Carbonated Creativity, Anxiety, and Flossing

Been going through a lot of internal struggle lately, which means Anxiety decided to come move in with me again.

The best way I can describe the (abstract) feeling of anxiety for me is being pressed up against a ceiling by some unknown force. The ceiling has a door but I can't reach it. I know I have to keep going up but something is keeping me from expanding (or exploding) and releasing the tension. Instead, the pressure builds and builds and there's no way out. I feel trapped and frustrated. 

And you won't like me when I feel trapped and frustrated.

Anyways, point being - I've had to sit with my anxiety for awhile, stare at it in the face, and try to unravel the mystery of it and depressurize my personal torture chamber.

A tool I want to pass on to every person in the world is the power of metaphor as it relates to mental health. There are so many ways in which we can use this tool of language to "translate" our feelings into something more tangible. So I looked for a metaphor.. and suddenly I had a connection.

Creativity.

My sister is a creative type. She always has been. When we were younger, she used come up with a new nickname for each member of my family every week (if not every day). She would always be the one deciding the storyline for our epic wars between our stuffed toys and the constant barrage of disasters and villains that plagued them. She drew, she painted, she paper mâché'd, she dressed up - then she discovered film and video editing and the rest is history.

Thinking about my sister's brain, I can only imagine the immense number of neurons (aka brain cells) firing and passing along messages at lightning speed, an endless game of "electric current" or "pulse" (if you ever played that hand-squeezing game from camp). Her brain is reaching for ideas constantly, coming up with new ones, running along many different pathways in the same amount of time that it takes me to decide I want to eat instead of play.

So what does this have to do with anxiety?
Coming back to my metaphor: carbonation.

Creativity is like soda. With the right amount of carbonation, you have an enjoyable drink. When you shake the can? You've got a grenade. All that pressure, and nowhere to go.

I found a ton of articles that name famous artists and mark how much anxiety plays a role in their creative process (Links: Here, Here, Here, and Here) - but I also believe it explains a lot about us ordinary folk too.

ugh I love him

This helps me understand our world better when I think about the rise of anxiety in our general population. With social media and the Internet, we have access to everything anyone ever feels like writing or recording, wonderful and terrible alike. And our brain tends to lean toward the horrible to prepare for survival.. but with every little negative, it shakes us up. Even the smallest amounts of creative energy in our brains, when "shaken", will create tension.

So, how do we let the bubbles out without exploding?

This is going to sound really dumb or like I'm intentionally being a dick, but hear me out: the crazed viral phenomenon of backpack kid and FortNite, flossing.

If we pull the lever all the way to the other end of the spectrum of anxiety, we get a panic attack. If you were able to chop your brain in half, put one half in your right hand and one half in your left, and look at its neuronal firing patterns mid-panic, you would see that one half is firing more than the other. Studies show that people who have panic attacks tend to have less blood flow across your two halves, aka your brain isn't using energy to move across the middle of your head.

Tricking your brain into doing this more is surprisingly easy. Physically "cross the midline", as psychologists and occupational therapists alike call it. Yes, it's as simple as it sounds: cross your left hand/leg over to your right side, and vice versa. One of my counseling mentors, in order to alleviate squirrelly "hyper" kids, will tell them to walk back to class touching their left hand to their right knee and their right hand to their left knee - all the way down the hallway.

This works, despite not having any awareness of why they're doing it.

Think of it another way. If you had a stack of 7 books and you put them in a bag and hang them on your right shoulder, your shoulder is going to hurt after awhile. If you put the straps on both shoulders, you'll have an easier time.

Good news, if you're not a kid (or a kid-like adult, like me): You don't have to floss if that's not your thing.

Anything, from tracing a page with an infinity sign on it, to crossing your arms and tapping your opposite side, to yoga stretches, to sports, to dancing and exercises.. as long as you're moving and you're crossing from one side to the other, you're helping your brain depressurize.

Yep. So there's another thing you can do to alleviate your anxiety. And please do comment or message me if you have questions or want to share anything that comes up for you.. it helps to know what's helpful to you all.

See ya next time!