5 Ways Blogging Relaxes My Anxiety

It goes without saying that 2020 was a difficult year. And for someone with anxiety, the changes that came with the pandemic could be overwhelming. The city lockdown, food shortages, disappearing paper products, and separation from my friends all elevated my anxiety levels! Not to mention the virus itself that had infected patients overwhelming hospital emergency rooms. I certainly didn’t want any of my loved ones to become a statistic.

The moment I felt my anxiety rising, was the moment I knew I had to take action. Action to calm myself down, stay grounded and believe it was all going to work out. That’s when I started typing. Really! I had no plan. I just wanted to ‘get it out’ and onto digital paper. 

Over time, I realized that creating this blog was one of the best decisions I made last year. Here’s the breakdown of 5 reasons why I’ve found blogging so helpful for my anxiety:

1. It’s a cathartic process: I immediately saw this benefit from my first post. It was actually a three part post because I had so much to say. And with each post, it felt like the first one in the sense that my mind feels a tremendous sense of relief once I finish typing.

2. Blogging keeps me busy: If you have ever experienced unemployment, you know that filling your days doing something productive can be difficult. And living in a lockdown city during this pandemic makes it even harder cause there’s literally no place to go! Fortunately, I don’t have to go anywhere to keep busy typing and illustrating.

3. Blogging keeps me focused: For those of you who are bloggers, I’m sure you understand what it means to ‘post regularly.’ It’s quite a challenge to create regular posts that are interesting and well written. And getting past the reoccurring writer’s block is an ongoing process. But this self-induced stress is still better than the free fall anxiety I get from doing nothing.

4. It’s a creative outlet: By design, creative people are constantly generating ideas, and those ideas need to be executed in some way. So as a designer, it’s not just the writing, but also the illustrating in this blog that enables a creative outlet for me.

5. The blogging community: The best thing that happened since I began blogging, was connecting with so many nice people in the blogging community. The likes and encouraging comments we leave on each other’s posts really motivate me to keep writing. Especially when I have writer’s block. 

So to those of you in this blogging community, I just want to say thank you for your support and inspiration. Keep up the great work! And to anyone else, I just want to say give writing a try. You might be surprised where it may lead you. Or at the very least, how much it helps you get through some difficult days.

Take care everyone!