Does therapy actually help with writer's block or creative block?

It can, though probably not in the way people expect. I'm less interested in productivity techniques than in what the block is protecting you from, whether that's the risk of being judged, a fear that the work won't be good enough, or grief about a version of your creative life you thought you'd have by now. Once that's clearer, the work itself often starts moving again on its own.

Why do I lose confidence in my work even when people tell me it's good?

This usually has less to do with the work itself and more to do with where your sense of worth is sitting. When identity and output are fused, external reassurance can't really land, because the doubt was never actually about the piece in front of you. That's slower to shift than a technique, but it's often the more durable change.

What makes working with you different from a general therapist, if I'm not a musician myself?

I'm a musician myself, which means some of this isn't abstract to me: what it's like to depend on your own output for income, what it does to you when a piece of work doesn't land, the specific kind of tired that comes from touring or freelancing without a stable structure around you. I don't assume that experience maps exactly onto yours, whatever your medium is, but it changes where the conversation starts.

Can uncertainty and lack of control actually be worked with, rather than just endured?

I think so, yes. A lot of my own thinking here comes from composers who built uncertainty into the work itself, like John Cage's use of chance operations, or Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening practice. The idea isn't to get better at controlling outcomes. It's to practice tolerating not knowing what comes next, in a low-stakes way, until it stops feeling like a threat.

My struggles are about my career and creative identity, not a diagnosable condition. Is that still something to bring to therapy?

Yes. When your sense of self is bound up with your creative output, a stalled project or a bad review isn't just a professional setback, it can feel like a referendum on who you are. That's a legitimate thing to work through, whether or not it fits neatly into a clinical category.

Are online sessions realistic if I tour or travel a lot for work?

Yes, that's part of why I offer them. Online sessions work across time zones and irregular schedules, which matters if your work doesn't allow for a fixed weekly slot in one place.

Therapy for Musicians & Creative Professionals

I work with musicians, writers, and other creative professionals navigating the particular weight of a creative life, in Berlin and online. I'm a musician myself, and I've lived and worked between two very different scenes, in Boston and in Berlin. A lot of what shows up in this work, the instability, the self-doubt, I've lived as well.

This isn't only for musicians. A lot of what's underneath, the unpredictable income, the way identity gets tangled up with output, the loneliness of work that depends entirely on you, can look similar across creative fields. No musical experience is required to work with me, and if you're a writer, a visual artist, or a performer, much of this page is written with you in mind too. You can read more about music therapy as a whole, or about online sessions if you're not in Berlin, or moving around a lot.

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A Bit About Me

I have a background in cognitive neuroscience and music therapy, and I also have a background as a musician, one that's taken shape across two countries and two fairly different music scenes. There are things about a creative and international life that are hard to fully understand if you haven't lived them: what it does to your sense of stability to depend on your own output for income, and what that does to your self worth. why it feels impossible to not 'take it personally' when the work is, in a sense, you.

Everyone's relationship to their own creative life is unique. But I think the starting point of a conversation is different when the person across from you has actually lived some version of this uncertainty.

The Work

Creative work carries pressures that are structural, not personal, even though they tend to get experienced as personal failings. Income is wildly irregular, and that keeps a nervous system in a low-grade state of vigilance for long enough that it can start to feel like a personality trait rather than a response to conditions. Touring and travel disrupt sleep and relationships and any real sense of a stable base. And self-worth has a way of fusing with output, so that a stalled project or a harsh review stops being a professional setback and starts to feel like a reflection of who you are.

It's a reasonable response to really demanding conditions, and I think one of the more useful early shifts is simply treating it as legitimate rather than something to just quietly push through.

The Block

Writer's block, the procrastination, the dread of opening the file or picking up an instrument, is rarely a problem of technique or talent, even though it often gets treated that way. Research on blocked writers has consistently found it associated with things like self-criticism, perfectionism, and fear of judgment, not a lack of discipline. More often the block is a symptom of something else entirely: exhaustion, a fear of being judged that has turned into a fear of trying at all, a nervous system too flooded, or too shut down, to access anything generative.

Approaching the block head-on, as if it were a willpower problem, tends not to work, because it usually isn't one. Working with what sits underneath it, the fear, the exhaustion, the perfectionism, tends to move things that pushing through cannot.

Letting Go of Control: Chance, Indeterminacy, and Deep Listening

A lot of my own thinking about creative block comes from composers who think about uncertainty in their work. John Cage used chance operations, dice, the I Ching, to decide what notes would occur and when, partly as a way of removing his own intention and control from the piece. Pauline Oliveros developed Deep Listening, a practice of shifting from focal attention, the spotlight we usually operate in, toward a wider, more global kind of listening that takes in everything at once. Steve Reich's early phase pieces let two identical patterns drift slowly out of sync and back together again, treating the unfolding of the process itself as the composition, rather than something to control toward a fixed outcome.

I think there's something clinically useful in all three of these approaches, and I've written about this at more length on my blog, if you'd like to read further. What they share is a shift away from trying to predict or control the outcome, and toward tolerating, even getting curious about, not knowing what happens next. For a lot of creative block, especially the kind rooted in perfectionism, that shift matters more than any specific technique. In sessions, this might look like using found sounds or voice memos and randomising their order, their volume, or how much they overlap. It might mean bringing in something like Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards with prompts designed to interrupt a stuck process, or trying a version of blackout poetry, where you work from constraint and removal rather than a blank page. The common thread is loosening the grip of control, changing the medium, letting something unplanned happen.

Performance, Perfectionism, and the Body

Performance anxiety, before a show, a reading, an opening, a deadline, has a physiological layer and an identity layer, and I think both usually need attention. The physiological layer is the nervous system's activation itself: elevated heart rate, shallow breathing, a body bracing for evaluation. Music offers a fairly direct route into working with that activation, using rhythm and tempo and structure to shift a physical state in ways that reasoning on its own often can't reach.

The identity layer is slower to shift. When your output is fused with your sense of worth, a single performance stops being one event among many and becomes something closer to a verdict. Untangling identity from output, so that a bad night is a bad night and not evidence about who you are, is not fast work, but it's often the change that actually holds.

Touring and Instability

A lot of creative careers happen in motion, between cities, time zones, temporary housing, unpredictable schedules. It's easy to normalise the cost of that because it comes with the territory: disrupted sleep, relationships and routines that are hard to maintain, a body that never quite settles because part of it is always anticipating the next departure.

Having lived and worked between Boston and Berlin myself, none of this is abstract to me. In sessions, this can mean working with the practical rhythms of touring or international creative life directly, building regulation tools that actually travel with you, and making some sense of what "home" means when your work keeps you moving.

Working With Music in Sessions

Sessions draw on a few different approaches, depending on what's useful for you at a given time.

Working with creative block: Figuring out what's actually underneath a block, exhaustion, fear, perfectionism, grief, rather than treating it as a discipline problem, and building a practice that can hold setbacks without falling apart.
Chance, constraint, and letting go of control: Drawing on chance operations, Deep Listening, Oblique Strategies-style prompts, or constraint-based exercises like blackout poetry, to practice tolerating uncertainty rather than eliminating it.
Performance and nervous system work: Using tempo, rhythm, and musical structure to work with pre-performance activation directly, alongside the slower work of untangling self-worth from outcome.
Verbal processing with music as anchor: Using songs, creative references, or your own work as a way into reflection on what's underneath the professional surface.
Career and identity work: Making space for the parts of a creative career that rarely get treated as legitimate, instability, comparison, touring, the fusion of self-worth with output.
Between-session work via the Sensory Intelligence Lab: Soundscapes and journaling tools built to travel with an unpredictable schedule, available any time at lab.jordanelias.de.

You'll never be required to perform, share creative work, or engage with music in a way that feels uncomfortable. Everything is paced by you.

Who This is For

Musicians, writers, artists, performers, or other creative professionals, whether creative work is your full livelihood or something you're trying to make room for alongside other work
People experiencing creative block, perfectionism, or a fraught relationship with their own process
People navigating performance anxiety before shows, readings, exhibitions, or submissions
Anyone living with the financial or scheduling instability that tends to come with creative or freelance work
People touring, travelling frequently, or living between countries as part of their work
Anyone whose sense of self is closely tied to their creative output, in a way that makes setbacks feel disproportionately heavy
People who also identify as queer or LGBTQIA+

In Berlin, and Online, Internationally

Sessions are available in person in Berlin and online for English-speaking clients across Europe and elsewhere, including the United States. Online sessions are built with touring and international creative life in mind, able to work around irregular schedules and time zones rather than requiring a fixed weekly slot in one place.

A sliding scale is available. Cost isn't meant to be a barrier to getting support.

Getting Started

The first step is a free 30-minute consultation, a conversation about what brought you here, what you're hoping for, and whether working together feels like a good fit. There's no pressure and no assessment involved. You don't need to arrive with a clear plan of action. We can work that out together.

Book a free intro call

Frequently Asked Questions

In my experience it's rarely a discipline problem, even though it often gets treated as one. Research on blocked writers has found real associations with self-criticism, perfectionism, and fear of judgment, not laziness. The block is usually a symptom pointing at something else. Working on output alone, without attending to what's underneath it, tends not to hold.
It can, though probably not in the way people expect. I'm less interested in productivity techniques than in what the block is protecting you from, whether that's the risk of being judged, a fear that the work won't be good enough, or grief about a version of your creative life you thought you'd have by now. Once that's clearer, the work itself often starts moving again on its own.
This usually has less to do with the work itself and more to do with where your sense of worth is sitting. When identity and output are fused, external reassurance can't really land, because the doubt was never actually about the piece in front of you. That's slower to shift than a technique, but it's often the more durable change.
I'm a musician myself, so some of this isn't abstract to me: what it's like to depend on your own output for income, what it does to you when a piece of work doesn't land, the specific kind of tired that comes from touring or freelancing without a stable structure around you. I don't assume that experience maps exactly onto yours, whatever your medium is, but it changes where the conversation starts.
I think so, yes. A lot of my own thinking here comes from composers who built uncertainty into the work itself, like John Cage's use of chance operations, or Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening practice. The idea isn't to get better at controlling outcomes. It's to practice tolerating not knowing what comes next, in a low-stakes way, until it stops feeling like a threat.
Yes. When your sense of self is bound up with your creative output, a stalled project or a bad review isn't just a professional setback, it can feel like a referendum on who you are. That's a legitimate thing to work through, whether or not it fits neatly into a clinical category.
Yes, that's part of why I offer them. Online sessions work across time zones and irregular schedules, which matters if your work doesn't allow for a fixed weekly slot in one place.