A brutally honest reflection on creativity and mental health

I’ve never cut off my ear and mailed it to someone, but I’ve definitely been two skipped meals and a deadline away from understanding why Van Gogh did.

There’s this long-held belief—romantic, disturbing, and weirdly seductive—that creativity and mental instability are blood relatives. That the same mind capable of crafting beauty is also just one sleepless night away from burning the whole thing down.

And if you’ve ever been both the artist and the storm, you know that theory hits a little too close to home. Picasso shattered rules like he couldn’t bear the thought of structure. Da Vinci wrote backwards and obsessed over cadavers. Sylvia Plath gave the world aching, brilliant poetry before the darkness dragged her under. Even now, we use the term “tortured artist” like it’s a job description.

But what if it’s not about being broken?

What if creativity isn’t a byproduct of madness…

What if it’s a way to survive it? So, what is mental stability anyway? Nine-to-fivers popping Ativan at lunch so they don’t scream in traffic? Parents white-knuckling the PTA bake sale while quietly falling apart inside? We glamorize “stable” like it’s some kind of moral achievement, but the truth is, most of us are just faking normal with wildly varying success rates.

Creatives?

We just show our cracks. We name them, frame them, paint them in oils and blow them up to 48×48 inches. That doesn’t make us broken. That makes us honest. Because creativity is where the chaos goes to be useful. It’s how we metabolize anxiety. It’s how we organize rage. It’s how we give grief a shape and fear a voice. And if we’re lucky, maybe—maybe—it helps someone else feel less alone in their own mess.

But let’s not pretend it’s easy.

The same mind that crafts insight and vision can turn on itself in a second. Self-doubt is a regular dinner guest. Burnout knocks like a debt collector. And when you’re your own harshest critic and most loyal muse, you never really clock out. People say, “You’re so lucky to be creative.”

Sure.

But you try sleeping with a brain that keeps rearranging the universe while you stare blankly into your monitor midday. Some days it’s art. Some days it’s survival. Most days, it’s both. I don’t think we need to be insane to create. But I do think creative people are tuned in to a frequency most folks avoid.

We notice more. Feel more. Obsess more. And that can be a gift or a curse, depending on the hour.

But if you’re still here, still making, still expressing—even when it hurts, that’s not madness, That’s fucking courage.