Just wondering what your thoughts are regarding the relationship between testosterone and creativity. there are some studies that suggest that high testosterone blunts empathy, enhances spatial reasoning, and possibly hinders creativity. I was wondering if any of you have had issues with this since being on TRT. I am a UX/UI Designer (web and app design) and I need a fair amount of creativity for my field of work This is scaring me off of TRT.
Theoretically, I could see how testosterone improving mood might make it harder for someone to empathize, since empathy is really just an adoption of someone else's negative emotional experience. Creativity, specifically artistic ability, tends to be an emotionally-emphasized practice.
anyways, Tl;dr= Have you had a hard time being more creative since getting on TRT?
NOT AT ALL!!!!
Certainly high doses of testosterone can change some things, and obviously the higher you go the more changes you might have to deal with.
Although I don't have any references to scientific literature. I can tell you that I am no less creative, or imaginative now that I am on TRT. If anything I started becoming more imaginative, and creative. When testosterone was low everything was why bother... with normal levels my "what if" returned as well. For me a bit of apathy came with low testosterone, and that deadened my creative and curious side. With low testosterone I was not even remotely motivated to be creative.
Now their might actually be some fact to being slightly less creative, but I sure didn't experience it. I am also not sure of what the situation was surrounding that. I would assume they are talking about super physiological levels like one might experience on a cycle. Even then look at the likes of Kai Greene, no one would think of saying he is not very creative, and I can assure you he has had ridiculously high levels of testosterone in his system many times.
Either way, you have low testosterone now, do you feel more creative now than in the past? If so, then maybe there is something to that. If not better than when you had higher testosterone then I would say you have nothing to worry about... On top of that people with normal testosterone levels have also always been creative, or inventive. I would be inclined to say that testosterone was part of the motivating factors for most inventions, which have been mostly made by men. Remember you are just trying to restore your testosterone to natural normal levels with TRT, not high test, that isn't the goal, and is in my opinion part of the reason for so many people having sides on their TRT.
My opinion is that IF there is less creativity, it is minimal to the point of being unnoticeable, but more importantly that the likelihood of me acting on a creative thought is so much lower with lowered testosterone that the productivity would still be far above my lower testosterone performance.
To give you an idea of creative things I like to do, I like drawing, writing, singing, dancing, making up silly freestyles, coming up with new workout programs, formulate out of the box solutions for things... I have no hindrance to any of my creative outlets from TRT. My life has actually improved quite a bit with TRT.
Creativity, specifically artistic ability, tends to be an emotionally-emphasized practice.
Agreed, but empathy isn't really an emotion, so much as an emotional awareness of others. There is no lack of emotion when on testosterone, actually you might feel more emotionally charged.
Sure the test makes things a little more about you than others, but it does not limit your emotions in anyway. You will feel the entire emotional gamut and may even feel them more intensely than having low test. So you will still have all of the emotional creative drive. You just might not be able to express what others are feeling in your art due to less empathy, and more about what you are feeling... Now if just commissioned work... I think you will be okay regardless.
