Being Sensitive and Creative

Clinical and research reports confirm creative people are unusually sensitive, and many creative people have commented about their own experience with the trait of high sensitivity.

For example, creativity coach Lisa Riley, LMFT comments she has “encountered a connection between highly sensitive people and their own creative impulses.

“Creatives often feel and perceive more intensely, dramatically, and with a wildly vivid color palate to draw from, which can only be described as looking at the world through a much larger lens.”

From her guest post: Highly Sensitive Personality and Creativity.

> Excerpt read by Assoc. Editor Cat Robson:

See multiple Products for Your Creative Success by creativity coach Lisa Riley
at her site The Art of Mind

Of course, being creative is not limited to people identified as artists, or even pursuing creative ventures.

Both creativity and being sensitive are on a spectrum – a range of different levels.

And being sensitive does not mean you are necessarily creative or an artist.

Oh please be careful with me, I’m sensitive

And I’d like to stay that way

From the song I’m Sensitive by Jewel
- from her debut album Pieces of You

…
Writer Pearl Buck commented:

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.

“To them… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise… Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off…”

Psychologist Elaine Aron, PhD is probably the leading expert on high sensitivity, or more technically, sensory processing sensitivity.

She explains:

“Highly sensitive individuals are those born with a tendency to notice more in their environment and deeply reflect on everything before acting, as compared to those who notice less and act quickly and impulsively. As a result, sensitive people, both children and adults, tend to be empathic, smart, intuitive, creative, careful, and conscientious…”

Continued in article Being Highly Sensitive and Creative – an excerpt from my book.

~~~