Stress is something that we all have to deal with at some point or another in our lives – whether we are struggling to make the most of our time while juggling two jobs or trying to do well in school – stress will pop up at one point or another. It’s important – ney, vital – that you have the resources and tools to cope with stress and luckily there are a huge number of techniques available today to help us cope with stress. One of the more interesting ways of coping with stress that we’ve seen come into popularity in the past few years is art therapy. It’s a type of therapy for destressing where it encourages you to be creative and to express yourself as means for improving your self-esteem and your awareness.
Many kinds of therapies will encourage you to focus on verbalising or using discussion as a means for communicating and relieving stress, but art therapy focuses on more abstract types of expression. This makes plenty of room for issues deep within the subconscious that may not be ready to be verbalised, to come to the surface. Let’s take a look at these tips, brought to you by Perth Premier Photobooths.
Write a letter that you don’t want to send
Whether you’re stewing on something that you haven’t said or just want to send your thoughts away, try writing a post card or a letter than you don’t intend to send off. See how the brain responds to writing your thoughts down. Often times it can be hugely helpful to simply get your thoughts out on paper and to see them in front of you. You might keep the letter and refer to it in the future as a way to see how far you’ve come.
Create a collage
This one requires some cutting, tearing and destruction and you’ll probably enjoy the outcome, too. Simply using glue or some other kind of adhesive, create a collage of a torn up magazine or painting. See how the unpredictable nature of the college takes shape on the page and see how creative you can get.
Draw in total darkness
This is an interesting activity as it forces you to remove the judgement that usually comes from creating. So often we are so harsh on our abilities and we judge our output – but what about when you draw in the dark? Free yourself from your inner critic and create something new.
Make a permission slip
Think about some of the societal and the self-enforced pressure that you feel every day; perhaps the personal traits and ‘problems’ that you see as faults, and the natural parts of being human that you see as errors in your personality. Choose one of the things that you do and judge yourself on, and give yourself – in explicit detail – permission to be yourself in that way. Make sure you make it as pretty as possible, after all, this is an art project.
Write a poem
If you don’t think that you are a poet, why not use the words cut out of a magazine or the words from a newspaper? You might find that inspiration will strike and you start to make up the words to fill things in. Don’t forget it’s supposed to help you to destress, so if you don’t think this one will be fun for you, maybe it’s not the task for you.
Be sure to take some time out of your everyday life to destress and to enjoy the very act of being alive. You can find peace in all sorts of activities, so focus your attention on just one of these and enjoy the benefits that follow.
