The creative process also offers a chance for self-reflection that can yield some insight into the source of your anxious thoughts, an essential step in resolving those triggers. You don’t engage with the feelings, and so they drift away. You focus on the movement of your hand across the page, the texture of the paper, and the brightness of any colors you add. Your attention, however, remains on your artwork. Getting in touch with the here and now through creativity can help you clear your head and better accept yourself in the moment, Lynch adds.Īs you draw or color, distracting and unhelpful thoughts might pop up in your consciousness. Mindfulness can help you learn to accept painful feelings and let them go. Learning to identify and recognize difficult emotions is an important part of improved emotional regulation. Yet as counterproductive as it may seem, spending some time with anxious thoughts can make it easier to release them. You want to get rid of anxious thoughts - not spend time sitting with them and fully experiencing them. If you live with anxiety, this might sound like a horrible idea. Mindfulness refers to your ability to stay present, engaged, and in tune with your thoughts, emotions, and sensations in your body. Research from 2018 also suggests mindful coloring activities may help relieve test anxiety, a significant source of stress for many students.In a small 2016 study, adults who participated in 45 minutes of art therapy by sculpting clay, drawing with markers, or making a collage felt more relaxed and had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol after the art exercise.Participants who spent the time drawing reported greater improvement in negative mood symptoms than those who simply looked at art. They then spent 20 minutes drawing or sorting through art prints. In a small 2007 study, participants listed 10 of their most significant worries.There’s also some research to back up the stress-relieving effects of art: While focused on the creative process, you aren’t giving energy to your anxiety. You decide what to draw and what colors to add to your design. Putting pencil to paper allows you to give yourself some space from unwanted, often uncontrollable, thoughts and engage in an activity you can control. This can start to affect everything from your sleep schedule to your appetite. Here’s how art can help: It can help reduce stressĪ constant undercurrent of anxiety threading through your day-to-day activities can leave you in a regular state of unease. This is particularly important for people who feel out of touch with their emotions or sense of self.” “Art uses metaphor, symbolism, and dynamic thoughts to represent the human experience in a way language cannot. “The creative process promotes new perspectives that lie beyond the structure of language,” Lynch says. Kelly Lynch, a licensed mental health counselor and registered art therapist in Seattle, WA, explains that art therapy can help you gain a deeper understanding of yourself - both through the creative process and the resulting artwork. Since its introduction in the mid-1900s, art therapy has helped people address a range of mental health symptoms.
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