The Fear Creativity Awakens at Midnight
Why making art feels emotionally dangerous and one word that softens the critic.
Posted May 16, 2026 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
The clock reads 12:05 AM. My eyes pop open.
I’m bombarded with questions: What were you thinking? Are you crazy? Who do you think you are anyway?
A feeling of queasiness and tension grips my abdomen. I know this feeling: Midnight doom darts.
In expressive arts therapy , both counselors and patients learn that the body often experiences felt senses representing emotions and thoughts—both positive and negative. A flutter in the chest when we see our true love. Tightness in the jaw when we’re about to go on stage. Receiving a poor grade or a dire medical diagnosis manifests as a queasy stomach. “Learning the focusing attitude toward the felt sense is a good example of how it can become a pivotal piece in supporting safety” (Malchiodi, 2020, p. 160).
Even though I didn’t like the feeling, I knew the feeling was real. I had to experience it.
The day before, I felt very productive. I woke before my 5 AM alarm, feeling rested, energized, and ready to conquer the world. I’ve started a new practice of meditating with my journal open on my lap, a pen in my hand. As thoughts and ideas form, and seemingly walk across my consciousness, I no longer worry that I will forget them after the next five, 10, 15, or 20 minutes of contemplation have passed. This process often captures exciting ideas that transpire into creative projects.
Throughout the morning, I felt a pleasant sensation—excitement. Imagine a fish tank of hungry minnows. The owner flips up the top and sprinkles tiny flakes of food on the surface. Suddenly, the glassy surface of the still water shimmers and bubbles. My morning excitement felt visceral and palpable—an effervescent eagerness radiated across my chest.
Artists and makers know this sensation well. Giddiness. Joy. Excitement about a new project’s potential. Or a new resource. Even a new pen and paper, or a beautiful piece of fabric. Unopened seed packets. A virgin lump of clay. Fresh tubes of paint. The possibilities are real. Even a vision, a concept, an idea fills the creative with a kind of fizzy excitement.
Mornings are like that. The day is young, full of promise. Opportunities. We hungry minnows have quietly nibbled away on vegetation for years. Then skills, resources, and time converge. We’re ready to begin. Like those tiny fish, we are eager to feast on the next meal.
In the wee-morning hours, I have so many ideas, it’s almost comical. I would need an entire team of dedicated writers, actors, directors, and producers to enact them all.
After the previous morning’s open-book meditation , I sat at my desk armed with a fresh cup of coffee and better light. I continued to capture ideas, this time with focus and fire, and after that, I had a plan that I could develop and flesh out with resources in my studio.
The day felt alive, swimming with possibilities.
The essential nature of creativity remains. I know I’ll feel better after I’ve created art. And yet imposter syndrome lurks in the corners of my consciousness.
Creative practices often elicit this wide range of emotions. We feel confident as we open a new sketch pad. Body-mapping is a practical way for clients and patients to show where they feel certain sensations. A simple cookie-cutter outline provides the participant with an easy method to point to the felt sense of pain, disgust, anger , pride, joy, and excitement. We might draw stars in our heads, indicating this sensation. Then we flip to the first blank page and feel the dread of making mistakes and ruining a pristine piece of new paper. Lightning bolts stab into the mid-section of the gingerbread shape. Squiggling lines obscure the heart area. Dark, black marks trail from the armpits to the wrists.
No wonder artists suffer mood swings. And this often occurs before any art has been created.
Our little pool of hungry minnows, those flashes of inspiration, concepts, and possible subject matter, have quietly nibbled away on vegetation to stay alive, sometimes for years. But then, eventually, the middle-of-the-night doom darts aim with bull’s-eye focus at the very heart of our goals . They withhold the fish flakes even when a project seems like fun. They don’t care if all the minnows in the fish tank stop swimming.
The middle-of-the-night critic stabbed me with spears of doubt, not just once but multiple times, cutting me down, slicing and dicing, pointing out my failures. It did not feel good. It is common for people to say you should treat yourself like a friend and show yourself some compassion and grace, but that is hard to muster in the still darkness of a quiet bedroom at 1 AM.
Then I remembered a video I’d watched recently. Coach Joe Hudson of the Art of Accomplishment offered a simple word to combat those middle-of-the-night demons: “Ouch!” That single word, ouch, turns the tables and asks: Why do you want to hurt me? Why are you being so mean? Why can’t you support this new and beautiful idea?
When those midnight critics tap on your slumbering shoulder, don’t try to argue with them, but don’t take it lying down. Their agenda is to keep you safe, to protect you, to shelter you from uncertainty, beginner’s missteps, growing pains, and inevitable failures. They want to keep you within their tribe. They may even be jealous of your creativity.
But what if we all possess a small container of fish flakes? What if we possess the food and nutrition to nourish one, two, or an entire school of hungry minnows and our creative ideas?
You are a powerful creative force. You have work to do, and we will vanquish that midnight critic together. We will triumph. Creativity is not reinvention. It’s reclamation. It is ours. It is yours.
Joe Hudson | Art of Accomplishment . “1 Word That Changes Your Inner Critic (Full Guide).” YouTube, 17 Feb. 2026. Accessed 15 May 2026.
Colors of the mind : a meta-analysis of creative arts therapy as an approach for post-traumatic stress disorder intervention Systematic Review. BMC Psychology. January 2025. J. Wang et al.
Malchiodi, C. A. (2020). Trauma and expressive arts therapy : Brain, body, and imagination in the healing process . Guilford Publications.
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B. Morey Stockwell, Ph.D., has been coaching creatives around the world and is an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell & Fitchburg State University.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.