Creative Blocks as Unmet Needs
Working with Creative Resistance using IFS
By Netta Sadovsky, LSW
One of the ways we often see Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy benefiting people is by identifying and clearing internal blockages that obstruct creativity. IFS is a form of therapy based on the understanding that humans are composed of multiple internal “parts”—each with their own personalities, roles, skills, desires, fears, and more. When an artist experiences a creative block, the reason often has to do with an unmediated polarization between two or more of these internal parts. These blockages are quite common, and IFS can powerfully help artists to better understand and address the unmet needs that underlie them, and thus to invigorate their creative practice.
To better understand how IFS might apply to artists experiencing creative blocks, let’s look at two examples.
First example: Lynda
For the last fifteen years, Lynda has worked as an attorney, helping underdog clients take on corporate interests. Last month, she suddenly quit her job in order to finally pursue her lifelong ambition to be a professional painter. The artist inside her could no longer allow her to give so much of her time and energy elsewhere. But since quitting her job, whenever Lynda sits in front of a canvas, she is immediately distracted—by her phone, her pets, that broken bookshelf she’s been meaning to fix; any task that doesn’t involve painting.
After beginning to work with an IFS therapist, Lynda starts to identify what’s happening inside her in these moments of distraction. She first notices and offers compassion to a frustrated artist part, and then identifies a younger adolescent part with whom the artist is feuding. Lynda calls this part her inner rebel, who was formed as Lynnda approached the end of high school, and her parents exerted increasingly suffocating control over virtually every aspect of her life, from her internet usage to her social network to her coursework at school.
This inner rebel was the first part of her to become interested in art, while studying Studio Art as an elective in High School. It’s also what led her work against corporate interests as a lawyer, rebelling against her parents’ values. But now that Lynda is officially pursuing art as a career, the inner rebel is resisting Lynda’s older parts’ efforts to direct the whole system’s energy toward professional ambition. Over time, IFS helps Lynda to take care of the inner rebel by finding ways to channel freedom and express rebellion within the act of painting, rather than by resisting Lynda’s intention to paint.
Second Example: Alex
Alex is a 34-year-old gay man who has been an artist his whole life, earning a Bachelor’s and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Studio Art. Alex has always worked in different mediums. He’ll spend six months obsessed with ceramics, then suddenly find himself working with textiles. He’s very talented and quickly develops the ability to express his creative inspiration with originality and skill in each new medium, but he’s never been able to stick with one long enough to gain professional traction. Also, Alex sometimes finds he strays from his creative practice for weeks or even months at a time. He may get wrapped up in a new relationship, a new day-job, or some other new interest, then suddenly find he hasn’t made anything for a long time.
Alex is depressed by his inability to focus his talents in a professionally beneficial way. Alex starts working with an IFS therapist who helps him identify some of the tension between his parts. Alex’s artist part feels discouraged, even hopeless. It points Alex and his therapist to the part it feels thwarted by, which Alex terms his inner wanderer.
Alex and the therapist patiently inquire into the wanderer’s history, and learn that his creative impulse was originally driven by this wanderer. It developed early in Alex’s childhood, when Alex would use daydreams to escape the monotony of his environment. Alex grew up in a highly homogenous culture. Virtually all of his neighbors were from Italian-American working class families, and among some of the patriarchal gender norms was the expectation that boys should not express sensitivity, creativity, or vulnerability.
This inner wanderer served Alex remarkably well and has furnished him with a life full of rich, diverse experiences. It has also provided him with endless creative inspiration. However, this part is not as skilled when it comes to professional goals. It will always favor exploration over discipline. In time, Alex learns to negotiate a collaboration between his inner wanderer, his artist, and other, older parts who are more skilled at managing his creative and professional aspirations. Alex learns to satisfy his inner wanderer within a new multi-media practice, which allows him to incorporate a variety of forms into each new project.
As seen in both these examples, through patient inquiry, IFS therapy can help artists undam these types of mysterious inner blockages that can hamper the flow of creative energy.