we look at each other.” (Brenè Brown)

Shame affects more of us than we tend to acknowledge. To some degree, I believe that it has its talons deeply embedded in all of us, but we rarely recognize its hold. Most of us confuse shame with guilt, anger, frustration, anxiety, or fear. Meanwhile, it is the shame that has taken root within us that is manifesting these emotions, infiltrating our relationships, diminishing our creativity, and destroying our lives.

Psychologist Mary C. Lamia, in “Shame: A Concealed, Contagious, and Dangerous Emotion,” defines shame as a “self-conscious emotion” that “informs us of an internal state of inadequacy, unworthiness, dishonour, regret, or disconnection.” Shame can be triggered by a variety of experiences, but, generally, it grows out of instances where one has been shamed or has felt ashamed. It arises from key moments of rejection or public scrutiny based on a mistake or a deviation from social norms. It breeds from situations where we have been violated or devalued as human beings. Often, it develops from times that we have (willingly or unwillingly) engaged in something we knew was morally and socially wrong. For the artist, this might manifest itself as a failure to produce the art that you envisioned, a rejection or negative comment about your work, a time you were teased for your creativity, a devaluing of your talent, or a sudden inability to create.

In her 2011 TEDTalk, Brenè Brown described shame as “the fear of disconnection. Is there something about me that if other people know it or see it that I won’t be worthy of connection?” Interestingly, this definition compliments the way that shame is presented to us throughout Scripture. It is best displayed to us in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve bit into the forbidden fruit and, aware of their disobedience and nakedness, they hid from each other and God in shame (Genesis 3:8). This story clearly demonstrates this “fear of disconnection” that Brown claims is entwined with shame. Adam and Eve hid knowing that their disobedience had caused them to be separated from God (Genesis 3:23-24). The shame they experienced was a consequence of their sin. As a result, we too are impacted by shame because of our own sin and that which exists in our broken world. We instinctively respond to our shame like Adam and Eve; we hide because we are not only afraid that we will be rejected by others but by our Creator. Isaiah 59:2 affirms this as it says, “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” The consequence for our sin is disconnection from God, who designed us for connection, and who we have rejected.

Jon Bloom describes the dynamic between sin and shame well in his article “Breaking the Power of Shame”:

“Because sin is alive in our bodies and because we are beset with weakness, the kind of shame we often experience is a potent combination of failure and pride. We fail morally (sin), we fail due to our limitations (weakness), and we fail because the creation is subject to futility and doesn’t work right.”(Jon Bloom)

Therefore, shame is a deep internal battle that each of us will inevitably face. As Roman 3:23 says, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” We are all guilty. Our response to that guilt is often through shame. Guilt indicates to us that we have done wrong. A healthy dose of this is good. But when we keep returning to that guilt, even after the deed has been forgiven, that is an indicator of a deeply held shame. It’s a sign that we have clothed ourselves in failure and wrongdoing or the wrong that has been done to us. This kind of shame, when left silent and unattended, has the potential to be lethal. The problem of shame, specifically unaddressed shame, is that it holds the power to fuse itself to every area of our lives, including our creativity.

Shame & Creativity

Many of you might have thought it odd that I’ve endeavoured to propose an interrelationship between shame and creativity. However, as research continues to exemplify, shame is a powerful emotion that can distort our sense of self and hinder our potential to live boldly. This includes our ability to create audaciously.

In Daring Greatly, Brenè Brown suggests that our resistance to vulnerability is linked with shame. If vulnerability means showing up and allowing others to fully see who we are, shame will likely urge us to run or hide. This is why many of us feel like we are drowning in fear along our creative journey. It’s because vulnerability is exactly what creativity requires of us. According to Brown, “To create is to make something that has never existed before. There is nothing more vulnerable than that.” She explains that the thing that makes creativity so vulnerable is that it is, at its core, all about “showing up and being seen.”

It takes courage to create because we are pouring part of ourselves and our stories into our creation. We take leaps of faith when we choose to share our art with others and, especially, when we bet our livelihood on it. We put ourselves out there by welcoming others to praise and reject our work. We boldly choose to commit to the creative process, a journey that promises failure. Art is personal. It is a window into the heart of the artist. We are vulnerable in its pursuit because we are taking risks and allowing ourselves to be seen. Others will see our successes, but they will also see our failures. They will love our art, or they will verbally express their hatred for it. We will experience joy and we will also endure shame.

If shame distorts the way we perceive ourselves, then it will undoubtedly saturate our creative process. A study posted on the Good Therapy website about creative blocks lists the reasons why many artists experience them, proving this to be true. The list they shared included self-doubt, rejection, negative self-talk, perfectionism, and anxiety amongst a few others. All of these reasons, when narrowed down, are linked with shame. This is something that an author, Greta Solomon, discovered in an experiment she conducted amongst students she was tutoring in English. She shared in her article, “How Shame Can Stop You From Fulfilling Your Writing Potential,” that she observed that her students were never able to tell her what they thought or felt about the issues discussed because they were having a mental block. Throughout her experiment, she discovered that “they had self-sabotaging writing thoughts and behaviours that directly stemmed from fear and shame.” Solomon began introducing techniques to help the students which did not address their writing, but the way they viewed themselves. She found that when they began combining positive mindsets with their creative writing exercises that their writing flowed better and the students “experienced the powerful joy of unbridled self-expression”

I experienced this interrelationship between shame and creativity through the creative block I battled during this past year. For me, this fear-driven-by-shame played a more prominent role in my creativity than I realized. In fact, it dates back to the genesis of my creative journey.

I was seventeen when I self-published my first novel, The Winds of Destiny. I was an inexperienced writer with little knowledge about the publishing industry, especially self-publishing. To add to this naivety, I’ve struggled with spelling and grammar for as long as I could remember. Terror gripped me every time I was asked to write anything in front of a class or group. Those times that my peers or friends (and teachers) teased me or joked about my spelling have stuck with me. As did the times when my intelligence was brought into question because of the correlation between my gender and the natural colour of my hair. Shame sewed more threads into the cloak I had already been wearing, bringing with it a string of lies I accepted about myself. The threads grew thicker as others pointed out all the mistakes in my self-published novel. Mistakes that I was aware of and feared people would cling to. It was hard to ignore the voices in my head that told me I had failed. Their words only grew louder throughout university as my creative writing professor told me that the fiction I was passionate about writing was worthless, that my stories were insignificant, and that a career in writing was impossible. Shame grew heavy whenever friends would ask me when my next book was coming out and I didn’t have an answer because I hadn’t finished the manuscript yet. Truthfully, I thought I never would.

In summary, shame has played a significant role not only in my creativity but in my life. It is a burden I have carried since my early childhood, yet I never recognized its presence. I was unaware of the ways it had manipulated the way I viewed myself. Above all, I didn’t notice the way it seeped into the way I related to my art. This deep-seated shame that I kept silent and hidden is the conductor of the fear that often leaves me paralyzed before the blank page. Ultimately, for me, it is the fear of failure that leaves me creatively dry. It’s the fear that the lies shame taught me to believe are true and that, because I have fallen short, others will turn away. That God Himself will turn away.

Furthermore, I believe that one of the reasons that many artists don’t talk about their experience with creative blocks is because we feel ashamed. We feel that we are not living up to the expectations of others or those we have for ourselves. We are not only frustrated when we cannot create, we are afraid and ashamed because it seems like we are failing. Sometimes, we actually are. And since creativity is a vulnerable process, we do not want anyone to see us in our failure.

Shame is powerful, so much so that it cannot be confined to categories; it’s intersectional. If it affects your relationships, then it is disturbing your spiritual life. If it’s upsetting your spiritual life, then it’s distorting your sense of self and it will influence your creative pursuits too. Unattended, shame will fester, thrive, and silently eat away at you. It may vanish for a time, but, eventually, it will come back to bite. Shame is a silent suffocation of the very things that make life beautiful. That is why it’s so important that we confront it and be rid of it.

The Solution

As I’ve emphasized, shame is not strictly a creative issue. It does impact your creativity but its roots lay far deeper. If we desire to create freely, boldly, and passionately, then we need to deal with our shame.

So, how do we do that?

In Greta Solomon’s experiment, she first got her students to ask themselves how and when their trust as a writer was broken. She asked her students to recognize the presence of shame in their creative journey and identify how it has impacted them. Other writers and researchers have made this same suggestion. The Bible itself echoes this when it speaks of confession: “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy” (Proverbs 28:13). It is healthy to acknowledge and recognize the patterns of shame in our lives. However, this cannot be the only way we deal with our shame.

Many of esteemed researchers, psychologists, and writers, along with the self-help messages from popular media influencers, have claimed that the key to dealing with our shame is to fully believe that we are good enough. It is to deny our thoughts of inadequacy and accept that we are innately worthy. Brenè Brown claims that the solution to overcoming our shame is by allowing ourselves to be “deeply seen” and “to work from a place that says ‘I’m enough.’” In doing so, Brown says, we will become kinder to each other and ourselves. There is an air of truth to this idea. It has been proven that people thrive when they are secure in their worthiness. But I wonder where this inward worth comes from? What about me makes me enough? Is it my efforts, actions, or my mere existence? What do we base these statements upon?

I don’t know about you, but as I have searched inward to seek my worth all I have found is a messy compilation of reasons why I am not enough. Personally, this practice of affirming myself has in no way freed me from the bonds of shame. It has bandaged wounds for a time, but as the band-aid dampens it slides off and I am exposed and bleeding again. The idea that I am enough in and of myself has been useless in my battle with shame because the evidence in my life is completely stacked against me. The truth is that I have failed - remarkably and frequently. The deep shame that I hold is not merely a collection of negative remarks or experiences from others. It’s also a mosaic of my own missteps and wrongdoing. It is, in varying degrees, self-imposed. As I examine these failings, I simply know that I am unworthy and no amount of denying this is going to change that, nor will it break the power that shame has over me. For myself, the only way that I have been able to shuck off and burn my cloak of shame is by looking to Jesus.

According to the Bible, humanity, broken by sin, is not innately good enough or worthy. We are not naturally strong or resilient on our own. In fact, we are incredibly weak. We have not only failed to live up to our own standards, but we have fallen short of God’s (Romans 3:23). The Lord knows this. He knows that sin is a malady we are all born with (Psalm 51:5). He knows that shame is a consequence of our sinful nature. But he did not just sit there are affirm our shortcoming or abandon us in our self-destruction. God sent his one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to be a perfect sacrifice for our sin and our shame (John 3:16-17). He sent Jesus to live a blameless life, to endure the shame of being stripped, mocked and crucified on a cross for our wrongdoing so that we may be forgiven and freed from the mastery of sin and shame (1 Peter 2:24). Therefore, in believing this, we are not only adopted into God’s eternal kingdom, but we can live (and create) knowing that the debt for our mistakes and the hurt inflicted upon us has been paid. We can live unashamed. We can fail and know that we are still loved and accepted - we are worthy because of Jesus. Not because of our achievements. Not because of our talents and efforts.

We are enough because Jesus Christ has made us so.

As Christians, specifically, those of us who are creators, it’s so important that we embrace this truth daily because this is the only way we can truly overcome the shame and fear that holds us back from doing the very thing we feel called to do - to create. Shame tells us that we are not enough and that we are not worthy of connection, but God, in light of the Gospel, says otherwise. He says we are worth enough to him to send His only Son to suffer and die on a Roman cross. If we believe that our worth is based on who God says we are, it means that we’re graciously allowed to fail, learn, and get back up again. We’re free to create without fear of failure or rejection because we are secure in the fact that our worth is dependent upon something greater than our efforts.

If we work from a place of knowing we are enough through Christ, we can endure every failure we have or will face along our creative journey because we know that each one is met with unearned and undeserved grace. Our deeply held shame can be eradicated by accepting the forgiveness and redemption promised through Jesus. We need to allow the Gospel to transform the way we think about ourselves and our creativity so that we may be free to create boldly and joyfully.

Therefore, the solution to the shame that often impedes our creativity is embracing the Gospel. It is through acknowledging the role that shame plays in our creativity and responding with the truth of God’s Word. Indeed, it’s by growing in our love for Jesus that we are freed to create fearlessly and enjoy the process of making something beautiful.

Death to Shame

In conclusion, shame does impact our creativity. We may not realize it, but its presence might be recognized amidst a creative block. It’s true that sometimes these blocks are not always a result of fear or shame. Often, it could simply be that something is not working in that chapter you’re writing or something does not sound right in your song, but you cannot identify a solution. However, I have noticed in myself that I tend to associate those issues with my own skill and worth as a writer. My inability to create can so quickly trigger the lies that shame has imprinted upon my mind. This is why I believe it is so important that we as Christian creatives regularly renew our minds in the truth of Jesus Christ. We need to accept that Paul was right to say in Romans 10:11 that, “’Everyone who believes in Him (Jesus) will not be put to shame.’” Christ has broken every chain of shame that kept us caged and afraid. We have the freedom to be vulnerable in our creativity because we know that we are no longer ruled by our shame.

My prayer is that you, Christian creator, will remember this truth and allow it to transform your entire life, including your creative process. I pray that you will find freedom in the cross, just as I have, and that it will motivate you to create art that glorifies the one who has set you free and that you will experience joy in the process.

“For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For Scripture says, ‘Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame .’” Romans 10:11

---

Sources:

Amodeo, John. “How Shame Suffocates Love and Creativity.” Psychology Today, 13 December 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/intimacy-path-toward-spirituality/201512/how-shame-suffocates-love-and-creativity. Accessed 1 March 2021.

Bloom, Jon. “Breaking The Power of Shame.” DesiringGod, 15 July 2016. https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/breaking-the-power-of-shame. Accessed 1 March 2021.

Brown, Brenè. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead. 2013.

Brown, Brenè. “Listening to Shame.” YouTube, uploaded by TED, 16 March 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psN1DORYYV0&ab_channel=TED

Brown, Brenè. “The Power of Vulnerability.” YouTube, uploaded by TED, 3 January 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o&ab_channel=TED

“Creative Blocks.” GoodTherapy, 11 January 2019, https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/creative-blocks. Accessed 1 March 2021.

Denard, Susan. “From FRAB to Fab Part 1: The Oft Forgotten Culprit Behind Writer’s Block.” Blog. Susan Denard. WordPress, 13 January 2014. https://susandennard.com/2014/01/13/from-frab-to-fab-part-1-the-oft-forgotten-oft-unspoken-culprit-behind-writers-block/. Accessed 1 March 2021.

Lamia, Mary C. “Shame: A Concealed, Contagious, and Dangerous Emotion.” Psychology Today, 4 April 2011. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/intense-emotions-and-strong-feelings/201104/shame-concealed-contagious-and-dangerous-emotion. Accessed 8 March 2021.

“Shame.” GoodTherapy, 27 September 2019, https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/shame. Accessed 8 March 2021.

Solomon, Greta. “How Shame Can Stop You From Fulfilling Your Writing Potential.” Writers Digest, 8 April 2019, https://www.writersdigest.com/be-inspired/how-shame-can-stop-you-from-fulfilling-your-writing-potential. Accessed 1 March 2021.

---

(Note to Reader: I hope you stick around for more posts from me as I embark on this journey of exploring my passion for art and faith through my writing to encourage others in their creative pursuits. Please know, Reader, that you are welcome here. No matter who you are. No matter your personal beliefs. I’d like to emphasize that everything in this post is based upon my own opinion, interpretation, and experience. I have qualifications, but I’d hardly call myself an expert. My hope is that in sharing my thoughts and story that you would find encouragement or inspiration through my words. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me! I’d love to connect with you!)