You probably know him: the myth of the “suffering artist.” The idea that great art arises from pain and suffering is deeply rooted in our culture. Just think of Vincent van Gogh, who cut off his left ear after an argument.
But do you actually have to suffer to be creative? A research team arrived at a surprising result: perhaps it is exactly the other way around. Creative processes could help to cope better with pain.
The Study
Creative processes and pain processing rely on similar neural mechanisms – this conclusion comes from a team of authors led by Radwa Khalil of the Constructor University Bremen. The study was published in 2026 in the journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews.
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To understand the thesis, it’s worth looking at how pain actually arises. Pain is not a pure feeling, but a perception with two components: a sensory component that records type, location and intensity, and an emotional component that determines how unpleasant the pain is experienced.
The pain signals are transmitted by the body via the spinal cord to the brain, where conscious pain perception occurs. Precisely because the emotional appraisal is so decisive, pain can also be influenced by sensory stimuli: pleasant visual or musical impressions, for example images of a loved one, can demonstrably reduce the perceived intensity of pain.
This is exactly where creative activities come into play. Painting, writing, music or dance exert pain-relieving effects in two ways: on the one hand, they divert attention away from the pain, and on the other, they activate the brain’s reward systems and release dopamine and noradrenaline.
Crucially, the involved brain regions largely overlap with those that participate in pain processing – they govern sensory processing, emotions and thinking. This overlap becomes particularly significant in chronic pain, as these networks are altered in the long term. Because creative work engages the same areas, it could help rebalance the disrupted activity patterns.
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What Does It Bring?
A new approach to pain management. Creative activities could become, in the future, an additional therapy in pain medicine – perhaps even beyond chronic pain, for example in ADHD or autism. Art therapy, for instance, is already established in some areas and partially anchored in medical guidelines. There it is often listed together with music, dance, or theatre therapy.
