Season 2 EP 10: How to De-stress with Art Journaling
Listen Now!
Perfectionist in Recovery
How to De-stress with Art Journaling
Hello and Welcome back to the Perfectionist in Recovery Podcast!
Hello and welcome back to the Perfectionist in Recovery Podcast! My name is Marcy Parks and I am a perfectionist in recovery and today I wanted to talk to you about how you can use art journaling as a way of de-stressing during this very stressful time. If you are a human on this planet, you know the past year and a half, going on two years now, has not been easy at all. Throughout this entire experience, so many emotions have been coming up like anxiety, fear, anger, and lots and lots of grief, so I wanted to share the practices that I have been leaning into in the past few months to help myself navigate through all the changes as well as all of those big emotions as they come up in hopes that they can do the same for you. Let’s go.
First things first, I wanted to take a second to say thank you!
Thank you for joining me here, for sharing your time while listening to this podcast, and for supporting my work! I am so grateful to those of you who have reached out to share your feedback with me - as I have said before and as those of you who have been long time listeners know, your feedback makes this podcast more enjoyable for you to listen to! So if you have thoughts you want to share, questions you want answered, or topics you want to hear discussed on the podcast, go to my website at www.marcyparksart.com/perfectionistinrecovery and submit your feedback there! If you love the podcast and want to continue to show your support of this work, like, follow, subscribe, share - all the things - and leave a review! Reviews are the best way to support the growth of this podcast.
Otherwise, for those of you who have already done all of those things, thank you!
Now, let’s get into it!
On this episode today, I wanted to talk a little bit about my art journaling practice, which I have been leaning fully into lately, what it looks like, and how a similar practice as part of a daily, or even weekly, routine can help you to de-stress and find some clarity in the madness that we are living through.
Content warning: I am going to be talking about the pandemic, so if you are done hearing about it, or need a mental break away from it, you may want to skip ahead.
So I have been chatting with some friends about, well, life, and a common theme that I am hearing everyone share is this level of exhaustion that we all seem to be experiencing. Everyone I know, including myself, is hitting a wall. If you’re like me, this probably isn’t even the first time you're hitting that wall in the past year. It might be more like the third or fourth wall you have hit and have worked around. Or maybe you've hit the wall and just stayed there this whole time. Either way, you’re not alone in your experience.
The pandemic is ramping up again and even for the most adaptable, optimistic people I know, this brings a level of stress and anxiety to their day. And I think that can be said about everyone.
But, lately, I have been thinking about and also talking with friends about what the long term effects of living through the pandemic will look like in our brains and bodies. One thing I can definitely say is that my brain just doesn’t work the same. I mean, don’t get me wrong, becoming a mother definitely impacted my memory, but going on two years now of pandemic life and the stress that comes with all of it has definitely changed some things. It seems like every other week I have serious brain fog that makes it hard for me to orient myself in my life.
If you have been watching or following the Olympics, you have heard about gymnast Simone Biles stepping back from competition for her mental health. She later shared on her instagram stories that she has been struggling with the “twisties” which is this sensation gymnasts, and I imagine divers also, experience where their body feels disconnected from their mind and they have a hard time orienting themselves to where they are when they are hurtling through the air.
This is problematic because, for gymnasts, not being able to sense where you are and landing the wrong way could mean paralysis, or worse.
The brain fog I have been feeling feels a lot like this. Although, for Simone, she feels like this when flying through the air at a higher rate of speed. For me, it feels more like I am floating in an ocean that is covered with fog and I don’t really know where I am or what I need to be doing. Actually, I know what I need to do, because my to-do list stays forever long, but I can’t actually get started doing anything. The brain fog I feel just makes me feel… adrift. Almost every other week I will feel this way.
Not to mention, in addition to this brain fog are these interruptions of grief that always surprise me. I didn’t realize how much grief would come with going back to work and navigating all the changes that came with that transition, in addition to grieving all that has been lost and changed in the past year.
I share all of this because I want to assure anyone else out there feeling this way that you are absolutely not alone. You are not crazy, or weird, or anything else. You are a human being living through a truly wild experience.
I also wanted to share this because I have found that my art journaling practice is what is really helping me to get my feet back on solid ground. I’ve had to let a few things shift to the back burner for a little while, like this podcast and keeping up on social media, in order to prioritize my art practice, so if you have missed me sharing here as regularly or on IG, that is why!
But I want to share the steps of my art journaling practice so that you can try this out at home for yourself to get reoriented to your space anytime you feel out of sorts. You can do this daily or weekly as needed.
To de-stress with an art journaling practice, set aside some time on a day to do the following for yourself:
Get into your body:
Brain fog leaves me feeling disconnected from myself. There were definitely days where I could not get it together and would just veg out watching netflix, or some other avoidant behavior, but that only delayed me finding a point of clarity. What started to turn things around for me was getting reconnected to my physical body. There are so many ways you can do this, but here are a few things I did:
Walk - get outside for daily walks!
Breathe - taking a few minutes to breathe deliberately or listen to one of the meditations on this podcast
Get a Massage - if you are vaccinated and have the available funds to book yourself a massage, I can’t encourage this enough.
Write it down:
Journaling. I don’t even have to say it, but I am. Y’all already know. Journaling, journaling, journaling. Take some time either on your computer or with your journal and just write things down. Make lists, write down your feelings, write whatever is on your mind even if there is not much there, just write it down!
Paint it out:
You don’t have to paint, you can also color. If markers and crayons are all you have handy, use those. Only have pens and pencils lying around? No problem, they are perfect, too. Use whatever is on hand and easy for you to set up (because if it is not easy to use, you won't do it!). Either in your journal on top of what you wrote (unless it is important lists you need to remember), or on another surface, get out your supplies and paint or color or scribble whatever it is you wrote about. If you made lists, maybe paint or draw the items on your list - don’t worry if you can’t draw. This is not a graded activity, it is not about making a masterpiece for people to see, this is about getting stress out of your body. If you wrote about your feelings, paint, color, or scribble what those feelings look like to you. Maybe it is just a big scribbly mess, or maybe it is just a solid black page, whatever it looks like is exactly what it is supposed to look like. Again, this is not about making something to be seen, it is about getting what is inside of you on the outside.
These are the steps I have been deliberately taking a few times a week to help keep myself grounded through all the changes and disruptions this year has brought. I hope that this practice helps you to get back into your body and find some relief as well.
And if you would like a journaling prompt to get you started journaling:
Journal Prompt:
How are you feeling?
Take some time to write about how you are feeling, maybe 15 minutes or so, then take a second to close your eyes and feel those feelings in your body, and then write about what those feelings feel like in your body.
Otherwise, that’s all I have for you today! Until next time, friends!
Ready to take the first step in your creative recovery?
If you enjoyed the episode, LEAVE A REVIEW!
My dream is to help more people connect with their creative identities and embrace themselves as a whole, messy human, and as it turns out, leaving a review on iTunes helps me to do just that!
So thank you in advance for leaving your review and helping me to connect more people with their inner artists!