Anxious? How Can Being More Creative Help You?
Recently, I read this article in the “Guardian” written by a young woman who had had period of anxiety accompanied by panic attacks.
Apart from pursuing a variety of approaches, she looked at how she was expressing her creativity in her life. She remembered that as a younger person, her life had been full of creative activities, one of which was singing. Consequent to this, she joined a choir and found that the passion she experienced along with the sense of community, had a significantly positive impact on her anxiety.
From a therapist’s point of view, this is very interesting. According to the Human Givens Institute, a training organisation, we have some basic human emotional needs that if satisfied, diminish the likelihood of mental disquiet.
By joining a choir, this young woman was catering to some of those, notably being part of a wider community, sense of meaning and purpose through being stretched and sense of achievement. It is worth noting here that when working with clients who are depressed, one of the things we do is to look at what they enjoyed doing before the onset of depression and encourage them to revive them.
According to Dr. Morris Stein, psychology and creativity expert, creativity means “a creative product that did not exist previously in precisely the same form.” Thus creativity has a wider definition that the one we often attribute to it of the arts. You can be creative in an indefinite number of ways.
Many studies have been carried out on the effects of creativity on mental health. It is said that being creative can increase positive emotions, lessen depressive symptoms, reduce stress and decrease anxiety. It is said that it also expands our perspective so that we notice more possibilities in our lives.
As the writer of the Guardian article realised, when we are young our lives are full of creative activities. Later, when we have the responsibilities of work and starting out our adult lives in other ways, these can fall by the wayside under the pressure of time or even the amount of energy we feel we have.
So how does creativity work to improve our mental health? Well firstly, we get lost in the activity. It requires focus and concentration. This can lead to what is described as a state of ’flow’ wherein the brain waves slow down and original thought is more able to form. The pre-frontal cortex quietens down so that we become less critical of our ideas. In this state, the brain also secretes endorphins, serotonin and dopamine - the feel good chemicals. No wonder our writer described feeling so much better as a result of singing in a choir.
As a side note, singing has other positive benefits in that when you are singing, you are using deep breathing. This alone helps you to feel better. Anxiety is usually associated with shallow breathing in the sufferer which in itself causes anxiety. Deep breathing on the other hand, engages the part of the nervous system associated with calming down.
At this time more than ever where restrictions are placed on our usual activities, our mental health can benefit from tapping into our creativity. What have you left behind that you would like to engage in once again? Or is there something else you have been meaning to start? With so much online now, you can probably find anything you want to get involved in and stimulate your creativity, not to mention a plethora of ideas.