Have you ever felt drawn to create something, but couldn’t quite explain why?
Maybe you want to paint, write a book, make pottery, build something, or learn an instrument.
You don’t necessarily want to become an artist, sell what you make, or turn it into a business.
You just want to make something.
I think there’s something important about that desire, particularly when we’re on a healing or personal development journey.
Because creative work can give us a way to explore parts of ourselves that are difficult to access through thinking and talking alone.
And I’ve come to see two distinct ways creativity can support our inner work.
We can create to heal, expressing and reconnecting with parts of ourselves that have been hidden or neglected. Or we can create to grow, deliberately stretching beyond our habitual personality patterns.
Sometimes the same project does both.
But the way we approach it matters.
Creating to heal: Giving what’s inside us somewhere to go
I have always loved painting.
There’s something magical about watching colour spread across a surface. Reds, pinks, blues and greens moving together, changing and becoming something new.
I love the feeling of paint under my fingers, the freedom of making something without knowing exactly what it’s going to become.
And yet, for years, that joy was accompanied by sadness.
Because I was convinced I was terrible at it.
At school, my art never looked as polished or technically accomplished as anyone else’s. I enjoyed the process, but I thought I was supposed to care more about the outcome.
Eventually, I stopped making art altogether.
I chose subjects and careers that felt more sensible, where I could be judged on something other than my creativity.
But my body never stopped wanting to create.
Years later, with the help of a coach, I gave myself permission to make bad art.
To waste paint. Use my fingers. Make a mess. Create something that might never be beautiful or even particularly interesting.
And that permission changed everything.
I started painting again, eventually taking part in the 100 Day Project, where I committed to making something every day.
My original plan was to paint a word each day.
But something else started happening.
Instead of painting the word, I found myself painting whatever I was feeling.
Sometimes I didn’t even know what that feeling was until I started moving the colours around.
The painting became a way of expressing something that hadn’t yet found its way into words.
Feelings I’d pushed aside. Parts of myself I’d learned to dismiss. Experiences I hadn’t fully acknowledged.
And because I wasn’t trying to create something good, I had room to explore whatever emerged.
That practice continued for four years.
I learned to trust my instincts and intuition. I became more comfortable with making mistakes, experimenting and discovering what happened when I didn’t try to control the outcome.
But most importantly, I changed my relationship with my feelings and with parts of myself I’d learned to hide.
That’s what I mean by creativity supporting healing.
It’s not necessarily about making something beautiful or meaningful. It’s about giving what’s inside us an opportunity to be seen, felt, expressed and accepted.
Creating to grow: Working with our protective patterns
But creativity can also serve a different purpose.
Sometimes we choose a project precisely because it asks something of us that we find difficult.
I’ve always wanted to be a writer.
When I first started writing my book on mistyping and the Enneagram, I had a strange relationship with that ambition.
Despite having written hundreds of articles, workshops, courses, scripts and essays, I didn’t really feel like a writer.
I had this idea that I’d only become one when I’d published a book. Never mind how much writing I’d already done. Apparently, I needed a published book to prove it to myself.
I don’t feel that way anymore.
But writing this book has turned out to be one of the most challenging creative projects I’ve ever undertaken.
As a Seven, I love generating ideas, seeing possibilities and making connections between seemingly unrelated things.
Give me a blank page and an exciting idea and I’m off.
But writing a book requires much more than that.
It requires choosing which ideas to include and which to leave out. Staying with one subject long after the initial excitement has faded. Revising something that isn’t working. Accepting that the process will take considerably longer than I’d like.
And editing. So much editing.
These are exactly the kinds of experiences my Seven pattern would rather avoid.
Limitations. Frustration. Repetition. The disappointment of realising something isn’t as good as I thought it was.
Which makes writing this book a wonderful opportunity for growth.
Not because writing a book is inherently transformative, but because the process keeps bringing me face to face with the very patterns I’m learning to become less dependent on.
I can observe the impulse to start something new when the editing gets difficult.
I can notice how quickly I want to rationalise a problem rather than sit with the disappointment.
And I can practise staying with the work, even when it’s frustrating, uncertain or simply not much fun.
The creative project gives me somewhere to practise doing things differently.
And the Enneagram helps me recognise what’s happening.
Healing and growth aren’t quite the same thing
This is an important distinction.
When we’re healing, creative expression can help us reconnect with feelings, needs, strengths and parts of ourselves that haven’t had much room in our lives.
We might need permission to play, make mistakes, express anger, explore sadness or create something that nobody else will ever see.
When we’re growing, we might deliberately take on a project that stretches our existing capacities.
We might need to practise finishing something, tolerating uncertainty, sharing our work with others, accepting criticism, or allowing ourselves to be a beginner.
And sometimes, before we can stretch ourselves, we need to heal something that’s making that stretch particularly difficult.
For me, giving myself permission to make bad art helped me loosen some of the shame I’d attached to being creative.
That made it easier to engage with creativity in other ways, including the more demanding work of writing a book.
But there’s no fixed sequence.
Healing can create the conditions for growth. And growth can reveal something that needs healing.
The important thing is recognising what we need, rather than assuming every creative project should challenge us or produce something worthwhile.
You don’t have to make your creativity productive
There’s another complication.
We live in a culture that encourages us to turn almost everything we create into something useful.
Write a book? Publish it.
Make art? Sell it.
Start a hobby? Turn it into a side hustle.
And when we’re on a healing journey, there can be extra pressure to produce something that proves the time we’ve spent healing was worthwhile.
But we don’t have to justify our creativity by turning it into something productive.
Sometimes the value is entirely in the process.
The painting that helped you express your sadness doesn’t need to hang in a gallery. The book that helped you understand your experiences doesn’t need to become a bestseller.
And the thing you make simply because you love making it doesn’t need to support your healing or growth at all.
Enjoyment is reason enough.
What is your creativity asking of you?
If there’s something you’ve been longing to create, I’d invite you to get curious about why.
Is there something inside you that wants to be expressed?
Perhaps a feeling, an experience, a story or a part of yourself that hasn’t had much space.
Or is there something you’re drawn to make because it feels exciting and frightening at the same time?
A project that would ask you to develop patience, courage, commitment, vulnerability or some other capacity your personality tends to avoid.
Maybe it’s both.
And perhaps you don’t know yet. That’s okay too.
You don’t need to understand what a creative project will mean before you begin.
Sometimes we discover what we’re really making only after we’ve started.
And as you create, you can notice what happens inside you. What feels delightful, what feels uncomfortable, what you want to avoid, and what parts of yourself are asking for attention.
You might discover something that needs healing.
You might find an opportunity to grow beyond an old protective pattern.
Or you might simply discover how much you love moving paint around a page.
Creativity gives us a place to meet ourselves. Sometimes to heal what’s been hidden, sometimes to grow beyond what’s familiar, and sometimes simply to enjoy being alive.