An open letter to creative professionals—and the people who hire us.

A longtime friend called me last night. He, like me, owns an advertising agency. We’ve both spent decades coming up with creative solutions for a variety of businesses. Our ability to connect unseen dots and communicate complex ideas through powerful imagery and cleverly crafted copy has brought us notoriety and accolades. On the surface, you’d never see anything but examples of qualified excellence and success in our chosen craft. You’d speak to us and find us to be competent, well-spoken, confident, and dedicated to delivering the best experience and results.

But what you will not see—the part that we’re very adept at keeping hidden—is the toll our creative gifts demand. Call it a deal with the devil. Label it as the byproduct of genius. However you want to label it, our talents come at a substantial cost to our physical and emotional well-being. My friend—someone I have literally known since kindergarten—is exceptionally brilliant at what he does. Unfathomably creative and gifted in both thought and ability. He, like me, struggles with the darkness of depression, insecurity, anxiety, and doubt.

Last night, at a crossroads, he reached out to me to try to make sense of his despair. He’s prideful; someone who has overcome numerous hardships throughout his life. Time and time again, I have seen him pick himself up, brush the dust off his shoulders, and reinvent himself to a new level of success. His success as running an advertising agency in large part gave me the confidence to hang my own shingle. He has everything the entrepreneurial spirit requires—he’s assumed debt to fund his dream, he’s continued to push forward through illness, sleepless nights, and divorce. He has accomplished so much while at the same time raising two absolutely amazing children—each equally gifted with creativity, rapier wit, and a deep intelligence. Those results, don’t just happen by accident.

So imagine my surprise when we spoke to find him at the absolutely bottom of his emotional barrel. His self-esteem depleted, and struggling with the equivalent of shiv between his shoulder blade from someone whom he mentored and helped elevate to new professional heights. He was searching for a reason to push forward. We spoke for a time. I hope my words provided him some foundation, a reason to once again pick himself up and build anew.

The conversation however kept me thinking about my own struggles with depression and how I have learned though painful experience to deal with life as a creative professional. I have come to an uneasy truce with my gifts and the penance they seem to demand. It’s my hope that I can help shed a little bit of light and understanding among those who might not understand this and give some hope to people like me and my friend who walk that precarious tightrope between genius and insanity.

Conversationally-speaking, it’s a generally understood concept that creatively gifted people suffer disproportionately higher rates of depression and suicide. Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemmingway, Kurt Cobain … it’s easy to rattle off names of well-known creatives who have succumbed to the darkness of their talents. It’s single-handedly my biggest fear—leaving my kids because I wasn’t strong enough to work through these feeling of inadequacies.

Although it is a popular notion that gifted children are at risk for higher rates of depression and suicide than their average, no empirical data supports this belief, except for students who are creatively gifted in the visual arts and writing – Neihart & Olenchak

 

I could go on at length with observations and research that would support the notions of the tormented creative. Instead, I just want to try to explain it in a way that might make sense to those who do not understand the creative mind and what it takes for us to do what we do.

 

The common perception that I have come across is that creativity is a skill, just like being good at math, or engineering. It’s not. If it were, it could be taught. I offer up that it is a talent, an ability that is inherent to an individual and something that can be nurtured, but isn’t an ability that can be learned or gained. Creatives are observers of the environment and the world. We do not think in a linear manner. Solving problems for us isn’t as straight forward as going from A to B to C. To us there are numerous points in between; tangents of thought both tangible and abstract; endless possibilities to be explored, evaluated on both emotional and intuitive levels before logical problem-solving enters the equations. We are dreamers. We’re labeled as aloof, temperamental, even unreliable. We may appear distracted in thought, but in reality we’re never lost.

 

From an outside perspective, I can see where that would be troublesome to an employer, or client. But let me shed some light on what’s really running through these wonderfully creative brains of ours.

 

We’re dissecting your problem from any number of angles. We’re looking at emotional connections. We’re evaluating potential objections that may arise from communication, philosophical, strategic, or perceptive viewpoints. We’re visualizing any number of manifestations of how the concept could play out; we’re crafting the visual cues and weighing colors; we’re toying with type, weighing layouts, and brainstorming taglines. To you, you may be observing a person sitting across from you at the meeting table gazing into space, or doodling on a scrap of paper—but what you can’t see is a brain alight and firing on all cylinders. Oh, make no mistake, we have heard every word you said and even though we’re still mid-meeting, every topic, every consideration you utter gets tossed into this wondrous cauldron of creative evaluation.

 

What you also might not understand is that those creative processes continue long after the meeting ends. We go to lunch and we’re seeing patterns in our french fries. We go home and do dishes, and the soap bubbles become a media of patterns amid chaos. We close our eyes at night and our mind continues to mold, craft, and experiment in a gray matter playground unfettered by fences and deadlines. Our brains don’t shut off because the clock strikes 5 o’clock. We continue to probe at the intricacies of the problem until we make sense of the nature of the situation; the underlining fabric and metaphysical fibers that connect thought to idea; problem to solution; emotion to response.

 

We function on very little sleep. We’re prone to require stimulation, be it music, alcohol, or drugs—though not as a means to drive our thoughts, but to compensate for the toll these processes demand of our body and mind. We’re perpetually exhausted. For us to work within the confines of the business world, we have to shrug off our physical needs and force our bodies to work within a framework of an 8–5 workday. We function on inspiration whenever it strikes and feed on breathing life into unrealized potential.

 

As clients and employers, this reality is seldom understood.

 

Business and progress is often defined by tangible goals and benchmarks. It is evaluated by statistics, formulas, and hastily prepared PowerPoint presentations. How does one quantify the unquantifiable? How do you compensate creativity? How do foreign concepts that defy classification produce tangible but highly subjective results, fit within a strategic plan? Simply put, they don’t, but it doesn’t keep people from trying to classify them as such.

 

An important thing to keep in mind when working with creative individuals is that our evaluation of success isn’t based in dollars and cents. Our greatest rewards do not come from salary or titles; our estimation of success and value comes from the reception our work receives. Do your eyes light up when you see your new ad campaign? Does your new logo elicit that ear-to-ear smile? Do you stand a little bit taller when walking out of the presentation, prideful in a concept that strikes the perfect tone between benefit and emotional resonance?

 

That’s what we want to see.

 

And when we don’t see it, it’s a devastation that cannot be easily explained. Being a creative professional is a tough trade. It’s the only craft I can think of which requires a deep emotional investment of body, mind, and soul which then requires us to stand in front of our audience to be judged. We stand there, our very identity splayed open for all to see, only to be critiqued, evaluated, and debated—and then asked to pick up the shambles of our work and asked to go back and fix it. The experience is different from evaluation of a spreadsheet where the numbers either add up or they don’t; our work product is subjective, it’s personal to us. Criticism—while both appropriate and necessary—cuts deep, and it’s an experience non-creatives seem to have difficulty in understanding.

 

My first exposure to creative rejection came in kindergarten. I was handed two sheets of paper. On one I was told to draw a picture of my father. On the other, I could draw anything I wanted. Instead of drawing a picture of my father first—which apparently was the teacher would have preferred—I opted for my ‘artist choice’ picture. I drew a picture of a dinosaur. It was the best dinosaur I had ever drawn at that point in my life. I was proud of it. I was very excited to take it home and show it to my parents. My teacher wasn’t so excited by my choice. She took a red marker and drew a large red ‘X’ through my creation and reprimanded me for drawing out-of-order.

 

To many, this may seem like a minor thing, but to me, it was devastating and it left an emotional scar relating to my creativity that lingers to this very day. Even though it makes sense for a client to make notes on printouts of design concepts; to scribble and rework lines of copy as they evaluate it merit; to me it brings out the painful memory of my work being crossed out. It makes me tremble a bit and sets my nerves on edge. Such a small thing, with such long-lasting repercussions.

 

Such slights to carry weight with us creatives. As a business owner, it’s only logical to tell us to brush it off and not take things personally.  But it is personal to us. It’s a judgement to us. It’s an offense we take to our core—even if one was never intended. A dressing down by a supervisor or client lasts a long time. I had a former boss who would come into my office and scream at me for some perceived slight or failure for a client to approve a concept. It was my fault. It was me not doing my job. It was me letting the ball drop. He may not have meant it that way, and in numerous discussions he and I have had over the years, I know that he didn’t. He’d be over the issue within minutes, but for me it felt like another nail in my professional coffin; another validation that I wasn’t good enough to merit people’s trust; that I just didn’t have the talent or skills necessary to live up to others’ expectations.

 

For my fellow creatives reading this, the point I want you to take from this is that feedback and criticism is not a condemnation of you as a person. It’s hard for us to separate the intimacy of our talents with the demands of the professional environment, but it’s something we need to do. A challenge to our work isn’t an evaluation of our worth, it’s a byproduct of a bottom-line, results driven world. If you are like me, or my friend, these situations often serve as motivation to work harder, strive to fill in the blanks, or figure out what where we erred in our processes. We take this feedback as a challenge; and opportunity to prove our critics wrong.

 

This is about as unhealthy approach to adversity as we can have. The animosity and personal egocentrism involved in embarking on such a challenge only accelerates the damage to our already challenging profession. It undermines the concept of teamwork and renders the concept of authenticity opaque.

 

At my darkest, I was ready to pull the trigger on my life. I was depressed. Suicidal. If you were to ask those who knew me, they had no clue. I was extremely adept at keeping my pain and struggles hidden. I painted on a happy face every day and trotted of to a job I would soon lose due to layoffs. To me, proving my value and justifying my position became an all-consuming effort. I worked crazy hours. I took ownership of every initiative; every bumpy procedure became a personal mission to solve. And when the results didn’t pan out, it only made me push harder. Eventually I ran a deficit. I spent so much of my energy trying to keep other people happy and live up to the perceptions and standards I set for them to evaluate me by, I ultimately had nothing left for myself.

 

As creatives, we’re experts in denial and self-deception. Our tumult is something that embarrasses us and makes others uncomfortable. It’s no wonder why we have a reputation for being moody and difficult to work with. We try to keep a cap on what we see as signs of weakness or emotional turbulence, but it seeps out—typically during times of great stress, like presentations to client.

 

The key I have found to balance the demands of my creativity with the demands of my professional career is to live an authentic life. To do that we must develop a world view that is far more generous and expansive than most people live. We must learn to empathize and understand the struggles of others. We must intuit their honest motivations and insecurities. We must develop a sense of empathy and realize that the same insecurities that drive us to push ourselves to the brink of disaster every day, are also present within the people rendering judgement upon us. As confident as they may seem, they’re struggling with same issues of body, health, and mind—they’re just not as aware of it as we are. Our creative gifts allow us a more up close and personal view of our vulnerability on a daily basis, and while it seems like a curse most days, it’s really a blessing.

 

We experience existence on a much deeper and encompassing way than most people simply cannot fathom. We’re connected to our world in a far more intimate level. If we can learn to embrace the unity of that concept, the doors open up and we find ourselves stronger and more resilient to even life’s most difficult challenge. We find the need for self-defense mechanisms like ego and pride diminished. We can better leverage our emotional IQ to understand criticism and uncover true motivations—which, to be honest, will only make us more awesome at what we do.

 

If you’re struggling with these issues, I’d like to recommend a couple of books. One of them addresses issues with value and self-esteem, the other provides insight on working with emotions within the workplace. To me, these books along with accompanying counseling, helped turn the corner and make sense of how valuable my creative abilities are to the professional world.

 

You Are Enough, Always Have Been, Always Will Be by David Walker

Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine

 

I’m not affiliated with either author, nor with Amazon.com to which the links will direct you. These books, for me, communicated their ideas in a way that was very easy for me to digest and appealed to my creative way. For my friend, if you’re reading this, I have sent you copies of both books. I hope you find them as beneficial as I did.

 

For my fellow creatives, understand that your gifts are not a curse. Do not let others make you feel as if they are something to be ashamed of or hidden in a back office somewhere. Your abilities set you apart and provide you with an immense ability to effect change upon the world. Embrace the strengths the provide and do not the emotional undercurrent which drives them define how you are viewed by others. If you need to talk to someone, by all means, talk. Don’t bury. Don’t deflect. There’s no shame in therapy or feeding your own soul with whatever nourishment it needs.

 

To those who employ creatives, take some time to understand that our needs aren’t often driven by material things. Take a moment to try to understand the process and just how much more time and energy your creatives are delivering to your business both on- and off-the-clock. You don’t have to curb your feedback; we need to know what it is you do and do not like about our work. We need honesty. We also need the time and understanding to let our processes work—whether you ever understand them or not. Tiptoeing around the feedback only serves to feed our insecurity; we pick up on that and it makes us feel as if you don’t trust us to handle the big picture. We’re people pleasers by nature. We want to deliver the best work at every turn. We will rise to the challenge. Give us reasonable expectations and just watch what we can do.

 

And to my friend. You are loved. You are valued. Do what you need to fill that tank and make yourself whole. There are so many people who believe in you.