Being a creative professional

I am an 'old school' Counselling Psychologist from the pre-doctorate era. My initial career was going to be in fine art, but became 'old school' photography: all darkrooms and f-stops. The digital industry repeatedly made me redundant. My way out of the angst and lostness of my twenties was existentialist philosophy, even though I didn't even know of its existence back then. I needed a career that was more meaningful, purposeful… but also one that felt authentically me and which met my fullest potential. 

Becoming a Counselling Psychologist met most of these needs. Being creative by nature, and having struggled academically due to neurodiversity, I always felt imposter syndrome against my peers and hid away in private practice, just providing therapy. During these 12 years I consolidated my creativity with my profession, making it my own, both through using it with clients and helping it to process my own therapy on my terms and in my language.

In January 2021 an email dropped into my inbox randomly enquiring about me become a Qualification in Counselling Psychology (QCoP) coordinating supervisor for them. This email sent me onto a path I had not planned or expected but have trusted to follow. A path where my creativity finally had its place in this profession and would help me challenge my imposter syndrome. This was my time. 

Creative space was already there

Whilst I was not up to date on current CoP teachings I noticed my passion, knowledge and experience became evident as I talked about the identity of CoP's with my QCoP candidates. I realised I was already living by and practicing what was now being taught, as though ahead of my time. 

I found something similar occurring at the DCoP conference 2024. I presented my own 'spiral model of change' in my own creative form, which I had been developing in the isolation of private practice. It turned out that model represented all that was being taught in present day CoP; that the work we do relates to the 'something in between' the client and therapist, beyond the theories and tools offered, beyond social constructs and systemic narratives. We work with the unknowns, the subjective, the experienced, the embodied, the neurodiverse brains, the individual languages of processing and communication. 

Working with this space means we have the movement to work creatively. And yet, to prove the validity of our profession we have to speak a different language. We have to evidence all of this knowledge in a rigid, colonialised academic format. Putting a comma in the right place seems more important to passing or failing than 'am I a good enough therapist' for my client? Is it any wonder I have imposter syndrome?! 

For me, it is about finding a balance, grounding ourselves in structure and frameworks so the creativity doesn't become chaos.

A creative journey of self confidence 

Feeling it was time to extrapolate some of this knowledge and challenge my imposter syndrome, I joined the Division of Counselling Psychology's Executive Committee. All I knew at this point was that I was passionate about advocating for Counselling Psychology and helping the public understand who and what we are. It made sense to join forces with those already doing the work. 

My role has somehow emerged in a way that feels like 'my time' and 'is me'. A seed of an idea was planted at the 2022 Strategy days regarding the 'Dissemination of research through creativity' initiative. Given my creative and artistic background it made sense I took this on, even if I didn't fully understand myself how you 'turn a piece of research into a dance performance'. It also made sense that I joined the Neurodiversity workstream, given my own personal and professional experiences. I hadn't quite envisaged how much of a natural overlap all of this work would have. 

Having used my creativity to develop the 'disseminating research' initiative I presented it to conference in 2024. The response was nothing I could imagine. Out of the woodwork came so many other trainees, course tutors, and professional counselling psychologists, just like me, who were also 'creating'. This EC initiative seemed to have given them permission to show us their creative languages. It does seem that many feel that if we want the public to understand who we are, we need to be speaking in both our language and theirs too. We need to be creative in how we do this, or we risk being stuck in the realm of 'old school' white colonialised psychology, not the innovative profession that we are. 

Creative dissemination does not mean the knowledge being researched is not scientifically valid or academically robust. Creative research enables us to access places in psychological study that statistics and scientific measures will never capture – experiencing the space between. This is where the healing happens in therapy, where humans have the ability to be creative and adapt their minds to view their world differently. Without creativity of mind and the neuroplasticity that enables this, we are merely robots.

And it seems The Psychologist is talking the same language – I'm writing this in response to the 'What does creativity mean to you?' prompt, and to encourage others to do the same. 

Neurodiversity

Taking over as lead of the workstream has further solidified the permission for me to be using and advocating creativity as a way to challenge difference and meet individual need, whilst remaining embedded in the robustness of research.

In the process of developing a set of considerations when working therapeutically with Neurodiversity, the consensus of the team became clear. We all felt this project had to be presented in way that both reflected the work of counselling psychologists and also echoed the message that we are conveying – that we can't restrict ourselves to one written word language. We have to vary how it is presented, using a variety of formats, so the message can reach as wide an audience as possible. This never dishonours our quest to be scientists – we remain grounded in our foundations of theory, ethics and research. 

I also feel I have no choice but to advocate for all of those who struggle with the written word, the processing difficulties, the imbalance between deep understanding and communication. I am that student who nearly got 'terminated' from Roehampton for not being unable to put down in academic form what the tutors knew of me through my verbal participation. I was fully capable of being a 'good enough' therapist, but I spoke the wrong language to prove it, even though this was my clients' language. It was only thanks to Dr Peter Martin – who looked beyond the 'failed' and asked the question 'why?' – that I got assessed and diagnosed. We all owe it to our clients, our peers, our students, to offer the same approach, to understand their language and be creative in finding a place we can meet them somewhere in between.

A year ago, having spent my first 12 years of my Psychology journey feeling like an imposter, I did not realise that I would reach a point where 'all of me' had a place in our profession. Is this my existential potential? I am both humbled and excited to see it resonate with other counselling psychologists. And now I take on these particular projects not because I think they are the priority. It's because they are me, and they speak my language that form part of the bigger picture; the crisis of our profession's standing and support.

So, what does creativity mean to me?

It doesn't mean anything…. but it is all about meaning… because it is me!

Being me is being a creative

Being human is to be creative

Being a Counselling Psychologist is to be creative

Being a role is to be creative

But for me… even moreso….

Creativity is my language

It is how I process the world

It is how I see the world, as shapes and images to be captured. 

It is how I can feel at ease within the world

It is my place of belonging

If I'm not allowed to use this language, then I may as well give up now as I don't know how else to be.

Being creative does not mean not being good enough… it means playing with being different.

Being creative does not mean being stupid… it means I can explore and play with deeper philosophical perspective on the world.

Being creative does not mean being lazy or stupid… it means I take a step back to 'see' what's happening.

Being creative means imposter syndrome and struggles in matching up to my peers and meeting archaic academic standards.

Being a creative meant I adapted quicker than peers to the therapeutic experience even when I couldn't write about it easily.

Being a creative means words have no meaning unless I can see them relating to body language, movement, a relational sense, an energy, a feeling, a sense of.

Being a creative means I don't conform or restrict how I see a person as a label, diagnosis or prescribed medical treatment plan. 

Being a creative is my tool for healing, for self-care, for meditating, for coming back to me…..

Being creative is my tool for regrounding, for clearing away others energy from my system, for taking away the pressure of using my cognitive brain, 

Being creative means I will play with any medium available to facilitate and explore my self expression.

Being creative shapes how I approach everything I do.

If I can't be creative I can't be me. 

• Recreating Research is a programme is to encourage Counselling Psychologists to pursue and share their research through different creative languages, with a focus on diversity, adaptability and accessibility.
• Find more information on The Psychologist's 'What does creativity mean to you?' prompt – deadline 2 June.