How art has improved my mental health

It’s a chilly October evening in Estonia. I’m sitting on the couch with my cat Mia and sipping my favourite green tea. It was a National Mental Health day recently and I thought I’ll share a little bit my story-how art has improved my mental health.

Those of you who are new here, I have social anxiety. Fortunately I have learned to control the panic attacks.

Did you know that creating art has power to reduce the stress, improve your mood and lower anxiety levels?

I have loved painting since I was a child. I always loved to paint something. Whether it was a still life object or some kind of animal.

When I was in high school, every time when I was exhausted from homework and needed to get my mind off, I would get a little notebook and just sketched something. Most of the time I sketched just some shapes and drew faces. I found that very relaxing.

I create art to express myself in ways that I can’t with words. I love that about art. I love that you can use colors, lines, shapes and texture to share parts of you that people probably are not familiar with.

As someone who struggles with anxiety, I’m really grateful that I found my passion in art because it has helped me improve my mental health a lot.

Creating art requires me to be present in the moment. I’m 100% present in the creating process.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a panic attack or experienced anxiety in some kind of way but anxiety takes all your attention away from the present moment and usually makes you worry about the future or some kind of event.

Thanks to creating art and therapy I was able to stop taking the antidepressants and sedatives years ago.

At some point Pandemic hit and suddenly cancelled all kinds of activities and meeting people were replaced with zoom calls.

This period of time really challenged my mental health. I’m so glad that I had art. I was able to put all my emotions in my work and heal through the process.

What do you do to improve your mental health?