How Art Can Help Relieve Your Anxiety

Anxiety makes you focus on something that harms you – a thought or action that makes you nervous and uncomfortable. What if you could focus instead on something that makes you calm?

Art has an amazing way of drawing a person's attention away from the outside world and into your own imagination. There are many ways in which you can use art to help you find relaxation when you're feeling anxious.

Relieving Stress With More Art in Your Life

By learning to express yourself and your emotions through drawing, painting, and other forms of art, you can begin to let go of the things that are causing you to experience fear. You learn to face them and see them in a different way.

Even if creating art isn't your “thing,” you can still find stress relief in art. Here are some of the ways art can help ease your mind and bring you to a calmer state.

Making Art

Making art can be cathartic and relaxing. It can also engage your emotions, depending on the type of art you're making, and the emotions you choose to put into it.

You can use the creation of art to let your anger or fear out. You can use it to discover feelings you didn't realize you have. You can also use artistic creation to help you achieve relaxation—something that can be found with painting. (Just go for abstract, don't worry about it being a masterpiece.)

Crafting

Crafting is a creative art form on its own. Taking up a craft as a hobby is an excellent way to switch your mind off of negative or anxious thoughts. Plus, there are so many options for crafting, you're certain to find something that can calm you down.

Some excellent crafting ideas that will allow you to focus on the art and find some relief from your anxiety include:

• Knitting or crocheting
• Pottery
• Scrapbooking
• Card making
• Candle or soap making

Each of these things not only gives your mind and senses something new to focus on, but you're creating something that wasn't there before. That is such an amazing feeling.

Enjoying Art

If you don't feel like you have an artistic bone in your body, don't fret. There are still art options that will help you naturally relieve stress and anxiety without medications. Plus, using art as therapy isn't about creating something that will sell, find a home in a gallery, or turn you into the next Picasso.

Much like the library, art museums are pretty quiet places. That's because people go there to contemplate art—rather than to talk about life and their problems. Art museums offer a great place for you to experience silence and calmness. Big or small, spend some time at a local art fair or an art museum and look closely at the art that is there, see how it makes you feel, ponder what the artist may have been feeling or expressing while they were creating. Be inspired. Be calm.