Joy draws anxiety

Hiya, my name is Joy, and I like to draw my feelings. And today I'm gonna show you something that I drew around anxiety.

So, what I did was, I found myself a bit of quiet time when I wasn't gonna be interrupted too much and I got my pens and my blank piece of paper and I just started to think, how does anxiety feel for me? And then I drew it.

And this is what I drew, basically bunch of arrows, just kind of all swirling, confusing, going in different directions and not really knowing which way is up.

And as I kind of sat in my nice kind of drawing zone, I started to think, well, I'll ask God, what does He think about it? And this is kind of what I thought he said it was about slowing down and it was about knowing that I wasn't alone in it, but that actually He is in it with me and helping me.

And then off the back of that I thought, okay, that's cool, so, then what can I do when I'm feeling like that? Knowing now that maybe I'm not on my own but I still need to do something, don't I? So, then I started to have some ideas about what I should do when I was feeling really anxious and so I thought of things like breathe normally, open my eyes and look around if I had shut them, switch on the light if it was dark, make a cup of tea because I'm British, and I also came up with some other things that I put off into arrows that were personal and helpful to me, that I know helped me when I'm anxious.

And maybe you would think there's some things that are generally are helpful like some of the general things that helped me, and maybe there's some specific things to you that you know would help you as well.

So I just carried on basically reflecting and drawing until I had kind of filled up my page a bit more and I wrote a Bible verse on mine that I found really encouraging about how in perfect love there's no space for fear because I just found that really helpful and I drew like a little candle of truth that I felt would kind of like be with me in the midst of my confusion.

So that's what I did and because I had then drawn these things, I found that next time I started to feel anxious it was much easier, much more natural for me to be like, okay, slow down, remember that you're not on your own, remember that you're loved, and then I was able to do some of the things that I had thought about doing, like opening my eyes, looking around, breathing normally, having a cup of tea, talking to somebody, all of these things and you will have things that you know are gonna work for you as well.

So that's what I did. I hope you liked my drawing and then why don't you give it a go and do something similar? Take care.