Author's Note:
Dear Readers,
This is one of the literary essays I made for my Writing Composition course during my second semester. I chose this particular topic because I am an avid fan of drawing, an activity that I consider as my escape during stressful times. I remembered I was given a mark of '70' for this article, and I was quite upset. But now, I understand that the quality of this writing is not yet excellent compared to my latest works, in which the skills of my writing already flourished better than before. Anyways, I hope this will help those of you who are coping with stress or have a certain interest in drawing. Enjoy!
E. Deborah K.
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OVERCOMING STRESS THROUGH DRAWING
Imagine you are on the verge of a critical situation. Your assignments are piled up high, tests are flooding and you just had a mental breakdown after breaking up with your girlfriend. To make it even worse, you got your electricity bill unpaid for 3 months and almost run out of savings. Tears wet your cheeks and you feel like escaping to another world just to get rid of all those things. Yes, you are experiencing stress. Maybe in times like that, you might search for a solution. In fact, you are not the only person who experience stuffs like that. Lots of other people also experience stress the way you do. Then, how do we get over it? There are various solutions. one of them is to solve this problem with a pencil and your creativity, that is drawing. Drawing can help us to release stress.
Before figuring out how drawing can overcome stress, let us take a look at what stress really is. According to the Stress Management Society in the United Kingdom, they define this occurrence as a “primarily a physical response...when stressed, the body thinks it is under attack and switches to 'fight or flight' mode, releasing a complex mix of hormones and chemicals...to prepare the body for physical action.” Basically, what they are trying to say is that our body will try to save us from being hurt by these threats, or stressful situations that we have. They will release hormones that causes us to obtain instincts to fight or avoid the stress factors. Unfortunately, by fighting or avoiding them, our stress level will add up or even damage our relationships with the people when we behave rudely due to the pressure we are experiencing.
Drawing can help us to release stress in many ways.
Priscilla Frank, author of 10 Easy Art Therapy Techniques to Help You De-Stress in the Huffington Post, quoted that “art therapy is a form of therapy that encourages creativity and self-expression as vehicles to reduce stress.”
It means that we do not have to be a master in order to produce a good painting. What we need is to draw what have been bugging our mind and to let it go. By doing that, we allow ourselves to perform mistakes and accept who we really are like seeing our own reflection in the mirror. We also learn to increase our positivity of mind, see our bodily state and to find our focus. “It is a calming activity that can help people go from a frazzled state to a more focused one,” claimed Sunni Brown, author of The Doodle Revolution.
There are several art therapy techniques to release stress, as suggested by Priscilla Frank. First, we may get rid of our self-judgements by drawing in total darkness. We create full, random strokes of lines in the dark just because we feel like it. Turn on the light to see the surprising result. In that way, we will not care about the artistry of our work but the relaxation that we experience. Second, we create a colorful permission slip. It will state that we have the permission to fail, permission to dream, permission to follow our heart, and so on. Finally, we can also experiment with watercolors. Close our eyes and imagine the colors entering into our body to see its state. After opening it, we may draw an outline of our human body and splatter it with colors that have entered.
Drawing does not only play a big role in arts, but also contributes to our psychological state. It allows us to express ourselves more freely in a special way. We are also able to throw away negative thoughts and overcome the pressure that had been haunting us. Therefore, whenever we feel like escaping to another world, remember that we can make it happen just by a single pencil and a sheet of paper.
References
Heller, Steven. “The Cognitive Benefits of Doodling.” The Atlantic 8 July 2015: -. www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/398027. Web. 24 April 2017.
Frank, Priscilla. “10 Easy Art Therapy Techniques to Help You De-Stress.” Huffington Post 7 November 2014:-. www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/07/art-therapy-techniques_n_6103092.html. Web. 24 April 2017.
Society, Stress Management. “What Is Stress?” Stress Management Society 2017:-. http://www.stress.org.uk/what-is-stress/. Web. 30 May 2017.
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