How Can I Help?

Apologies for the longer-than-expected silence on the blog. If you’ve been following it, you know it’s been a pretty challenging summer. As the fall routine starts up again, I’m planning to get back to regular posts, as much as possible!

This week’s post will be rather short, and mostly consists of a question (more on that below). This summer, as I’ve been dealing with an (extraordinarily, frustratingly, intensely) annoying amount of anxiety, I’ve been thinking a lot about the experience that artists, in particular, can have with this disorder and with its flip side, depression. Here on the blog, I’ve posted before about how artists, especially those who routinely put their work out on display in the world, encounter a lot of challenges that can trigger and exacerbate any mental health situations we might be dealing with. Criticism (particularly the blanket, non-useful kind) and rejection hit our buttons and can make it hard to continue our work, and sometimes even to get out of bed in the morning. (Been there.)

We’re lucky to live in a time when mental health care and resources are available, although many mental health conditions are still improperly understood and all-too-often stigmatized. It can be hard to admit that you have a chronic condition that makes life harder than you’d like. You can feel that you’re just not trying enough, or you’re not being positive enough, or you really don’t want anyone to know how you actually feel because it seems unreasonable, silly, paranoid…the list goes on. (One thing I’ve learned this summer, in a far more up-close-and-personal way than I would have liked, is exactly how paranoid anxiety can make you, and what kinds of wildly irrational fears it can convince you to believe in.) Long and short, even though resources and help are out there, it can be hard, sometimes, to reach out for them, and to find the right match for our needs.

Templeton hug
Hugs can help, as Templeton demonstrates.

This is where my question comes in, the focus of this post. I’d like to create my own small resource specifically geared toward artists who deal with depression and anxiety. It would come out of my own experience, and I see it as addressing and sharing that experience, and maybe also offering some affirmations, particularly for the times when we face things like rejection and destructive criticism. I also see cat pictures being involved, because why not?

What I’d like to know, though, is if you are an artist who has these challenges, what would be most helpful for you. What kind of resource would best encourage you, maybe offer a perspective you haven’t seen before or seen enough, or help you feel supported in your own work? What has been missing from the resources you have?

Making art can be a lonely process; doubly lonely, sometimes, for those of us who also feel isolated by mental health challenges. That’s where I’d like to help most. If you have thoughts about what you’d like to see, what might best give you some extra inspiration and support, please feel free to leave a comment here or write to me at

More on the blog soon. Meanwhile, as always, thank you for reading!

Fergus therapist
Another therapy cat: Fergus.