creative anxiety

Apparently creative anxiety is a hot topic.

There are creativity coaches, like the multi-book author Eric Maisel, PhD who help people deal with anxiety related to creative production. In a write-up on this random blog, Barbara Martin quotes Meisel, saying:

“We get anxious when we fear that we are about to embark on something with potentially negative consequences for our mental, emotional, physical, existential or spiritual health. That is not irrational. That is the epitome of rationality.”

and comments that:

Anxiety or fear can prevent us from creating at our best and sometimes causes blocks, stopping us from creating at all. These fears can make us hesitate at the outset of a project or take a detour in the middle or fail to complete, and fear or anxiety can skew our decision-making in ways intended to protect us against bad consequences.