3 WAYS CREATIVITY, ART AND JOURNALING CAN SUPPORT YOUR MENTAL HEALTH
try exploring your creativity to support your mental health
EVER WONDERED WHAT IS HAPPENING TO YOUR BRAIN WHEN YOU ENGAGE IN WRITING AND ART MAKING?
There is so much more to creative journaling that writing, art making and beautiful journal pages. This type activity can actually support your long term mental health, but how?
what makes CREATIVE journaling effective?
While writing your brain is engaging the left side of the brain, the rational and analytical mind. While the left side of the brain is busy the right brain, the creative mind, opens up, allowing intuition to play a part and remove mental blocks.
Here are 3 ways in which creative journaling can support your mental health and how you can get started today.
1. it activates the reward center of our brain
Even though creative journaling or any type of writing or art making can initially feel like a whole new and daunting process, despite the fears research has shown that engaging in creative activities activates the reward centre of the brain, which leaves you feeling motivated.
Researchers have measured blood flow to the brain's reward center, the medial prefrontal cortex, in 26 participants as they completed three art activities: coloring in a mandala, doodling and drawing freely on a blank sheet of paper. They found an increase in blood flow to this part of the brain when the participants were making art.
It doesn’t take much to activate your brain, it’s not about creating beautifully perfect pages, its not about ‘being an artist’ and having neat handwriting, its about so much more, its about letting go and enjoying the process while your mind reaps the rewards.
2. It reduces stress
A creative journal is a safe place to explore emotions and manage stress or anxiety. Releasing feelings on to a page in a more abstract way can help to lessen the intensity of the feeling, when we keep anxious thoughts and feelings inside they just continue to manifest and grow. If instead we acknowledge them in our journal we are offered a chance to gain some insight into these feelings, clarify our values and notice and changes in our own growth and patterns. This knowledge is powerful and allows us to take targeted action if needed.
3. It brings clarity and supports goal setting
Following on from the last point above, gaining clarity is one of the major benefits of creative journaling. Thoughts and plans can often get so muddled in our mind, life is busy and sometimes messy and there isn’t always space to make sense of what we are experiencing or where we are headed. Using a journal as a vessel to hold space for this, to explore and play with new ideas is one of the best ways I know to gain clarity and set myself goals for my future.
How to get started with creative journaling
Too many people who want to explore journaling set themselves up for failure right at the very beginning.
You do not need a brand new journal or expensive supplies (these will only foster a feeling of fear of the blank page and a need for perfection). What you do need is to be patient with yourself and with the journaling habit you will build.
Firstly, remember that it is all about the process not the end result.
Here are some steps I would recommend to start building a mindful creative journaling habit:
1 - Establish a routine Our brain loves consistency and routine, try and stick to the same time of day and place to practice your journaling
2 - Make space for yourself and your journaling - just little nook in your home will do. The simple act of leaving your journal out in plain sight will support you in actually using it
3 - Journal from the 5 senses, when you sit down to journal surround yourself with things that inspire you - your physical space affects your mental space. Consider how you can open up your 5 senses to really engage your mind, for me, it looks something like this: a hot drink (taste), pens with quotes on (touch), an intention from a card deck (sight), music (sound), incense or candles (smell)
4 - Slowly introduce creativity. As mentioned above, look for small ways you can inject a little bit of creativity into your journal to excite your mind and inspire it to write. Maybe you start with using doodles, highlighters or stickers, you could stick in cut outs from magazines or found objects that mean something to you….just explore your creative side gently and slowly.
5 - Using prompts can be a great way to give yourself a little kick start, remember that they are just prompts and you can always switch them up, use them inspiration to write your own prompts, anything goes, but often having something there to read and literally prompt you can take action can be all you need to get started. Be sure to grab my free 20 mindful journaling prompts!
