When Unexpressed Art Starts Hurting the ArtistT

here’s a physical sensation to suppressed creativity—a heaviness in the chest, a restlessness in the limbs, like carrying something that desperately wants to be born but remains trapped inside, slowly dying.

I feel it most acutely when I have ideas for stories but write grocery lists instead, when melodies form in my mind but I hum them silently until they disappear. The creative impulse doesn’t vanish when ignored—it ferments, turning from inspiration to regret.

Happy notices when I’m carrying unexpressed creativity. I become irritable, distracted, like someone fighting a fever. The energy that should flow outward in creation turns inward, becoming anxiety, depression, a sense of incompleteness that no external accomplishment can satisfy.

There’s something toxic about unused creative capacity. Unlike other unused skills, creativity doesn’t simply atrophy—it poisons the system that contains it. The novel I never write haunts my sleep. The paintings I never attempt make me resentful of blank walls.

Arash creates constantly—drawing, building, inventing games—and I recognize in him the natural flow of expression that gets corrupted in adults by fear, perfectionism, and the weight of having to make everything matter. His creativity moves freely because he hasn’t yet learned to judge it before expressing it.

The weight accumulates daily. Each unexpressed poem adds to the burden. Each unsung song increases the pressure. Each story left untold becomes another layer of creative sediment, settling into the corners of consciousness where it slowly rots.

The only cure is expression itself—not perfect expression, not impressive expression, just the act of letting the internal pressure release through whatever medium will receive it. Words on paper, colors on canvas, movements in empty rooms.

The tragedy isn’t that we’re not all great artists. It’s that we’re all carrying great art inside us that we never let see the light, and that unexpressed creativity eventually turns against the very person meant to birth it into existence.