The studies that have been done into art therapy tend to be geared towrards either visual arts (drawing, painting, sculpture, coloring and others) or into music therapy. While I find an enormous amount of relief from my symptoms during, and after, the times when I play my piano, I want to focus on visual arts in this post. The reason is simple, many visual arts can be done with little to no instruction, and they can be extremely inexpensive. Of course, deciding to take up something such as painting, with oil paints as the medium, on expansive canvases can be more costly and require instruction. However, no one has to set out to be the next Michelangelo to reduce symptoms.
There are many inexpensive and simple forms of art therapy that have been shown to lessen symptoms and help to bring about an overall sense of wellbeing. For instance, if my paintbrushes feel as if they are made of lead, my creative juices have run dry and I need a quick and easy escape into art, I often pick up my colored pencils, and simply color. Psychologist Alice Domar, Ph.D., has done extensive research into coloring. She stated:
There are many inexpensive and simple forms of art therapy that have been shown to lessen symptoms and help to bring about an overall sense of wellbeing. For instance, if my paintbrushes feel as if they are made of lead, my creative juices have run dry and I need a quick and easy escape into art, I often pick up my colored pencils, and simply color. Psychologist Alice Domar, Ph.D., has done extensive research into coloring. She stated:
“It [coloring] engages both sides of your brain in that it’s both creative and tactical. It’s impossible to worry about dinner or the laundry or anything else when your mind is completely engaged. With knitting or other crafts, you can watch TV or multitask, but coloring really requires you to be in the moment. And that makes it meditative. Coloring brings you back to a simpler time, it’s pleasurable, it’s a chance to sit and be mindful…and at the end you get this beautiful result. You have a real sense of accomplishment.”
There are a multitude of adult coloring books available today. Many of them consist of botanicals, animals, mandelas (symbols used in Buddhism that represent wholeness), paisleys, cats, enchanted forests, decorative fans, etc. Websites abound that offer free coloring pages, that simply need to be printed. Also when “free printable adult coloring pages” is typed into search engines, such as Google, thousands upon thousands of pages appear by category. So, for the cost of a box of colored pencils, which can be purchased for as low as one dollar, and the cost of printing a sheet of paper, anyone can start this form of therapy. Also, there is no need to pay for formal lessons of any kind. That is a beautiful thing.
Another great option, if someone wants to paint but has run out of creative juices, doesn't have the training or lacks a strong creative side, is paint by number kits. Trust me when I say that these kits have come a long way over the years. I enjoy them a great deal when I just want to paint and don't feel like overthinking anything. They are relatively inexpensive, however I have found that the brush that most of these kits come with is horrible. So, there may be an additional few dollars needed to purchase a couple of decent brushes. As long as they are washed out and handled properly they last for a long time though, so the additional cost is minimal over the long haul. Here is one that I am in the middle of now.
Another great option, if someone wants to paint but has run out of creative juices, doesn't have the training or lacks a strong creative side, is paint by number kits. Trust me when I say that these kits have come a long way over the years. I enjoy them a great deal when I just want to paint and don't feel like overthinking anything. They are relatively inexpensive, however I have found that the brush that most of these kits come with is horrible. So, there may be an additional few dollars needed to purchase a couple of decent brushes. As long as they are washed out and handled properly they last for a long time though, so the additional cost is minimal over the long haul. Here is one that I am in the middle of now.
Of course the possibilities are endless. I went through many different types of art, with many different mediums, before I found the ones that brought me the greatest relief. There were so many to choose from that I simply made a list of all the things that I wanted to try and started marking them off as I tried each one.
Here is the list I used: Calligraphy, Ceramics, Collage, Computer Art, Drawing (chalk, charcoal, crayon, pastel, pen and ink, pencil), Graphic Art, Jewelry Art, Junk Art, Mosaic Art, Painting (acrylics, oils, tempera, watercolors), Photography, Sand Art, Sculpture (statue, relief sculpture, stone, wood-carving), Stained Glass Art, Video Art.
After trying so many different art forms I found that I love painting, drawing, photography and coloring. Those were the ones that I settled on. My family loves pottery, ceramics and calligraphy. Everyone is a little different in the types and styles of art they enjoy creating. That is an important point, because different types of art, using different mediums, work for different people.
I hope that others are able to find forms of visual art that help reduce their symptoms and bring them a better overall sense of wellbeing. Because as Picasso famously said, “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
Here is the list I used: Calligraphy, Ceramics, Collage, Computer Art, Drawing (chalk, charcoal, crayon, pastel, pen and ink, pencil), Graphic Art, Jewelry Art, Junk Art, Mosaic Art, Painting (acrylics, oils, tempera, watercolors), Photography, Sand Art, Sculpture (statue, relief sculpture, stone, wood-carving), Stained Glass Art, Video Art.
After trying so many different art forms I found that I love painting, drawing, photography and coloring. Those were the ones that I settled on. My family loves pottery, ceramics and calligraphy. Everyone is a little different in the types and styles of art they enjoy creating. That is an important point, because different types of art, using different mediums, work for different people.
I hope that others are able to find forms of visual art that help reduce their symptoms and bring them a better overall sense of wellbeing. Because as Picasso famously said, “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
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As always I wish you wonderful mental health and great successes eating healthy meals. If you, or someone you love, is severely depressed or anxious, please click the link to the right and you will be directed to the International Association for Suicide Prevention. It is a great resource, and is staffed by wonderful people.
Feel free to send your questions or comments to:
I haven’t slept well the past few days. There has been too much going on, and I have been overwhelmed. Of course, that means I haven’t been able to exercise like I normally do, which has made things worse. I forgot to take care of myself first, and now everything else is suffering because of it.
When I let things get out of hand around me, my insomnia kicks in. All of this made me remember an article I read about the link between my symptoms and a lack of sleep. I went and found it. After I cut out all the lengthy paragraphs that are full of medical jargon, so that it can be quickly and easily read, I will promptly be going to bed. Wish me luck! What follows are excerpts directly from the report published July 1, 2009.
The basis of a mutual relationship between sleep and mental health is not yet completely understood. But neuroimaging and neurochemistry studies suggest that a good night’s sleep helps foster both mental and emotional resilience while chronic sleep disruptions set the stage for emotional vulnerability.
Depression. Studies using different methods and populations estimate that 65% to 90% of adult patients with major depression, and about 90% of children with this disorder, experience some kind of sleep problem. Most patients with depression have insomnia, but about one in five suffer from obstructive sleep apnea.
Sleep problems also increase the risk of developing depression. A longitudinal study of about 1,000 adults ages 21 to 30 enrolled in a Michigan health maintenance organization found that, compared with normal sleepers, those who reported a history of insomnia during an interview in 1989 were four times as likely to develop major depression by the time of a second interview three years later. And two longitudinal studies in young people — one involving 300 pairs of young twins, and another including 1,014 teenagers — found that sleep problems developed before major depression did.
Sleep problems affect outcomes for patients with depression. Studies report that depressed patients who continue to experience insomnia are less likely to respond to treatment than those without sleep problems. Even patients whose mood improves with antidepressant therapy are more at risk for a relapse of depression later on. Depressed patients who experience sleep disturbances are more likely to think about suicide and die by suicide than depressed patients who are able to sleep normally.
Bipolar disorder. Studies in different populations report that 69% to 99% of patients experience insomnia or report less need for sleep during a manic episode of bipolar disorder. In bipolar depression, however, studies report that 23% to 78% of patients sleep excessively (hypersomnia), while others may experience insomnia or restless sleep.
Longitudinal studies suggest that insomnia and other sleep problems worsen before an episode of mania or bipolar depression, and lack of sleep can trigger mania. Sleep problems also adversely affect mood and contribute to relapse.
Anxiety disorders. Sleep problems affect more than 50% of adult patients with generalized anxiety disorder, are common in those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and may occur in panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and phobias. They are also common in children and adolescents. One sleep laboratory study found that youngsters with an anxiety disorder took longer to fall asleep, and slept less deeply, when compared with a control group of healthy children.
Insomnia may also be a risk factor for developing an anxiety disorder, but not as much as it is for major depression. In the longitudinal study of teenagers mentioned earlier, for example, sleep problems preceded anxiety disorders 27% of the time, while they preceded depression 69% of the time.
For me, what all that means is that I don't have the luxury of taking my sleep for granted. I have to allow myself time to wind down at night. I have to make time for exercise, so that when I do go to bed I am able to sleep well. I can't take on too much and allow myself to become overwhelmed. After all, I can only do so much.
Tonight, if all else fails, and I end up staring at the ceiling again, I'll get up and go for a fast paced run. When I get home, I will write out ten things that I'm grateful for. That always puts me in a better frame of mind and helps me relax. I'll follow that up with a long shower, and I'll collapse onto the bed exhausted. That is one of the few cures I have found for my insomnia so far. With that, I am going to bed. Good night friends.
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As always, I wish you wonderful mental health and great successes at eating healthy meals. If you, or someone you love, is severely depressed or anxious, please click the link to the right and you will be directed to the International Association for Suicide Prevention. It is a great resource and is staffed by wonderful people.
Feel free to send your questions or comments to:
Everyone is in different places on their journey. We all have our own diagnosis/diagnoses and experience different levels of severity. We do however, share many feelings, struggles and experiences. My desire is that these quotes of strength and hope will translate well and will be, for the most part, helpful. Because no two people's experiences and diagnoses will ever be exactly the same, some of these will surely be more beneficial than others. In other words, take the best and leave the rest.
I have quotes of strength and hope everywhere around me. I collect them the way some people collect stamps or coins. They are all over my house, in my car, on my phone, in my pockets and in-between the pages of my books, as bookmarks. I do that so I can quickly read them as I come across them. I can't recall how many times I have found the words I needed, right when I needed them the most. I have many of them memorized now. I am in a much better place because of that.
I have compiled a few of them into a Jpeg format so that they can be clicked on and printed. I did that in case anyone wishes to have a copy to help them start a collection of their own. I kept them on the smaller side, because I found that to be helpful. They can fit in a pocket, a wallet, a bag, on a dashboard, taped to a computer screen, in a book, etc. That allows me to stumble upon them nearly everywhere I go.
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Instagram / Google+
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As always I wish you wonderful mental health and great successes eating healthy meals. If you, or someone you love, is severely depressed or anxious, please click the link to the right and you will be directed to the International Association for Suicide Prevention. It is a great resource and is staffed by wonderful people.
Feel free to send your questions or comments to:
As with most things in life, television can have both positive and negative effects. While watching uplifting and humorous programs have been shown to increase one's feelings of happiness and wellbeing, newscasts have been shown to have the opposite effect.
There have been studies using functional MRI that determined humorous television programming could activate the regions of the brain that are associated with balanced mood and feelings of happiness. After only thirty minutes the participants brain scans showed higher functioning and the participants reported feeling better.
In one study, researchers noted that depression reduces the frequency of laughter. Inversely, they found that laughter reduces the severity of depression. They also reported that laughter increases the patient's ability to connect with people in their life, which further alleviates symptoms of depression.
It is no secret that laughter can actually cause people to feel better. The trick is to find something funny enough to laugh at. Personally, I prefer to watch clips on YouTube. I don't particularly care to sit through a whole show to see if it will make me laugh when I'm experiencing symptoms. I want to see as many hilarious clips in as short a time period as possible.
I find that subscribing to channels that I find humorous on YouTube, and bookmarking my favorite clips, to be quite helpful. The sooner I can chuckle the better. Also, by watching clips on YouTube, I'm not sucked into watching hours of television or having to flip past news channels.
That is where the dangers lie in television, in watching too much and in watching newscasts. Watching too much television has been shown to be associated with unhappiness, depression and social isolation. Watching newscasts have been shown to actually cause anxiety and worsen depression.
A study done by psychologists Wendy M. Johnston and Graham Davey was published in the British Journal of Psychology. It showed that participants who watched news programs had increases in both anxious and sad moods. Afterwards, the participants also showed a significant increase in the tendency to catastrophize a personal worry. The researchers suggested that negative TV news programs could exacerbate a range of personal concerns that were not relevant to the content of the program. In other words, viewing the news seems to actually facilitate worrying and depression. Once the negative show was watched the participants often felt worse about other areas of their life, whether those areas were directly affected by the news that was delivered or not.
An analysis study of nearly thirty thousand adults over the course of thirty years in the United States revealed happy people glue themselves to the television a third less often than unhappy people. This study’s results held true even after taking into account income, marital status, education, and age. This data led the authors to conclude that, "TV doesn't really seem to satisfy people over the long haul the way that social involvement or reading a newspaper does. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less. The data suggest to us that the TV habit may offer short-run pleasure at the expense of long-term malaise.” Again, this was not a small study that can be easily dismissed. It was done over a thirty-year span on nearly thirty thousand people, and the only factor they tracked that had a negative relationship across socioeconomic status, marital status, education and age was watching too much television. That is profound!
I love to laugh as much as anyone, but that is no excuse for me to watch endless hours of television. Television is, more often than not, part of the problem, not part of the solution. Turning off the television after a funny show, and getting involved in life, is hard to do if symptoms have crept up. However, it is at times like those when I know I have to do it. Finding a wellness activity to dive into is where I find my relief.
As far as the news is concerned, I realize that people like to be informed, so do I. There is an enormous difference between being informed and being inundated though. Watching newscasts is certain to make me feel horrible. Reading a few news articles from well-respected journalistic sources is the only way I can get my news and not come away feeling horrible. It's that simple.
As far as the news is concerned, I realize that people like to be informed, so do I. There is an enormous difference between being informed and being inundated though. Watching newscasts is certain to make me feel horrible. Reading a few news articles from well-respected journalistic sources is the only way I can get my news and not come away feeling horrible. It's that simple.
As always, I wish you wonderful mental health and great successes eating healthy meals. If you, or someone you love, is severely depressed or anxious, please click the link to the right and you will be directed to the International Association for Suicide Prevention. It is a great resource and is staffed by wonderful people.
Feel free to send your questions or comments to:
questions@thementalrunner.org