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Disclaimer This publication is for information only and is not intended to substitute professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice. Never disregard professional advice or delay seeking it. Always consult your pharmacist or doctor for guidance and before using any natural, over-the-counter or prescription remedies, and read any instructions carefully. In an emergency, call the emergency services and seek professional help immediately. Readers rely on any information at their sole risk, and Art to Reduce Anxiety, and its publisher, Future Publishing Ltd, limit their liability to the fullest extent permitted by law. If you, or anyone you know, is affected by anxiety, the following charities and helplines are ready to offer free support. UK Mind www.mind.org.uk Samaritans 116 123 US Anxiety and Depression Association of America https://adaa.org National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) 800-950-NAMI (6264) Australia SANE Australia www.sane.org Lifeline 13 11 14
For many of us, anxiety is just another fact of life; it’s something we live with every day. Sometimes it feels like a small dot – there, but imperceptible enough that we can go about our daily lives without fear. Other times it’s like a gaping black hole, mercilessly devouring everything that made us feel happy, confident and comfortable, leaving us as a shell of the person we once were. Finding the right treatment can totally transform your life, and there are so many options available. Whether you’re already receiving treatment and you’re looking for a complementary therapy, or you’ve yet to take that step and you’re searching for something to take the bite off your anxiousness, embracing your creative side can work wonders on reducing the effects of anxiety. Art therapy itself has existed for decades, and science has shown over and over again that getting creative offers a range of benefits for the mind, from helping to explore difficult feelings that can be hard to verbalise, to meditative opportunities to process our emotions. Over the following pages, we’ve provided dozens of mindful creative tasks for you, from colouring-in pages to guided doodling spaces. We’ve shared some of our favourite grounding techniques, too, to help you settle your mind when things start to overwhelm you.
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W hen anxiety hits, it can be debilitating. Whether it creeps up on you, slowly chipping away at your motivation and happiness over the course of days or weeks, or it suddenly overwhelms you with no warning, once anxiety has taken root in our minds and bodies it can feel nigh-on impossible to shake it off. Acknowledging your struggle and asking for help is the hardest step you have to take to get tangible help. Modern-day treatments for anxiety range from medication, including beta-blockers and SSRIs, to various kinds of therapy, including CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), and while it may take some time to find a treatment that works for you, once you’ve discovered the one it can change your life. Art therapy is one particular approach that has proven benefits for anxiety under the guidance of a qualified art therapist. In particular this method of treatment works particularly well with children, the elderly and those who struggle to verbalise their emotions. That’s not to say that art therapy is exclusively beneficial to those, however – the act of being creative can benefit all, including those who don’t consider themselves artistic or talented. Whether you’re engaging in art as a form of meditation or you intend to embrace your creative side as a complement to existing treatment, the act of creating can provide a muchneeded boost to your mental wellbeing. Mental health professionals have acknowledged the ﹥ k÷ƀò ƨƍ ƭĴ ĥƄƚƑƧ čĴƖ ƭƎ īƚƊ÷ ŔƇ÷ ƦƎŎƓ ƨƟ ŔƇ÷ ƟƎĥƋƨưđĬƆ Ʃƀćƞƒ 5
wide-ranging benefits of art therapy on those suffering from anxiety, as well as depression and phobias. Over the following pages, we’ve provided some activities to encourage your creativity, from simple colouring-in pages, to prompted doodles. Whatever kind of anxiety you experience, hopefully over the following pages you will manage to explore your creative side and find a cathartic release from the stresses of day-to-day life. Here, we’ll explore the different kinds of creative pages in this book, and how you can get the best from this title. As you flick through the pages, you’ll notice that there’s a mix of text and empty space. As well as providing space for you to delve into your creative side, we’ve shared some so-called grounding techniques to help keep your anxiety under control. Grounding techniques are simple routines that can be used by anyone who experiences any kind of anxiety to rein in any building sense of panic or anxiousness. Over the course of this book, we’ll share many different techniques that can help to bring you out of a panicked mental state and into the immediate present – where there is no danger. Different techniques work for different people so it might be necessary to try a few before you find something that works well for you. It is best to practise them before a panic attack so that you know the exercise: the middle of a panic attack is not the time to be trying to remember what to do next. Peppered throughout the book, we’ve included colouring-in pages, ranging from simple and straightforward, to more detailed, unique designs. Take the time to disconnect from the stresses of life and grant yourself the opportunity to colour meditatively. For many, time alone to focus on simple, creative tasks provides an outlet for not just being creative, but time to self-reflect and process difficult emotions. You’ll also notice several doodling pages, with blobs of colour, as well as a full-page colourful background. Here, you can truly indulge your imagination and engage your creative side by interpreting these colours and drawing whatever you imagine. It can be difficult to draw without any direction, so we’ve provided little prompts on every doodle spread to help you see the potential of these pages. Don’t forget, this book is just for you – nobody will be flicking through it, or judging you on how well you draw or what you choose to put in this book. Give yourself permission to release your feelings and stresses in this book and embrace the freedom that art can offer you. • 6
In the UK, Australia and in some states in the US, art therapists must be registered and/or licensed. To find a qualified professional in your region, visit the sites below. UK: British Association of Art Therapists baat.org Australia: ANZACATA anzacata.org US: American Art Therapy Association arttherapy.org 7
kÜƈĬƁƨư ćƑĴƔƧòƢƍƠ Take the time to observe your surroundings to ground yourself in the exterior world rather than engaging in negative cycles in your head, and acknowledge colour to help you get back on track. 16 hŇĴƆƫƄŎƒƢƯ÷ īƔƒƜĥƞ Ň÷ƋƀƱƚŔđƎƍ Sometimes we tense up without even realising, so try out this handy technique to give your body a break from the physical pains of anxiety. 50 ĴĬƓƫƎĥ ƘƨŘƫ ëƑƄƚƭč One of the best ways to regain control when you begin to panic is to control your breathing, so try this out next time you need a time-out. 36 ȢɌȢɌȢ ŇŘƋƄ Much like the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 technique, the 3, 3, 3 rule engages your senses and provides you with an opportunity to stop focusing on your internal anxieties. 54 .÷Ŕ ƌƎƯƢĬƆ We know animals ‘shake it off’ when they’ve experienced a stressful situation, so learn how the act of movement can provide a positive release of negative emotions. 76 ȤɌȣɌȢɌȡɌȠ Ŕ÷ƂơĬƈƐƮ÷ Sight, sound, touch, smell and taste – the five senses are key to helping ground you in the present, so use this technique to find inner peace. 40 .ŇĴƔƍƝ ŵƨŘƑƬƄĥƅ ưƢŔƇ ưÜŔƄƑ Discover how the physical act of plunging your hands into water can pull us out of the anxiety loop and help us return to the present. Month One 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 17 16 15 18 19 20 21 22 3526 27 28 29 30 31 xŇÜƂƤ ŵƎƮƑ ƦĴƎò Taking note of how you feel – both the good and the bad – and what made you feel that way can help you to notice patterns in your moods. 66 8
čÜƋƥƄĬƆƞ ƲĴƔŇ ƁƫƚđĬ Use puzzles, challenges and games to divert your mind and encourage your attention on a more productive activity. 82 ÜĥƀƍƜƢĬƆ ƭ÷ìƇƧƈņƮ÷ƒ Find out how the act of balancing can disengage your brain from a negative spiral and focus it on the present moment. 92 9
How do you A nxiety affects us all in different ways, and we all experience it differently – perhaps you notice that your body tenses up, or you find your stomach churning? Maybe your legs feel like jelly, or your jaw starts to ache as you clench your teeth. When you start to feel anxious, try to notice how your body responds. On the next page, using whatever colours you feel represent your anxiety best, colour in where you feel it most. For example, if you feel stress in your shoulders, you could choose to colour in orange from the base of the neck to the middle of the upper arm – and if you feel pangs of fear for the future in your stomach, colour in the trunk with blue. Noticing these physical symptoms can help you take the first step to alleviating them – for example, a full-body shake like a dog to help loosen tight shoulders, or widely opening and shutting your mouth like a fish to relieve a clenched jaw. ìƊƧĴůƋƄƝćƢƍƠ ŵĴƔƑ ƚƧŴđƄƓƲ ƚĬƃ ŔÜƊƈƧć ƍƨƭ÷ ƎĆ Ƈƨư đŔ ƀƅƟƞìƓƬ ŵĴƔ ìÜƍ ơƄĥƏ ƭƨ Ň÷ƈƍ Ƣƭ đĬ 10
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R ainbow grounding is a relaxation technique that works particularly well with anxious children. The Covid-19 pandemic and the government response to it produced major increases in anxiety among children in the UK, so this might be a useful exercise to help an anxious child. It is based on moving attention out from the internal world to the world around us. Look around and try to see the rainbow in the colours of the things in your surroundings. Start with red, then move through the other colours: yellow, green, orange, purple and blue. It’s probably best to skip indigo as most people are a bit vague as to how indigo differs from purple. As you see each colour, really look at it to see what shade it is, its texture, the way the light falls upon it and so on. It’s fine to add non-rainbow colours too, such as pink, black, grey or brown. The best thing about this technique is its simplicity, which makes it particularly suitable for young children. Over the following pages, look around your environment and use the space provided to doodle what you see. Notice the depth of colour, the shapes and textures, and how the light throughout the day changes on this item. 17
xč÷ƏƬŵƂơĴĥƎƆƲ ƨĆ Without a doubt, the colour red is the most provocative of them all. For many, it symbolises emotions on both extremes: love, passion and desire, as well as anger, aggression and dominance. It’s a powerful colour, often associated with equally strong, sometimes primal emotions. However, you might feel somewhat differently – how does the colour red make you feel? What do you associate it with? 18
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xč÷ƏƬŵƂơĴĥƎƆƲ ƨĆ Another bold colour, orange is often associated with positive energy, spirituality and enthusiasm. It can also represent the changing of the seasons and whatever that might mean to you – perhaps it’s a time of year that you dread, marking the end of summer and the start of winter, or perhaps you feel that it represents a new beginning. 21
xč÷ƏƬŵƂơĴĥƎƆƲ ƨĆ Traditionally the colour of happiness, yellow is usually seen as a warm, joyful, energetic colour, associated with positivity. The colour of the sun, flowers and often linked with summer, yellow does have a downside, however. Intense shades can increase any sense of unease or irritation. As with all colours, our own responses to yellow are unique. Do you feel positively about the colour, or do you find your anxiety soaring if you’re exposed to it for too long? 22
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xč÷ƏƬŵƂơĴĥƎƆƲ ƨĆ The colour of nature, green is instinctively comforting and healing for most people. It represents calmness and tranquillity, as well as good health and fertility. While many associations with green are positive, one well-known negative connotation is that of envy – the ‘green-eyed monster’. 25
xč÷ƏƬŵƂơĴĥƎƆƲ ƨĆ As the colour of the skies and the seas, blue is often said to invoke calmness, serenity, trust and tranquillity. It’s also believed to represent compassion, sincerity and thoughtfulness. However, it can also infer feelings of sadness and melancholy. What do you think of when you see the colour blue? 26
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xč÷ƏƬŵƂơĴĥƎƆƲ ƨĆ The ultimate colour of luxury, purple has long been associated with royalty, rarity and opulence as a result of the dye’s scarcity in history. It’s also often linked to mystery and intrigue, in particular the supernatural and superstitious. Some parts of the world associate the colour purple with mourning. What does the colour purple make you think about? 29
xč÷ƏƬŵƂơĴĥƎƆƲ ƨĆ Pink occupies a unique space in colour psychology. Society has led us to believe that it’s a feminine, girly colour, but this expectation has created a somewhat rebellious counter effect. Generally speaking, pink is considered to represent romance, kindness and innocence, especially in its paler shades. However, bolder hues, such as hot pink or magenta can evoke a feeling of rebellion, boldness and excitement. 30
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xč÷ƏƬŵƂơĴĥƎƆƲ ƨĆ Like green, brown can symbolise nature – the colour of soil, trees, earth – the start of life. However, it takes this association with nature a few steps further. It can also represent death and decay – the full life cycle, from birth to death in its most organic, emotionless state. Some shades of brown have been noted for representing security and dependability, in particular lighter tones. 33
36 P anic attacks produce hyperventilation. Hyperventilation floods our muscles with oxygen, making us ready to fight or run away. But in a panic attack, there is nothing to run away from. Our deep brain is preparing us for a situation from our deep past, when what we are actually facing is the fear of giving a presentation or nerves before an exam, for example. The situations that produce anxiety in the modern world are rarely resolved by fighting or running away. One way to tell our amygdala that there really is nothing to worry about is to control our breath. By controlling our breathing we can nudge the brain and nervous system out of the flight/fight response. To do so, we need to change the breath pattern into an in-breath to a slow count of four, and an out-breath to a slow count of four, preferably through the nose. It’s important that the count is the same length for both. At the start, when panic breathing has kicked in, it might be difficult to breathe through the nose, but as soon as it is possible, we should switch to nose breathing. The difficulty with this technique is holding on to the slow, even breath count no matter what thoughts and feelings are assailing us, because it takes a while for the message of slow, steady breathing to get through to the deep brain. But holding the slow, even breathing will send a message through the body to the deep brain: there is no emergency, switch off the danger hormones. Note that some magazine articles advocate breathing out for twice as long as the in-breath, so an in-breath to the count of four and an out-breath to the count of eight. This rarely works, as that breathing pattern works to put our system into its rest/ digest state. Trying to switch immediately from the fight/flight response to rest/digest is simply too big a step – the body might panic even further at having these contradictory signals being sent to it. Using calm, slow breathing, with an even breath count puts us into a neutral physiological state, ready to respond to external stimuli. This allows the deep brain to reset itself and enables us to come out of the panic attack. The best way to prepare for dealing with a panic attack is to practise the long, 4/4 breath pattern beforehand, so that it has become grooved by repetition.
38 Getty Images |Ŏ÷ ƓơƄŎƞ ƏÜƠƄŎ Ɠƨ ƝŇÜƖ ƎƧɌ òĴƎƃƥƢĬƆ ưčÜƓƄƯƞŇ ƘĴƔ Ɵƞ÷ĥ H ave a think about the things you see when you go for a walk, and draw them on this page. Perhaps you see different types of tree leaves. On the following page, build up the scene however you like – are those trees in the distance? Is this a landscape – a farmland at sunrise, perhaps, or a bog brimming with mosses and curious creatures?
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fiīƏƥĴŵƈƍƠ ŔƇƞ ƟđŮƄ ƒƞƧŎ÷ƒ ŔĴ ƑƄƭƮŇƍ ƭĴ ŔƇƄ ƩŇƞƒ÷ƧŔ D uring a panic attack, or when we can feel anxiety ramping up, the body and brain are locked into a feedback loop. Feelings of anxiety make the deep brain think it is in danger, which leads to it pumping out emergency hormones while getting the body ready to fight or flee. These elevated physical levels feed the physical sensations that accompany anxiety, making us more anxious, which leads to the deep brain pumping out even more emergency hormones. But all of this is going on inside us. There is no danger. Even if the anxiety trigger is something like a forthcoming event, the event is not yet – there is no need to panic. However, the deep part of the brain does not know this. Future fear has translated into a panic attack in the present. If we can pull our focus back to the present, where in fact there is nothing dangerous, then the body can respond in turn. The 5-4-3-2-1 technique is a way of dissolving future fears into the immediate reality of our surroundings. To begin, as an immediate calming technique, slow the breath. Breathe in for a count of four and then out for a count of four. Repeat. Keep this breathing pattern throughout the exercise, but the next time you breathe out, look around your surroundings and say out loud the names of five things you can see. They could be in the room with you (a chair, a bookcase) or outside, visible through a window (a tree, the sky, someone passing by). Then, again speaking out loud, say the names of four things you can hear. They can be things loud or quiet, near or far. The point is to focus the attention in your ears at this point. The third step is to say three things you can feel. This could be the chair under your bottom or the weight of clothes on your shoulder or the touch of a breeze on your cheek. We are working our way through the five senses, employing each sense in turn to turn our attention from the thoughts and feelings inside our mind to the exterior world immediately around us – a world that is calm and safe. By going through the senses in turn, we are conveying a message to our amygdala (which listens to the senses far more closely than it listens to our conscious thoughts) that everything is all right. The fourth step is to name two things we can smell. If you don’t have a particularly sensitive sense of smell, it might work to carry around something that has a distinctive odour to focus on when you need to employ the 5-4-3-2-1 technique – a bottle of perfume or a stick of chewing gum, for example. The chewing gum will come in useful for the final step: taste. It doesn’t matter what you use to engage the sense of taste, but something pleasant will help to wind the exercise down calmly. The 5-4-3-2-1 technique is a focused sensory technique to shift our focus away from the storm of internal thoughts and feelings of a panic attack to the world outside ourselves. The technique conveys the message to our autonomic nervous system through all five senses that everything really is all right and it can switch off its emergency response. 41
ŇÜƖ ƷƯƄ ŔƇƢƧćƒ ŵĴƔ ƂƚƧ 42
ŇÜƖ ƟƎƮŇ ƓơđĬƆƬ ŵĴƔ ƂƚƧ 44
ŇÜƖ ƭčƑƄƞ ƭčđƍƠŎ ŵĴƔ ƂƚƧ 46
ŇÜƖ ƭůƎ ƓơƢĬƆƬ ŵĴƔ ƂƚƧ ŇÜƖ ƎƧƞ ŔƇđƧć ŵĴƔ ƂƚƧ
50 Progressive muscle relaxation W hen we’re anxious, our muscles tense, as the deep brain prepares the body to fight or run. However, people suffering from generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), the most common form of anxiety disorder, who live in a constant state of chronic anxiety, can have their muscles in a habitual, permanent state of tension. Progressive muscle relaxation systematically works through the muscle groups of the body, learning the difference between tension and relaxation, and discovering how to successively relax the body’s muscles. This technique must be thoroughly practised, ideally twice a day at first. It takes about 15 minutes and you’ll need a room where you won’t be disturbed. Start by lying on the floor or sitting comfortably in a chair. Take five, long, slow, even breaths. Progressive muscle relaxation targets muscle groups in turn. First tense the muscle group as much as possible. After five seconds, breathe out and relax those muscles. Concentrate on how the muscles feel when relaxed compared to when tense. People usually find it most effective working from feet to head or head to feet. We will look at feet to head. Some people find it helpful to have a recording to take them through the different muscle groups until they have learned them all. Start by tensing one foot, curling the toes downwards. Hold, then relax, focusing on the feel of a relaxed muscle. Next tighten the calf of the same leg by curling the toes upwards. Finish the leg by tensing the thigh muscles. Repeat on the other leg. Clench one hand, then relax. Tense the whole arm by drawing your clenched fist to your shoulder. Repeat with the other arm. Moving on to the trunk, start by tightening then releasing the buttocks. Next, tense and relax your stomach. Tense the chest by taking and holding a really big breath, then breathe out. To tense the neck and shoulders, hunch your shoulders towards your ears and then relax. Open the mouth as wide as it will go and then relax. Squish your eyes as tightly shut as possible and then open them. Finally, tense your forehead by raising your eyebrows as high as you can, and then relax. Once the exercise is familiar and you know what a relaxed muscle feels like, you might want to switch to tensing and releasing sections of the body together. Finally, it may become possible to skip tensing completely and work through the body, relaxing each muscle group in turn. The end result should be a relaxed body. As our brains work in partnership with our bodies, this will tell the brain that it can relax too. J÷ƀŇƍƢƧć ƇĴư ŔƎ ƑƞƥÜŴ ŔƇ÷ ƦƔŎƂƥƞŎ Ĵƅ ƭčƄ ƁƨƝŵ Images Getty Images