(How to reduce Anxiety) With Art Activities to stop your brain over thinking
In our two previous posts we covered how art helps with emotions, and destructive activities. In this blog we are going to share why you over think and how can you stop repeating cycles overthinking which turns into stress/anxiety and uncomfortable emotions.
Why do people 'think continously' about a situation and just cannot put it to rest?
The reason for this is because:
1. They don't feel in control of their situation. When you don't feel in control of a situation, you start to feel you are 'loosing' control.
2. This can create reactive behavior from making decisions without thinking of the pro's and con's.
3. What is generally happening is that you too - don't feel heard or feel you have said/done the 'right' thing. Many people feel the need to want to 'defend' themselves when they feel out of control.
What you need to understand is that you are allowing childhood memories that were uncomfortable to surface. At the time when you were a child (you were feeling and thinking what you are doing now as an adult). It may not be the same experience, but you are experiencing the same emotions. You start to feel vulnerable and emotionally 'shrink' into a little child. Your brain reminds you that it was an uncomfortable experience and you start to either defend, not say anything and build resentment, react or take the situation out of context.
When you start to see that situations you experience now as an adult cause pain emotionally, all it is showing you is what you have not dealt with as a child. This needs to be addressed, healed and faced. The early signs of turning a situation into stress is allowing yourself to 'over think' situations.
What can help you:
1. Use self help techniques that allow you to feel in control and change your emotions. Example: EFT
2. Use destructive creative activities (examples are in the previous post)
3. Find creative activities that get your brain to think and solve the process. (example: building projects) No matter how difficult they are - find a way to complete it.
4. Set time aside every day even when you feel great and do the activities
5. Find a goal to work towards that requires research. This gets your mind to focus on activities that are not going to allow your brain time to think all the time about your situation
6. Write your feelings down on paper. Write letters to the person and then tear them up
7. Keep a diary of your thoughts - time yourself when you cry (you start to see you are just releasing and are mentally ok)
How does the brain work with creative building activities?
When you are finding a way to build and complete an activity, you will experience emotions from;'I can't do this, throw it away, walk away, come back to it' etc. All of these emotions are surfacing for you to find a way to solve and to look at what you say to yourself in the process. This is all what you have learnt from adults when you were growing up. The point you need to realize, is that you cannot blame adults because you have a choice to make the change.
Art and creative activities to help you:
1. Technical drawing techniques (helps you to break difficult steps down into simple steps)
2. Learn a new creative/art project. (Learning something new helps you to follow a process of steps)
3. Build something with instructions (By following instructions to build an item this gets your brain to follow a process)
How often must I do this?
The answer is how uncomfortable is your emotions? How stressed are you? An hour a day of activites is all your brain needs to balance itself.
