Coloring Your Way to Mindfulness and Taking a Break From Worry
Ivy Griffin
Have you read the articles and know that practicing mindfulness or meditation is good for you? Maybe you’ve tried sitting quietly and focusing on your breathing, and you suddenly have 1,000 thoughts running through your head, which quickly turn into worries and leave you feeling overwhelmed and stressed.
As a highly sensitive person (hsp), we have the tendency to process things deeply, which can mean we have a LOT of thoughts a LOT of the time. Depending on our personalities and past experiences, these thoughts can easily turn into worries and trigger feelings of anxiety, panic, and overwhelm.
While meditating in silence or listening to a guided meditation can be great tools for soothing your sensitive nervous system, we’ll talk about those another time. Another great mindfulness tool that we sometimes overlook is coloring.
You’ve probably seen adult coloring books become popular over the last several years; coloring can have many wonderful mental health benefits for all ages. You can find plenty of free printable coloring pages online, as well as a huge variety of coloring books in stores and online.
Coloring can promote several mental health benefits, especially for highly sensitive people:
Mindfulness
Coloring can help us be more mindful, which basically means intentionally being more aware in the present moment without judgment. While coloring, you’re focused on choosing which colors to use, which part of the picture you want to work on, and maybe hearing the sounds the colored pencil/marker/crayon is making on the page. Coloring can allow us to shut out the distractions around us and within us for a few moments and just concentrate on the present in a nonjudgmental way. If you find your mind wandering as you color (which is totally normal), that’s okay, just try to return your attention to what you’re experiencing in the present, right now. As hsps, we benefit even more from these breaks in what can feel like our never-ending thoughts.
Stress Relief
Coloring is a great way to relieve stress by relaxing the mind and body. It can help relieve symptoms associated with anxiety and depression. Giving our brain something else to focus on other than our racing thoughts or negative self-talk can provide some relief from these difficult emotions. Try sitting down for a coloring session for at least a few minutes, and focus on your breathing as you color. You can also take note of your heart rate before and after coloring and see if you feel a difference. You can even rate how stressed you feel 1-10 pre and post coloring to see if there’s a measurable difference, which might just help convince you to do some more coloring the next time you’re stressed.
Practice Being Imperfect
As sensitive people, we often struggle with perfectionism. Coloring can be a helpful activity to try practicing imperfection. None of us are perfect! If you experience fears of not being a “good enough” artist or tend to compare your own artistic work to others’, then coloring can be a great low-stress, non-competitive activity to try out. There’s no right or wrong way to color, and you can choose whichever colors you want to use. It doesn’t matter if you stay inside the lines, whether you finish your coloring in one sitting or not, or how fast or slow you color. All that matters is focusing on the present moment and enjoying the process, and hopefully finding some stress relief along the way.
So, maybe the next time you find yourself in a worry spiral, break out the ol’ coloring book and crayons, tap into your 7 year old self, and let yourself relax and just be.
Warmly,
she/her
Sources:
https://arttherapy.org/what-is-art-therapy/https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/coloring-is-good-for-your-health