The Anxiety of Identity

By Eric Maisel, PhD

Once we begin to really fall in love with a creative discipline, we begin the process of identity formation and begin to call ourselves a writer, painter, filmmaker, musician, singer, actor, and so on. As this process unfolds, we begin to add more and more pieces to this identity, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes not. We may add “heavy drinking” and “don’t need anybody!” to our Ernest Hemingway version of our writer identity or “manic-depressive” and “highly sensitive” to our Virginia Woolf version of our writer identity, not so much because we are those things but because we somehow think that they belong to a writer’s identity.

In this unconscious fashion our identity begins to build — and makes us anxious because we understand in a corner of our consciousness that we are not really that persona we have adopted. At the same time we may have trouble growing into the identity we actually need to nurture, the one that includes personality traits such as discipline, self-direction, self-trust, resiliency, flexibility, concentration, and spontaneity. On the one hand, we build a false self that is made up of cultural constructs and bits of romanticism, and on the other we fail to construct an authentic self that might actually be equal to the rigors of the creative life. This secret knowledge, tucked away in a corner of awareness, that we have not created ourselves in our best image, haunts us and provokes anxiety.

It is never too late to do the sort of personality analysis and personality work that will help you grow into the person you would like to be. This personality work involves identifying false bits of personality to eliminate and desired personality traits to nurture. If you have serious problems, say, with an addiction to alcohol or cocaine, you will need to do full-scale recovery work. Personality work is possible — countless addicts in recovery can attest to that reality — but it is real work that will require your complete attention. Similarly, adding wanted traits like discipline or concentration won’t happen overnight or without a struggle. But if you can manage this heroic work, you will become your real self and, in the process, reduce a substantial amount of your anxiety.

Next: The Anxiety of Choosing »

About the Author | More by Eric Maisel
Eric Maisel, Ph.D., is America’s foremost creativity coach and is widely known as the creativity expert. His most recent book is Mastering Creative Anxiety. This article is based on or excerpted from the book Mastering Creative Anxiety © 2011 by Eric Maisel. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA.

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