11 Ways to Become a More Creative Person

In my article, The Joy of Becoming More Playful As An Adult, I discussed how playing can help you to be a more creative person.  In this article, I'm focusing on creativity and things you can do to inspire your creativity.

Become a More Creative Person

Things You Can Do to Inspire Your Creativity

• Tap Into Your Unconscious Mind Using Stream of Consciousness Writing: In her book, The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron writes about doing stream of consciousness writing when you wake up in the morning.  She calls it the Morning Pages.  This process also goes by other names, including free associative writing.  With any type of free associative writing you're allowing yourself to just write down whatever comes to mind. You're not editing it or assessing it. You're just allowing your thoughts to flow. This will eventually tap into your unconscious mind so you can access your creativity. 

• Welcome Boredom: People usually try to avoid being bored by filling up their time with all kinds of activity, including spending time scrolling through social media.  But instead of trying to avoid boredom, embrace it.  People often get their best ideas when they're bored (see my article: How Boredom Can Lead to Greater Creativity).

• Use Your Dreams: Dreams can be a great source of creativity. You can give yourself a  suggestion just before going to sleep that you want creative ideas for a project you're working on. This is called dream incubation (see my articles: Dream Incubation - Planting Seeds, Embodied Imagination and Dreamwork and Working With Dreams to Develop Your Creative Imagination).

Use Your Dream to Develop Your Creativity

• Develop Your Intuition: There are lots of ways to develop your intuition. Many people use vivid picture cards, like Tarot cards that appeal to them or cards called Inner Active cards to stimulate their intuition which also enhances creativity (see my article: Tapping into Your Creative and Intuitive Power).

• Spend Time in Nature: Even just a few minutes of walking in nature can help you to relax and open up to new ideas.

• Get Physical: Exercising helps to increase blood flow and oxygen to the brain. It also helps to get you out of a linear mode of thinking so you can tap into your creativity.

• Keep a List of Ideas: Whenever you hear an interesting or intriguing idea, write it down.  When you get into the habit of keeping a list of ideas, you give your mind the signal that you're open to new ideas so they can begin to flow.

• Watch an Inspiring TED Talk: TED talk speakers are usually inspiring and can motivate you to open yourself to new ideas.

Become a More Creative Person: Watch an Inspiring TED Talk

• Do Something New: Try something new--whether it's going to a new place, learning about a new culture, learning a new language, taking an acting class, telling your five minute story at a storytelling show, like The Moth, or whatever seems fun and inspiring to you (see my article: The Power of Storytelling and Being Open to New Experiences).

• Look at Your World With New Eyes: Instead of seeing your surroundings in the way you always see them, look at your world with new eyes. This could mean you walk around your neighborhood and look for things you never noticed before--a decoration on a building, a flower in your neighbor's garden you've never noticed before, an unusual looking tree, a bird's nest and so on (see my article: Seeing Small Wonders All Around Us If We Just Take the Time to Notice).

• Practice Mindfulness Meditation: Research studies have revealed many benefits to doing mindfulness meditation, including developing a more flexible way of thinking. When you can think more flexibly, you can be more creative (see my article: The Mind-Body Connection: Mindfulness Meditation).

Conclusion

There are many ways to tap into your creativity. It's a matter of finding what works for you.  

Sometimes people feel creatively blocked and they need to find ways to reclaim their creativity).  

Getting Help in Therapy

If you're unable to get out of a creative rut on your own, you can seek help in therapy from a therapist who does Experiential Therapy, which uses the mind-body connection to help clients to get creatively unblocked.

Getting Help in Therapy

Working with a skilled experiential therapist can help you overcome blocks that are hindering your progress (see my article: Overcoming Creative Blocks).

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I am a sex positive therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Your Daydreams Can Be a Source of Inspiration and Motivation

As children, many of us were warned by the adults in our lives to "Stop daydreaming." Maybe we were in our own fantasy world, using our imagination to create new worlds with fantastic people, plants or animals. Or, maybe we were imagining ourselves as flying to another planet or being celebrated for making a new discovery.

Daydreams Can Be a Source of Inspiration and Motivation

Over time, we might have come to think of daydreaming as being a waste of time. But our daydreams can offer us many opportunities for new and creative ideas as well as new ways of seeing ourselves and the world.

What is a daydream?
A daydream is often a pleasant fantasy from our unconscious that we have when we're awake and our minds wander off. Daydreams are usually about our hopes, wishes and aspirations. Usually, we don't direct our daydreams. They just come, if we allow them and if we take the time to pay attention to them.

Research Studies Reveal That We Spend a Lot of Time Daydreaming
Recent studies have revealed that, whether we realize it or not, we spend a significant amount of time daydreaming each day--up to a third of our day. 

Scientists have also discovered that daydreaming serves an important function with regard to problem solving, as our unconscious minds come up with new ways to look at situations.

Creative Writers and Daydreaming
Our unconscious minds can come up with so many more ideas than our conscious minds. 

For instance, many writers have said that when they felt blocked and unable to write, if they took a break from their writing and allowed themselves time to just let their minds wander, often they suddenly come up with new ideas.

Freud wrote about this phenomenon in "Creative Writers and Daydreaming."

How We Can Use Our Daydreams
Instead of thinking of daydreams as a waste of time, we can begin to think of them as a powerful, creative and rich source of information and inspiration. 

We can begin to pay attention to our daydreams to find out what they're telling us about our wishes, hopes and aspirations. 

Are we having particular daydreams about a new idea, a song, a story, a new career, a new image of ourselves?

We can begin to write down our daydreams and look for recurring themes. Maybe we can use some of our pleasant daydreams to bring new and creative ideas into fruition. 

And why not? We have this wonderful source--why not use it, and have fun with it? Learn to be more playful, enjoy your daydreams and let your imagination soar.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Reclaiming Your Creativity

Many clients have come to see me over the years in my psychotherapy private practice in New York City to overcome creative psychological blocks.  

These include writers, actors, artists, singers, and other people in the creative fields.  Often, the psychotherapy work involves reclaiming a creative aspect of themselves.

Reclaiming Your Creativity

What Does "Reclaiming Your Creativity" Mean?
The following vignette, which is a composite of many psychotherapy cases to protect confidentiality, is an example of a creative psychological block and how this client was able to reclaim his creativity:

John:
John, who is in his late 30s, is a short story writer.  At the point when he came to see me, he was struggling to complete a book of his short stories.  Every time he sat down at his computer to work on his stories, he was plagued by crushing self doubt.   He would stare at the computer screen for a long time while thoughts swirled around his head, "Who do you think you are, trying to write stories?," "No one's interested in what you have to say," "You can't write" and so on.  After a while, John would walk away from his work, pace around the room, and distract himself with something else before he went back to his writing to try again.

When John came to see me, this pattern was going on for months.  He was feeling more and more anxious and frustrated, and he feared he would never be able to write again.  Accomplished writers that John respected had looked over his work, and they encouraged him to complete the book.  But John was stuck.  He couldn't stop the critical voices in his head long enough to do any more work.

After several sessions of obtaining his personal history, which included an overly critical father who denigrated John's writing as a child, we used a combination of clinical hypnosis and Somatic Experiencing techniques to help John overcome the negative thoughts that kept him creatively blocked. The work wasn't easy for John because there were layers of trauma where John's father shamed him mercilessly.  But over time, John learned to overcome his negative thoughts so they no longer defeated him.  He also developed more confidence and he eventually completed his book and went on to other creative endeavors.

Psychological Blocks Can Occur in Any Endeavor
You don't have to be a writer or an artist to struggle with your creativity.  We all use our creativity every day to come up with ideas and solve problems in our lives.  Self doubt can be just as stifling no matter what you do, draining away your self confidence.  Often, these critical thoughts have their origins in childhood, and as a adults we re-experience them in the form of psychological blocks:

• the singer whose voice closes up on her when she goes for an audition
• the office manager who feels like he's about to choke, literally, when he has to give a presentation at work
• the supervisor who has been asked to come up with a solution to a work problem who feels like she's in a mental fog whenever she and her boss talk about the problem
• the job applicant who suddenly can't think of his accomplishments when the interviewer asks him about them
• the broadcast journalist whose presentation is fine--except when she goes on air and she stammers through the broadcast

A Psychological Block to a Solving an Office Problem

Psychological Blocks Can Be Overcome with Clinical Hypnosis and Somatic Experiencing
Psychological blocks can be overcome with a combination of clinical hypnosis and Somatic Experiencing.  

No two clinical cases are alike and there's no way to say in advance how the problem will be resolved.  

Much will depend on the individual's personal history, the type of problem, if there is trauma involved, and how the individual processes in treatment.  

For some people, the problem can be resolved in a matter of months, and for other people it might take longer.  But, generally speaking, I've found the combination of clinical hypnosis and Somatic Experiencing to be much more effective than just regular talk therapy.

About Me
I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist. 

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.



Photo Credits (in order of appearance):
photo credit: miguelavg via photopin cc
photo credit: drewleavy via photopin cc

The Joy of Being Attuned to Your Inner Child

As a psychotherapist who specializes in doing trauma work, I work with many people who were traumatized as children. This often means doing what John Bradshaw and others have called inner child work. Because this type of trauma work has become so prevalent, I think many people associate the term inner child to a state that is only a reference to trauma. But, being attuned to your "inner child" can also be a source of joy, inspiration, creativity, and happiness.

The Joy of Being Attuned to Your Inner Child

Regaining a Sense of Playfulness and Wonder

Childhood often holds moments of playfulness, openness, and a sense of curiosity and wonder that many people lose when they become adults. If you were fortunate enough to have had a reasonably good childhood with loving parents, your childhood probably had many instances of joy and love. It can be a rich inner emotional resource that you might have forgotten about but that is still available to you.

Rediscovering Your Inner Child and Creativity

As a psychotherapist in New York City, over the years, I've worked with many creative people--writers, composers, and artists--who want to tap into the part of the "inner child" who felt such an aliveness and openness to the world.

Often, they are struggling to overcome their "inner critic," that "voice of negative prediction" that causes creative blocks. Using clinical hypnosis or a combination of clinical hypnosis and Somatic Experiencing, they can tap into this deep resource.

But you don't have to be involved with artistic endeavors to benefit from becoming attuned to the joy of your "inner child." Feeling alive and open to new possibilities is beneficial to everyone, whether we tap into these feeling states for work, personal relationships or for your own sense of well being.

Mind-Body Oriented Psychotherapy Can Help to Tap into Creativity and Joy

So, instead of thinking of inner child work as always being about trauma or shame, you can also benefit from the positive aspects of your having been young, open, and playful. A sense of playfulness in our personal lives and in our work can open up a well spring of creativity and joy that you might not even realize you still have available to you.

All of your feeling states are still a part of you. They might not be as easily accessible during your everyday waking consciousness. But learning to access these states with mind-body oriented psychotherapeutic treatment modalities, like clinical hypnosis or Somatic Experiencing, can tap into your unconscious mind where these experiences might have been dormant for many years.

There is much to be gained by being attuned to that part of you that is often referred to as your "inner child." Whether it's resolving trauma, tuning into an openness and sense of wonder, or a combination of these experiences and more, working with the "inner child" can help you to feel more emotionally integrated and vibrant. That sense of being more alive, joyful, inspired, creative and open enables you to lead a more emotionally fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist who provides psychotherapy services to individuals and couples, including dynamic talk therapy, EMDR, clinical hypnosis, and Somatic Experiencing.

I have helped many clients to lead more fulfilling and enriched lives.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Overcoming Creative Blocks with Clinical Hypnosis

As a New York City psychotherapist, I often work with artistic clients who are trying to overcome creative blocks. Writers, actors, composers, and artists often struggle with blocks in their creative endeavors. The tendency is usually to struggle and try to push yourself through this phase. 

Overcoming Creative Blocks

Sometimes this works for some people but, often, it backfires because the more you push yourself, the more frustrated you become. And the more frustrated you become with your creative block, the more likely you'll become self critical. The more self critical you are, the less likely you'll be able to overcome your creative block.

We often associate creativity with artists and writers, but we're all creative beings no matter what we do. We use our creativity everyday to problem solve or come up with ideas in our personal lives and at work.

The Odyssey
I just finished rereading The Odyssey (Homer). When I read it the first time as a teen, I didn't appreciate it nearly as well as I did this time around. 

Aside from the fact that my current reading of it was from a much better translation (Fagle), as an adult who has had much more life experience than the teen I was when I read it the first time, I appreciate so much more Odysseus' spirit to survive, his wily nature, and the wonderfully creative solutions he comes up with whenever he encounters life and death situations. His creative nature saved his life as well as the lives of his loved ones.

When we're blocked, for whatever reason, it's hard for us to think "out of the box." We're too stuck to explore and discover new ways to look at a situation or a problem, and we might not know what's keeping us stuck. 

Maybe it's an unwillingness to look at a situation from a different perspective. Maybe we're in a rut and can't see beyond the immediate circumstances. Often, we don't know why we're creatively block.

Clinical hypnosis, also known as hypnotherapy, can be very helpful in overcoming creative blocks. Hypnosis helps us to access our creativity on an unconscious level. And the best part is that we don't even need to know the reason why our creativity is blocked for hypnosis to work.

If you're experiencing a creative block that you've been unable to overcome on your own, you could benefit from seeing a licensed mental health professional who is trained in clinical hypnosis.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR therapist, and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Creative Imagination and Dream Work for Writers

In my prior blog post, I wrote a post entitled, "Working with Dreams to Develop Your Creative Imagination" (http://www.psychotherapist-nyc.blogspot.com/2011/07/working-with-dreams-to-develop-your.html).

Creative Imagination, Dream Incubation, and Dream Work to Overcome Creative Blocks:
In this blog post, I will focus on how creative imagination and dream work can be a source of inspiration for writers. As I've mentioned before, among the clients that I work with in my psychotherapy private practice in NYC, I work with writers, actors, musicians, composers, and other people who are in the creative arts.

Creative Imagination and Dream Work For Writers

In any creative endeavor, it's not unusual to develop a creative block that gets in the way of doing the work. Dream incubation and the subsequent dream work that is possible from incubated dreams is often very helpful for writers who are experiencing creative blocks or at an impasse in their work.

For instance, if a writer is struggling with a particular character or a scene in a story, he or she can incubate a dream to overcome this impasse. As I mentioned in prior blog posts, to incubate a dream, you can either give yourself a suggestion before going to sleep that you want to have a dream to overcome this impasse or you can work with a psychoanalytically trained psychotherapist who is trained in Embodied Imagination dream work (developed by Robert Bosnak) to help you.

When we do Embodied Imagination dream work for incubated dreams, we not only have access to our own experiences in the dream, we also have access to the experiences of the other characters in the dream.

As I've mentioned before, in Embodied Imagination dream work, we start with our own experiences, but we don't stop there. We also access the experiences of the other characters in the dream. Now, I realize that this might sound odd, but one of the basic concepts of Embodied Imagination is that we make no assumptions about where the dream is coming from or who the other characters are in the dream.

Rather than assuming that the characters are a part of ourselves, as we might in Gestalt or other types of psychotherapy, we make no assumptions. We allow the other characters to have their own "lives" in the dream. This frees us up to experience these characters from their own perspectives. Needless to say, I'm not referring to the type of hallucinations that people with schizophrenia or some other delusional or psychotic disorder might have. All I'm saying is that, for the purpose of doing the dream work, we suspend disbelief in the service of doing the creative dream work and using our imagination. For a fuller explanation of this phenomenon, I recommend that you read Robert Bosnak's book, Embodiment.

So, for example, a writer might incubate a dream about a particular character that he or she is not satisfied with in the story. The dreams that are the result of this incubation would include valuable information about the character, sometimes coming from the character's own mouth.

When we're dreaming, generally, we're in a more relaxed state than in our regular waking experience. This allows us to have access to a deeper sense of our imagination than when we're awake. In these dreams, characters and scenes "come alive" in ways that they often don't in our usual waking consciousness. And it takes no extra time since we would spend the same amount of time sleeping whether we incubated dreams or not.

I also find that, like with most things, maintaining a sense of humor helps with the creative process.

About Me

I am a licensed psychoanalytically trained psychotherapist. I am also a hypnotherapist, Somatic Experiencing therapist, and an EMDR therapist.

I work with individuals and couples, and my office is convenient located in Manhattan.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Working with Dreams to Develop Your Creative Imagination

Dreams and Your Creative Imagination:
I love working with dreams, my own dreams as well as clients' and friends' dreams. Dream work provides us with a unique opportunity to access our creative imagination in ways that are often not accessible to us in the normal waking state.

Working with Dreams to Develop Your Creative Imagination

What Do We Mean by "Imagination"?
The word "imagination" has gotten a bad rap in modern times, especially for adults. Often, when we hear the words "imagined" or "imagination," it has a negative connotation. We often think of these words as meaning something that is false, as in: "It was just his imagination." 

But the word "imagination" has a much broader meaning. When we can open up to our imagination, we open ourselves to our internal world of images, ideas, emotions, and our felt sense about ourselves and the world around us. 

We use our imagination to learn new things and to understand and develop new concepts. We also use our imagination to come up with creative solutions to everyday problems and in our creative endeavors. Most inventions were created with the inventor using his or her imagination to come up with new ideas. Often, these inventors came up with creative ideas through their dreams.

Children are usually much better attuned to their imagination and can enter into and out of imagined states or play with ease. They know the difference between imagination, play and everyday waking reality. But, somehow, for many of us, when we become adults, we often get the message that imagining and play are things that are left behind in childhood for the logical reality of adulthood. Even for some children who are scolded for daydreaming or "making up stories" from their imagination, they lose this precious skill early in life.

Remembering Your Dreams:
In order to do dream work, you must first remember your dreams. For most people who are motivated to remember their dreams, a simple suggestion before going to sleep as well as keeping a note pad and pen close at hand to jot down dreams is often enough to help you remember your dreams. It's important to write down your dream in the present tense as soon as you wake up.


We often think that we'll remember a dream only to have it slip away like vapor as soon as we focus on something else. Even if what you remember is only a snippet of part of a dream, write it down. By writing down even a snippet of a dream, you're giving your unconscious mind the suggestion that dreams are important. Usually, over time, snippets will develop into more in-depth memories of dreams.

Keeping a Dream Journal:
I recommend keeping a dream journal where you record your dreams. Keeping the dream journal in a safe and private place will allow you to feel free to write down your dreams without censoring yourself. Giving each dream a date and dream title and keeping an index is also very helpful in many ways. 

First, by giving titles to your dreams, you're giving your unconscious mind the suggestion that dreams are meaningful stories that you want to remember. Second, having an index of dream titles helps you to look back on particular themes.

How Does Dream Work Help Us to Access Our Creative Imagination?
When I do dreamwork with clients, I help them to get back into the dream state (also called the hypnogogic state) of the particular dream that we're working on. In this dream state, you have access to the images, emotions, and the felt sense of the dream.

A psychotherapist who is experienced with doing this type of dream work, such as Embodied Imagination, can help clients to access not only their own experiences in the dream but also tap into the experiences of the other characters in the dream. I've written about Embodied Imagination and Robert Bosnak in prior blog posts: (http://www.psychotherapist-nyc.blogspot.com/2011/01/dreams-and-embodied--imagination.html). I also recommend reading Robert Bosnak's book, Embodiment, available in paperback.

If you want to develop your creative mind while dreaming, you can also give yourself a suggestion before going to sleep to have creative dreams about the issue that you want to work on. This takes some practice, motivation, and patience. Using evocative imagery just before going to sleep is often helpful to incubate dreams on a particular issue.

When I work with clients who want to incubate dreams to come up with creative solutions for a particular problem or issue, I help them get into a relaxed state to use their imagination. This might involve having them focus on their emotional experience and desire related to this issue. 

I help them to sense into their experience using their five senses, as well as their imagination, emotions and felt sense. Then, before they go to sleep, they practice what we did in our therapy session for a minute or so before going to sleep in order to incubate dreams. Often, these experiences can be revelatory, accessing a deep sense of creativity that is not usually available to them in normal waking life.

I recommend working with a psychotherapist who has a psychoanalytic background and who has experience using Embodied Imagination to get the full experience of using your imagination and developing your creativity. But you can also benefit from paying attention to your dreams on your own to develop your creativity.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, hypnotherapist, Somatic Experiencing therapist, and EMDR therapist.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Beware of Emotional Saboteurs

Most of us have had the experience of being excited about a new idea or project, telling a friend or family member and having them douse our ideas with ice water before we've even gotten our ideas off the ground. Often, because the ideas are new for us, this could be enough to discourage us and tap into old feelings of inadequacy. There's nothing like an emotional saboteur to stop you in your tracks and make you doubt yourself to the point that you give up on your ideas.

What Are Emotional Saboteurs?
Emotional saboteurs come in all shapes and sizes, and there are both internal and external emotional saboteurs. This article will focus primarily on external saboteurs, but it's important to recognize that we have our own internal saboteurs that can get triggered by external saboteurs.

Beware of Emotional Saboteurs

External Emotional Saboteurs - The Anxious Saboteur:
External emotional saboteurs are often well meaning. On a conscious level, they often don't really mean to discourage us but, due to their own feelings of inadequacy or their own fears, they do just that. When we share our enthusiasm for a new idea with them, they become anxious. 

Without realizing it, they begin to find all kinds of reasons why our ideas won't work. On a conscious level, they might feel that they're protecting us from failure or from taking a risk. Often, they try to live their lives as carefully as possible, taking as few risks as possible. So that when they hear you talk about something that might involve a degree of risk, it's like an alarm goes off in their heads that says "Warning! Danger ahead!" and they want to spare you of what they perceive as a bad idea.

External Emotional Saboteurs: The Pessimist:
Another type of emotional saboteur is the person who is very pessimistic about almost everything. He or she can always find "the downside" to any idea or situation. If there is even one possibility in 1,000 that something could go wrong, this person will dwell on this one possibility and try to convince you not to go forward. They have all kinds of stories about people who tried the same thing and it never worked or they suffered some horrible fate. Since they are pessimists at heart, they almost never try anything that is new or risky.

External Emotional Saboteurs: The Office "Jungle Fighter":
Then, there are the emotional saboteurs who knowingly try to discourage you from any new creative endeavors. They might engage in emotional sabotage because they're envious or maybe they're competitive and wish they had come up with your idea. 

It's not unusual to find this type of emotional saboteur in the workplace. No sooner have they discouraged you from proceeding with your idea or project than they are talking it up with the boss as if it was their idea. When you find these emotional saboteurs in the workplace, they're like "jungle fighters," manipulative and cunning. They find insidious ways to discourage you and tap into your insecurities. For the more extreme types in this category, there's something sociopathic about them. They are only motivated by self interest and lacking in empathy for anyone else.

External Emotional Saboteurs: The "Expert":
In our enthusiasm to gather information about the ideas that we might want to pursue, we often consult with an "expert" in the field. This could be someone who has many years of valuable experience in the particular area that we're interested in.

Let's say, for instance, that you're thinking about writing a book. You might consult with an established writer or publisher or someone else in the field who has particular expertise in the area that you're interested in. 

If you choose the right person, you'll get balanced advice on your particular endeavor. You come away with valuable information that you can use to decide how to proceed. But if you choose someone who happens to be an emotional saboteur by nature, their "expert" opinion might be very discouraging. You might hear about how books are not selling due to the recession or that other people have written about the topic that you're interested in and they failed, and so on. 

This person might not be someone who can think "outside the box" and, for example, he or she might not give you ideas about self publishing. They've "been there," "done that" and they try to discourage you from going forward with your idea.

How to Distinguish People Who Give Sound Advice from Emotional Saboteurs:
When we're at the very beginning of a creative process, we're most vulnerable to emotional saboteurs. We have our hopes and dreams and, due to our enthusiasm and naivete, we can go to the wrong person who can dash our hopes before we even get our project off the ground. I often wonder how many writers, artists, dancers, or people in other areas have been discouraged by emotional saboteurs and abandon their ideas.

But how do we distinguish between people who are emotional saboteurs from people who might be giving us sound advice? It's often tricky to tell the difference. A lot depends on your own judgement about the person and the situation. 

So, for instance, if you're thinking of jumping into some get-rich-quick scheme or you're about to be, unwittingly, pulled into a scam, you want someone who is level headed to give you advice or share their own experiences with you to keep you from doing something that is foolhardy. Before you invest your hard earned money in some scheme that sounds too good to be true, you want to be able to listen to balanced advice with an open mind and consider that they might be right before you do something that is potentially harmful to you or your loved ones.

We Often Know, On Some Level, Who Will Be An Emotional Saboteur:
In my opinion, if we know the people that we're going to for advice, on some level, we often know who will be unnecessarily discouraging and who will be even handed with our new ideas. Why we would go to someone that we know would discourage us is a big topic for another article. Sometimes, on an unconscious level, a part of us feels inadequate and, without realizing it, we look to others to confirm our own sense of inadequacy. So, if this is your pattern, it's important to recognize this and learn to stop doing it.

Before you seek advice on new creative endeavors, it's important to think carefully about who you go to for advice. Sometimes, in the early stages of a new project, if you're sure that you want to pursue it and you have a chance for success, you have to use your discernment about who you talk to about it.

I'm not talking about being paranoid. I'm talking about protecting your new, sometimes not quite formed ideas from people who tend to be discouraging. Like the first tender shoots of a plant peeking through the ground, you don't want emotional saboteurs drowning your new ideas with their negativity. You might want to give your ideas a chance to germinate and grow for a while and gain more self confidence about them before you expose them to people who might tap into your own insecurities about them.

I don't know how many times I've heard people say that they started a writing project and gave it to friends to read and comment on only to have their friends criticize and tear it apart with no positive feedback or encouragement at all. Often, the writer will then either tear up the writing or shove it in a drawer never to see the light of day again, saying to him or herself, "I don't know what I was thinking when I thought I could write." After someone has had this type of discouragement time and time again, it's difficult to undo so they can get unblocked creatively and work again.

Psychotherapists As Emotional Saboteurs:
It pains me to say this, but in my own field there are some emotional saboteurs. I don't think that most therapists mean to be emotional saboteurs. Often, they don't realize that they're doing it. Unfortunately, unless a psychotherapist goes through psychoanalytic training, they're not required to go into their own therapy to work out their own personal stuff. This is an area that I wish would change, but I don't see it changing any time soon.

Most therapists have been in their own therapy or at least have obtained professional supervision to be able to distinguish their own feelings and history from their clents' problems. But some of them have not. So, if you're thinking about going into therapy, it's important to ask about a prospective therapist's background. By this, I don't mean that you ask personal questions about a therapist's personal background--I mean that you find out what their training has been. Even with training and personal therapy, some therapists, who might have pessimistic personalities, might end up, unwittingly, discouraging you from worthwhile creative endeavors.

Once again, that doesn't mean that if you're in therapy with a therapist who is trying to help you to see that something that you want to do is self destructive that your therapist is an emotional saboteur. You might just have a blind spot where you're not seeing that what appears to you as a good idea could be foolhardy.

Internal Emotional Saboteurs:
Our own internal emotional saboteurs can be like old tapes that play in our heads that tell us things like, "You'll never be able to do it," "You're not good enough," "Who do you think you are?" Often these are based on experiences that we've had as children. If we've had many of these experiences when we were growing up, these old feelings are right there on the surface waiting to be triggered in new situations.

Using Your Judgement and Intuition
When someone is thinking about embarking on a new idea, I usually encourage them to be discerning, avoid people that, in their heart of hearts, they know to be emotional saboteurs, and talk to more than one person. Then, after that, it's a matter of using your own judgement and intuition.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I have helped many clients to overcome their fears and creative blocks about new creative projects.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 or email me.

What is Clinical Hypnosis?

Clinical hypnosis, also known as hypnotherapy, is a therapeutic method that can create a state of deep relaxation where your attention is focused and your unconscious mind is open to making positive changes.

Clinical Hypnosis

When performed by a qualified hypnotherapist, clinical hypnosis can improve your emotional health and overall well being.

Misconceptions About Clinical Hypnosis
There are many misconceptions about clinical hypnosis, most likely because people confuse clinical hypnosis with stage hypnosis that they have seen in movies or heard about where people quack like a duck or bark like a dog or do other embarrassing things. That is not clinical hypnosis.

From the outset, let's be clear that there are important distinctions between clinical hypnosis and stage hypnosis. Clinical hypnosis is a collaborative treatment. You have complete control at all times. You are awake and maintain dual awareness of everything around you in the here and now as well as in the hypnotic state. No one can make you do anything that you don't want to do.

Clinical hypnosis as Therapeutic Method
Clinical hypnosis is used to treat many issues, including: weight loss, insomnia, pain management, enhancing creativity, overcoming writer's block or other creative blocks, overcoming fears, performance enhancement for athletes, actors, singers, musicians, public speakers, executives, and sales people.

Clinical hypnosis is also used to stop smoking and to overcome other negative habits, as well as for stress management, test anxiety, stage fright, anxiety, relationship issues, and many other issues.

About Me
I am a licensed psychotherapist and hypnotherapist in New York City.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist & Hypnotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 or email me.