Okay, I'm not putting this up for debate. What I'm saying right now is that mindfulness colouring does work to reduce stress levels and make you feel calmer. Now, it's not going to appeal to everyone and it's not going to be something which is enough to reduce some people's stress enough to make you feel "better" but it is a stress-busting method. That's not to say that there are no problems with it, but it does work.
One of the reasons it works is because it's self-soothing. One of the great things about something self-soothing is that it doesn't matter where you are or who you are with, it's possible to reduce your stress levels. That's really important at the moment, given that COVID has made people more isolated than they have been previously. It won't stop you from feeling isolated, but it will be a soothing exercise which will be able to reduce your stress levels.
One of my favourite things about it though is that it's pretty cheap. It upsets me that because it became such a trend and some of these colouring books were becoming really expensive. Considering the stress that finances cause us, I find that really difficult to accept, but if money is a problem then it is possible to get a children's colouring book pretty cheaply and either crayons, coloured pencils or felt tips from places like the pound shop or Wilko which make it more accessible. I appreciate that it still might be outside of some people's budgets though.
One of the main reasons that mindfulness colouring works is because it gives us something else to focus upon than all of the stressors in our lives. If all you have to think about for a few minutes is what colour you want to make a certain part of the picture, that's good, because that's not something that should cause us stress.
When you get to the end of the picture, there's a sense of achievement that should make you feel good. I say should, because there are some issues with this. The sense of achievement at having finished it can be marked with other things. The achievement is good, and you might be really impressed that you don't feel very creative or artistic, but this is a thing that you've created and this is something artistic. If you've planned it, you might have got something that you want to be artwork on your wall, or for your children or for a gift for someone else. Maybe that influenced your colour choices when you were making them! It's great to have that, but it's also not completely necessary. I know of people who have coloured in their pictures and then they either rip them up, as another little stress buster or they put them in the recycling. If you know that you have used none toxic colours, you can shred the paper and use it for things like hedgehog or rabbit bedding. It might be possible to donate long paper shreddings (not out of a cross-cutting machine) to your local wildlife sanctuary for them to make use of.
Some of us though, and I say us because I'm definitely in this group!, are hypercritical of everything we do and that extended to our self-soothing exercises. There's a little voice in your head like a mental woodpecker and rather than making a tapping noise as it's drilling into a tree, it sits there saying things like, you're not flexible enough for yoga, you're terrible at this, you're making a tit of yourself. When you're in talking cure therapy, it might be saying something like 'the therapist has heard all this before' 'you're just moaning' 'there are people with real problems in the world'. When you've done your mindfulness colouring, it might be saying that you've coloured over the lines in places, chosen the wrong colour in others and that you've wasted a whole lot of time colouring when you could have been dealing with the things that are making you stressed. It might also make you question whether to give someone the piece that you were thinking of giving them, because 'why would they want that?' 'you're not a child; they're not going to put your artwork on the fridge now you're x years old.' We are quite vicious with ourselves sometimes.
When you speak to yourself like that, try and catch yourself. Try and remind yourself that if you said that to anyone else, you'd think you were mean, so don't speak to yourself like that! You are not your own punching bag. It takes practice and it sometimes takes energy that we don't think we have, but it's worth saying, I'm not an artist, but I'm proud of what I have done. I was struggling so, at the time when I was colouring, I needed to do something self-soothing, because, after that, I went off and did... whatever is on your to-do list. You can't operate in a constant state of panic for very long. You don't function well in that environment, so giving yourself the time and space to calm down, even just a little, means you can recalibrate and then do things effectively afterwards.
It's also worth remembering when you colour outside of the lines, you're not using mindfulness colouring to try and get a piece of artwork into the Tate or any other gallery; it's a tool to help you to have a minute and calm yourself. Gifts don't need to be the best pieces of artwork either - you just want them to be thoughtful and you want them to know you've spent your time on something for them. Nothing is more valuable than your time.
There's something else you can try as well though when you're colouring. It's not supposed to be a high level, highly focused activity, but when you are colouring, try to control your breathing. Try to meditate at the same time, but not the way that we normally see people meditating of sat cross-legged and eyes closed. Think about your breathing, and focus on a good breath in through the nose and then a longer breath out through the mouth. It might seem a little odd, because how can you breathe out more than you breathe in, but it's more, holding your breath and controlling the release of it. You want to try and get away from the ideas of ragged breathing or hyperventilating that you can get into when you're anxious or your scared or you are pushing yourself into that panicked breathing. It doesn't have to be the whole time that you are colouring, but a couple of minutes, or even a minute - an actual, full minute, sixty seconds of commitment - is enough. And it, like a lot of things, will become easier with practice. If your brain tells you that you look or sound like 'a tit' remember that it doesn't matter what you look like in this moment, or what your sound like. You need a minute and you can have a minute. You can do it with your children or with others, and the quiet companionship of it is actually another great assistance.
It's possible to look at other options as well, like apps for mindfulness colouring. It's something whether you can be looking at your phone - though I would remind you that doing this just before bed won't help you sleep as well as the paper version because of the blue light on screens - or an iPad or other device which you can get the apps on. I would suggest putting on a 'Do Not Disturb' function or similar, so Facebook, Twitter or whatever else is trying to suck your attention away from it. The great thing about it is it colours in the lines for you and some of them even tell you what colour goes where. You can still pair it with mindfulness breathing exercises and it will still have an effect, though I believe there have been studies which show that the effect of putting pen (or pencil, or crayon) to paper has a different effect to when we're using our phones or typing on a laptop.
You might be wondering why on Earth I'm talking, or er, writing, about this at the moment, but the reason is that COVID has eaten into the resilience that a lot of people have, and it has stolen some of our coping mechanisms. It has stripped people of friendship networks and human connections that we need and forced on us a solitude which has made many people severely uncomfortable. Sat here in my office in Manchester, I'm trying to tell myself not to worry about what looks like the second wave sweeping over Europe and reports of third waves in other places. I'm doing what I can to look after myself with all the hand washing and mask-wearing, and I'm making masks for the people around me to try and make the people I love safe, but I also know that if a second wave hits, my medication is sorted, mostly, and I'm in a good, well goodish, place mentally. I'm with my parents and my dog, so not lost and lonely in my little flat in London, and I have a few good coping mechanisms that are making me feel better, but I worry about the people around me, and also people that I don't know. Self-control and self-care are good ways to increase your resilience and make you better able to cope with the stress and trauma that we're trying to deal with in our lives at the moment. I talk about mental health a lot, so it seems like a logical extension of that. :)
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