Life still feels anxious, and I’m still spending time with creativity as a calming distraction. I’m painting and art journaling and writing and doodling and crocheting.
Even outside of how these activities help me when it comes to anxiety and stress, they help me because they bring me joy – they keep me connected with creativity and they light me up. And I can spend time with them even on days I don’t feel up to venturing out.
Doodling is one of those calming and meditative activities that can be done for a minute or an hour, on a big piece of paper or a tiny receipt. I can listen to something in the background or half-watch a show while I use a pen to play.
I’ve been especially enjoying making doodles on small pieces of paper, and I’ll sometimes simply grab an index card from a nearby stack…
Or open up my little moleskin journal and play around there.
It’s fun. It’s relaxing. It’s distracting.
And it’s calming.
Try some doodling (if you haven’t already). It doesn’t matter how it looks, because that’s not the point.
The point is the calming, the play, the letting your fingers move the pen or pencil or marker as you relax into the moment.
As I continue my journey of life having way more anxiety than I wish it would, I’ve been spending even more time immersed in creativity. I’m still (very gradually) working on a sequel to my novel, New Life in New Melody, and doing other writerly-type things.
Mostly, though, my creative time has been related to painting and art journaling and doodling.
Writing (as I’ve mentioned before) seems to need a certain amount of feeling settled inside myself for me to make the jump from not-writing to writing on any given day… and when the anxiety is too high, I can’t seem to reach that state.
But painting is different for me. I can pick up a paintbrush and start painting even in the midst of high anxiety.
And then the settled feeling comes, at least while I’m painting. And it’s calming. And it’s distracting.
Even just painting squares of color does this for me. Recently, I spent some time going through some of my acrylic paints and I simply painted swatches of color.
Which is just what I need to get past the anxiety and reach a place of peace.
Even just doing this made such a difference in the anxiety!
Whenever I had a bit of paint leftover on my palette, I added it to a canvas I had recently covered with white gesso. Not trying to make it into anything, just painting and making marks to use up the extra bits of paint left when I squeezed out or poured too much.
Simply playing with the paint.
Just being in the creativity with the paint and the brushes.
But the calming of it, and the distraction of it, help so much.
When you’re feeling anxious, find what can help you distract from the feelings (unless distraction isn’t what’s needed at the time). Find what can help you calm. It might take some experimenting – and what helps can shift and change, which is why it’s good to have a variety of things to turn to and try. But when you do find what helps, take the time to do it.
And may it make a positive difference in your day.
I often think it would be nice to be the kind of writer who could write any day, every day, no matter what was going on with life or emotions.
But I’m not.
Although I’m able to paint every day, even if life is in turmoil and the anxiety is high, I can’t do that with writing. I think it’s because, for me, writing involves some part of my mind and brain and attention that’s hard for me to access if I’m not feeling a certain amount of being settled inside myself. I don’t have to feel completely calm and settled to write, but there has to be a certain level of it that simply isn’t there when the anxiety is super high.
This definitely gets in the way of writing routines and rhythms. And it can mean writing in starts-and-stops. It can even feel as though I’m taking one step forward and two steps back.
And I have to admit that it’s discouraging. But it’s something that has been true for me throughout my decades of writing.
Even though this has consistently been the case for me, though, time and again I re-visit this issue and examine it and ask myself certain questions.
Should I push myself more? Should I force myself to be more discipled? Should I find some coping technique, even if it’s unhealthy, that numbs my feelings (whether anxiety or grief) enough that I can hear the characters and stories that want to be told through my writing?
None of those feel right for me. When the anxiety is so bad, pushing through it or pushing it aside seem impossible. And ever since the end of my long slow xanax taper, I have no desire to risk more anti-anxiety meds or even alcohol to numb. Whatever calming techniques I use or try need to be things that won’t mess with my brain and central nervous more than they’ve already been messed with (and harmed by) prescription medication.
So I keep coming back to giving myself grace. Or trying to, at least.
Giving myself grace and space and time to grieve the losses in my life. Giving myself grace and forgiveness for not meeting some self-imposed ideal of what my writing or productivity should look like. And giving myself grace and permission to honor my personal rhythms… whether that’s with my writing, or dealing with life in general, or going through a day.
And giving myself grace to do it all imperfectly.
How about you? Do you need to give yourself more grace? Do you need to do more honoring of your needs and your feelings and your rhythms?
If so, I hope you’ll do just that.
♥
My art journaling page from early 2020 for my word-of-the-year – grace.
Ginger Simpson White 