HOW EARRING DESIGN HAS HELPED MY MENTAL HEALTH
What’s mental health got to do with it, got to do with it!? (sung to the beat of Tina Turner’s What’s Love Got to Do with It, of course!)
I really didn’t understand the correlation between mental health and creativity until I began mixing creative endeavours into the steaming cauldron of my brain that is typically teeming with anxiety and negative thoughts. In accessing the creative juices associated with being a maker, I’ve been able to take temporary vacations from anxiety, stress, and negative self talk, floating away on regulated clouds of paint, resin, and glitter.
But I wasn’t always making art or designing earrings. Up until my mid-twenties most of my life and time was devoted to competitive sports. It wasn’t until after I had finished all my post-secondary schooling and began my “adult” life that I started leaning into my creative side.That was also the time, however, that my mental health started to deteriorate, affecting my daily life.
Now, mental health struggles are deeply personal and unique for everyone navigating them and what works for me may not work for others. But when I get in my studio to design and construct my earrings it becomes like therapy. I’m able to toss on some tunes and zone out into my own creative world. My heart stops racing a million miles a minute, the negative, obsessive thoughts disappear, and my jaw stops clenching. It’s fun, energizing, and when I see final designs come together it gives me a big sense of accomplishment.
These are the same feelings that I used to get when I was highly involved in athletics. And while I’m still active with sports, or at least I was pre-covid, I don’t compete at the same competitive level that I used to. I’ve replaced field hockey and ice hockey with ball hockey “beer leagues,”playing for championship t-shirts and a pitcher of Hoyne Pilsner. It seems as though I have replaced the high intensity sports life with a creative life and the benefits of it all are similar (except I sit a lot more when making earrings, whoops!).
If you’re like me and always looking for new ways to manage the beautiful mess that is the mind, try dabbling in anything creative. It could be interior design, music, fashion, makeup, painting, landscape design, photography, videography, acting, drag or something as simple as picking up a pencil and paper and trying to doodle. The list goes on and on. For me, I found my creative edge in the world of statement earring design. For you, it might be pottery. We all have a creative side to us, whether we know it or not, and finding tools that can provide us with a bit of relief, even if only momentarily, is a worthwhile pursuit (at least it has been for this human).
Has art and the creative process helped you tackle the many ins and outs of dealing with your mental health? Let us know!
- Karlie