Think Outside the Box

This is your chance to think outside the box and have some fun. This activity/exercise is good for getting your creative juices flowing, or a good procrastination activity, but it is also good as a distraction from pain. It is a simple idea, and can be done in infinite variations.
Take a piece of paper (or two or three...) Draw on it four or six or eight squares. It doesn't matter how many or what size. After you do it a time or two, you can decide what feels right to you. I like six squares, in two rows of three (or three rows of two, depending on how you orient your paper). Now- Put on your thinking cap, and think outside the box, literally. What is the box, and what would you find outside it? Draw whatever comes to mind around the first box. Now go on to the second. Try not to be critical of either your ideas or your drawing skills. Any idea is a good one, even if it doesn't seem like it..Imagine looking down at it, straight at it, or up at it.Imagine it different sizes, different colors. Different ideas come to mind.
So, what are some ideas to get you started? It is a house, and there are bushes and flowers around it, maybe a swing-set, (Don't get caught up in the fact that this is an overhead view.) You can even add what you would see on the surface of the box, in this case, the roof, maybe a chimney.  It is a shoe box, with a pair of mismatched shoes. It is a toy-box with the toys all over the place...You could also see the squares as buildings in a city, and connect them with streets, sidewalks, cars, people, dogs, etc. Let your imagination wander. Have fun.
Some variations on this are thinking about what would be inside the box instead of outside (this is actually easier, so if you are having trouble thinking outside the box, think inside instead). This could be a toy-box, shoe box, or house, or a deck of cards (draw any one you want), a book, a painting, a candy bar, etc. You could do the same thing with circles, or ovals, or rectangles or triangles, or heptagons.
That brings to mind a game we used to do as kids, a similar idea to this. One person makes a scribble on a piece of paper, the next person has to look at the scribble and find a part that resembles something, and using more crayons, makes it more recognizable. You could also do this by yourself.
Get absorbed in activities such as these, and for many people, their pain fades.The more detailed and absorbed you get, the more the pain will fade. Give it a few tries. It may feel awkward and difficult at first, but it should get easier.  

Drawing Distracts, Helps People Feel Better

We have spent the past several days at the 22nd Annual Conference of The Association for Psychological Science.  My husband is a psychologist, I am a psychiatric occupational therapist, and tomorrow morning our oldest son, who is a doctoral student at Boston U. will be presenting a poster session.  (There will be a room full of people presenting their research, each with a section of a wall on which to mount their research info. People walk around and stop to talk to any of the presenters they want to to get more info on the topics that interest them.)

During a previous poster session two days ago, I talked to a young lady about a poster that is relevant to this blog.  The research topic was 'Drawing Improves Short-Term Mood Not by Venting but by Distraction'.  The researchers were Jennifer E. Drake, Katelyn Coleman and Ellen Winner, all of Boston College.  I feel bad that I don't remember which one of them I talked to, I hope she will forgive me, but she was very informative. 

What they did was have the subjects watch a distressing film, then divided the subjects into 2 groups.  One group was told to write, the other group was told to draw.  They could either focus on the topic of the film in order to vent/process it, or on any other topic in order to distract themselves.  They were given a mood assessment before the film, after the film, and again after the writing or drawing intervention. 

What they found was that the people who drew on other topics to distract themselves had significantly higher mood afterward than those who drew on the topic, or either of the writing groups.  In fact, the ones who wrote on the topic of the film had the lowest mood afterward.  Keep in mind that they wrote or drew for only 10 minutes, so it was not the same as most journaling, which goes on as long as you need, or is an ongoing activity.  It does, however, show that if you feel like you need to do something to feel better, a good option is to pull out some paper and crayons/pencils/markers and draw on a topic you like.  Every person is different, so experiment with different media, and pay attention to what helps you feel better, what helps you get away from your issues for awhile.