Why You Have Creative Stress

Shannel Wheeler
8 min readJan 22, 2024
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

The spark of creativity is a great feeling. As the rush of excitement ignites, a euphoric feeling passes through your body. A genius idea formulates. It’s so good that you have to document it — scribble it quickly on a napkin if no paper is nearby, or frantically type it in your phone.

When it’s really good, we stop at nothing to capture the thought before it wanes.

These are the moments of inspiration that can hit us at any moment. And some of those ideas grow — into a personal goal, a client project, a community collaboration, or a deliverable for the job. Some of those ideas wake up in the middle of the night or push us to get out of bed in the morning.

But how does a person go from a state of creative bliss to a state of creative stress? How does the feeling of intrigue and anticipation gradually (or quickly) turn into an unrelenting burden? There may be a few reasons why:

You take yourself too seriously

I should be able to finish this in 2 hours.
If I don’t make this perfect, I’ll fail.
I can’t believe I didn’t get it right on the first try.
I should know better…

“Why….soooo…serious?” is one of my favorite lines from The Joker in The Dark Knight. There’s nothing…

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Shannel Wheeler

Left-brain creative | Brand/Design Implementation | Design Instruction and Inspiration | Creating with Purpose: https://shannelwheeler.com