Art Therapy to Reduce Anxiety

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is how your body responds to stress. It is a feeling of nervousness or fear about upcoming situations or events. Everyone feels nervous about the first day of a new job or school, or giving a speech etc. However, if your anxiety is extreme, lasts over six months, and interferes with the quality of your life, you may be suffering from an anxiety disorder.

Anxiety disorder can be debilitating and intense. It could make you stop doing things that you normally love, and if left untreated, it could worsen.

What is art therapy?

Art therapy is a type of anxiety treatment that specialises in using art materials to express your creativity, often in the presence of a trained mental healthcare professional. Examples of this kind of art include drawing, sketching, painting, colouring in adult colouring books, clay modelling, and sculpting. This therapy helps you explore your feelings through artistic expression, improves your self-esteem, relieves anxiety, and resolves other psychological issues.

Benefits of art therapy for helping anxiety

Numerous studies have been conducted to verify the beneficial effects that art therapy has as an anxiety treatment. Here is what art therapy does:

● Relieves stress

● Slows down cognitive decline

● Improves communication

● Reduces anxiety

● Stops you from fixating on worrying thoughts

● Calms your nervous system

● Enhances your self-awareness

● Motivates your self-expression

While art therapy by itself cannot cure anxiety disorders, it can certainly help you cope with your symptoms and make you feel less anxious.

Art therapy exercises for anxiety

Art therapy is something that you can on at your own at home, even while you are seeing a healthcare professional for anxiety treatment. Here are some things you can try that will help relieve your anxiety:

1. Colouring books

Adult colouring books are a simple way to relax and ward off stress. Even people who are not artistic by nature can try this easily, as the books have outlined drawings that show you what to colour.

2. Mandala art

Mandala art refers to drawings made of circular designs. You can either create your own mandala drawings inspired by mandala art pictures or spend time colouring in the mandala art. The rhythmic repetition of working in circles calms you down and relieves stress.

3. Gratitude journal

If you are not too artistic, you can create a gratitude journal. Decorate a journal in a design that pleases you and write down about people, events, and things in your life that you are grateful for. You can write down your thoughts or even a few lines of poetry.

4. Create patterns

Doodling and drawing patterns often relieve stress and anxiety. How you doodle can also help you understand your emotions. Tangled lines could mean you are nervous and pressing the pencil hard could mean you are trying to release some tension.

5. One-minute brain dump

This is a method of recording all your thoughts and ideas until you feel like all your tension has been released and you are able to breathe normally again. This has been found to help calm you down when you’re very anxious.

6. Create affirmation card

You can use an old deck of cards to do this. Decorate one side with origami paper, colourful designs, etc.,and on the other side, write out or paste printed out affirmations like ‘breathe’, ‘I am confident’, ‘Each new day is a fresh start’, etc.

7. Mind map anxiety

You can also create a mind map for your anxiety by listing out all the issues that are causing you to stress out. Start with a circle in the centre of a page that says, ‘why do I feel this way?’. Draw arrows pointing out from this circle and list out all the reasons. Once you take a look at the mind map, you might feel like your problems are not so big after all!