A Guest Post by Alex Moore of SchizLife.Com.
Stress plagues millions of people across the world, and it’s sometimes debilitating. It’s completely natural to feel anxious about certain things. Moving to a new city, making a major life change, dealing with health issues or other life problems, and even feeling stressed or anxious over a big project at work can cause anxiety. It’s not always bad, either.
Feeling stressed and anxious can motivate you to succeed when it’s productive, and it can cause you serious health issues when it’s not. If you’re feeling anxious and want to find a way to make it stop, try sewing. Believe it or not, you can relieve a lot of your stress and feelings of anxiousness by taking up this healthy habit.
Sewing Relieves Stress
Whether you’re working on an advanced sewing machine because you already have sewing skills or you’re just learning with a needle and thread, this is one craft that helps you take the edge off. Creating, whether through simple stitching or designing machine embroidery patterns, is beneficial to your mental health. It’s not only a good way to keep your hands and your mind busy and focused on a task, it also helps you relieve feelings of stress, it reduces your feelings of anxiousness, and it helps you feel more accomplished
Sewing Helps Your Focus
The stress relief you feel when you sew is due to the fact you’re not focusing on your life problems. It’s an intricate process that requires your time, attention to detail, and your absolute focus. When your mind is preoccupied with your sewing machine or the thread you’re working through a simple button repair, you’re not thinking of the things in your life that make you feel down.
You’re thinking of creating, and your mind is focused on only one thing. This is very similar to meditation. Your mind clears, you are focusing on one singular thought rather than dozens of little thoughts running through your mind all at once, and you’re not able to dedicate your attention to your negative thoughts. Deep breathing, clear thinking, and focus help relieve negative feelings in your mind and body. Your relationships will also see great improvement as a result.
Being Creative is A Natural Anti-Depressant
Dopamine is what your brain produces when you feel good about something. Whether it’s exercise or reading a good book or sewing, dopamine is what your body produces when you’re really enjoying yourself. Sewing allows your body to product dopamine. You love what you’re doing, and your body does respond to this. It goes straight to the brain and helps eliminate the kind of production that results from stress, which means you automatically improve your mood.
If you feel down in the dumps or like you can’t focus on anything but the negatives in your life, try sewing. Even if you’re just learning, you can use this as a way to help your body product feel-good chemicals that help you focus on all the positives in your life rather than the many negatives.
You’re Also Staying Young When You Sew
Sewing is often thought to be an activity the elderly prefer, but many young people really get into this craft. Since it’s been known to help keep you young, that’s a good thing to get into. Sewing can help you with many of your life issues, health issues, and even aging issues. When you really enjoy the things you do with your downtime, you get to stay a bit younger thanks to the positive chemicals your body produces.
Sewing also helps your brain stay sharp and high-functioning. This is what really keeps you young. You’re sharper, more aware, and you maintain a certain level of intelligence. It’s beneficial to your mental health in terms of how you feel now as well as how you feel later in life. Cognitive awareness is important.
Sewing Requires Structured Time
When you’re busy, when you’re having fun, and when you’re not given too much free time to think, you feel better about life. You forget the things that make you feel overwhelmed and stressed. You don’t have time to overthink or focus on anything that doesn’t benefit you in any way, and you don’t have a chance to let your mind wander to places it doesn’t want to go.
It’s structured time that keeps you busy enough to forget things that make you feel uneasy. When you take the time to enjoy things such as sewing, you’re telling yourself it’s all right to focus on the good things in life and forget the things you cannot control. Too much unstructured time allows your mind to focus on things that aren’t healthy.
Sewing is something you might already know how to do, it might be something you’ve never tried, or it might be something you’re not yet very good at doing. It doesn’t matter. Focusing on it or any other craft project helps you relieve your anxiety and live a happier life. Over time, your body will relax, your mind will slow down, and you’ll be able to better control how you feel about your life.
