Trigger warning: This blog post discusses topics relating to mental health, which may be triggering for some individuals.
When the world broke me, I responded with music, dance and stories.
Creative Activist and TMC Youth Board member, Hannah, has written this blog post for Mental Health Awareness Week (12th-18th May), sharing her own personal mental health journey and the life-changing role that creativity has played in helping to rebuild her mental wellbeing.
My name is Hannah, and I’m so glad you’re here. I’m a proud member of The Mighty Creatives’ Youth Board and someone who knows, very personally, just how life-changing creativity can be – not just as an outlet, but as a lifeline.
I’m what I call a Creative Activist – someone who uses the arts not just to heal and express, but to spark change. I’ve worked with over 25 organisations as a lived experience advisor, artist, speaker, and advocate, combining my two biggest passions: creativity and social justice.
I’m also an actor, musician, dancer, artist, facilitator and writer. I’m currently studying Inclusive Performance, having recently returned to education after a long (and much-needed) break. I previously trained in Musical Theatre at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, and I’m a proud member of both the National Youth Theatre and the London Regional Ensemble of the National Open Youth Orchestra.
But beneath those achievements is a deeper story – one marked by struggle, survival, and ultimately, creativity as a tool for transformation.
Growing up undiagnosed neurodivergent – I’m autistic with a PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance) profile and have ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) – meant that I often felt like the world wasn’t built for me. I experienced trauma, exclusion, and by the age of nine, was already battling suicidal thoughts. My teenage years were marked by hospital stays, burnout, and being told that I was “too complex” or “too difficult” to help.
I was legally detained under the Mental Health Act. I was in PICU (Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit). I felt like my identity was reduced to a set of diagnoses, risks, and labels. And yet – in the depths of this darkness – creativity found me.
It didn’t “fix” everything overnight. But it offered something I’d never truly had before: a way to make sense of myself, and a safe space to be me, without judgment or restriction.
Here are five ways creativity helped me rebuild my mental health – and continues to help me fight for change today.
There were so many times I didn’t know how to put into words what I was feeling. Growing up neurodivergent and traumatised, I often masked, performed, or stayed silent. The world didn’t feel safe enough to speak my truth.
But when I performed in a role, wrote a poem, or created a piece of visual art, I could finally say what was living inside me. Creativity gave me a new language – one that didn’t rely on neurotypical rules or rigid expectations. It gave me a way to speak without having to explain.
It started with bullet journaling in hospital – just doodles at first, then poems, visual metaphors, collages, lyrics. Over time I began to realise: this was more than a hobby. It was survival. Creativity helped me begin to untangle the pain and confusion inside me and let it out in a way that felt empowering – even beautiful.
Through storytelling, performance, and art, I reclaimed a sense of agency. I began to feel less like a “problem to be fixed” and more like a person with something to say.
I live with C-PTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) from both childhood and the mistreatment I experienced in psychiatric units. For years I was locked away in a system that didn’t understand me. I was restrained, labelled, and silenced. That level of trauma doesn’t just disappear. It lives in the body. It builds in layers.
But creativity has helped me start peeling those layers back.
Through drawing and mixed media art, I began visually exploring the emotions that felt unsafe to speak aloud. Through music, I could channel anger or sadness in ways that didn’t overwhelm me. Through theatre, I began inhabiting different identities, finding safety in expression and performance.
No one told me what to feel or how to heal, creativity gave me that control. In creative spaces, I wasn’t “too much” or “too complex” – I was just me, experimenting, feeling, and healing.
It’s not a perfect or linear process, but it’s mine.
For so long, I didn’t know who I really was. Years of masking, hiding, and trying to fit a mould meant I lost sight of my own identity. I felt alien – like everyone else had the rulebook to life, and I’d missed the first chapter.
When I was finally diagnosed as autistic at 19, things began to make more sense – but it was creativity that helped me explore what that really meant. I used drawing, writing, music, and dance to unpick the fear, stigma and internalised ableism I’d absorbed for years. I created to find out what I liked, what made me feel safe, what brought me joy. That process still continues.
Performing – especially as part of the National Youth Theatre and National Open Youth Orchestra – has been transformative. On stage or in rehearsals, I’m not trying to “pass” as neurotypical. I can move, breathe and express myself in a way that honours my neurodivergence, not hides it.
Music has also become a personal sanctuary. I play several instruments and sing, and when I do, it feels like my nervous system finally settles. It’s my way of communicating, of connecting – without needing to explain.
For years I felt alone. Misunderstood in school. Misdiagnosed or dismissed by professionals. Watching my peers grow up and move on while I was stuck behind locked hospital doors. The isolation was soul-crushing.
But the creative world opened something new for me: belonging.
When I joined performance groups, youth projects, and creative collectives, I met others who also walked less conventional paths. Some neurodivergent, some with mental health experiences, all with a shared passion for expression and justice. There was no judgment – only curiosity and celebration.
With TMC and other organisations like EDA (Emotion Dysregulation in Autism), Mind, and Young Minds, I found spaces where I wasn’t a burden or a label, but a collaborator. A leader. A change-maker. Creative communities gave me connection, confidence, and courage.
And perhaps most importantly, they reminded me that I wasn’t alone. I never was.
Today, everything I do is driven by one goal: social change. I want to help create a world where neurodivergent and mentally ill young people are seen, heard, and supported – not sidelined or institutionalised.
Creativity is how I do that.
Through public speaking, podcasting, blogging, and performance, I use my lived experience to highlight injustice and demand better. I’ve delivered training, contributed to national campaigns, spoken at conferences, and facilitated workshops. My poetry speaks to pain, power and protest. My art challenges assumptions. My music tells stories no textbook ever could.
I believe creativity is one of the most radical tools we have. It cuts through noise. It connects people. It brings hard topics to life in ways that statistics never can.
I’m not just creating for me anymore – I’m creating for the younger me who felt invisible, and for every other young person still in the shadows.
It’s easy to say “creativity saved my life” – but for me, that’s not just a phrase. It’s my reality.
I still face challenges. Healing isn’t linear. Systems still fail people like me every day. But I’ve found something that makes it all feel possible again: a way to feel, a way to fight, and a way to dream.
To anyone reading this who feels lost, broken, or unheard:
🌟 You are not too complicated.
🌟 You are not a problem.
🌟 There is power in your story, and creativity might just help you tell it.
Whether it’s a song, a scribble, a movement or a moment – your creativity matters.
Let’s use it to build something better. Together.
