Why I Color

Coloring helped me overcome anxiety and panic attacks. Since I started coloring, I believe I have developed superpowers. I know that you probably don’t believe me, but read on and I’ll tell you what happened.

My story starts a few years ago, when I realized I was broke.

When I looked at the balance in my bank account and saw it was almost empty, I realized that I was in trouble. I had nothing in there and yet my bills were still due. I had run out of my savings and I had no income to replace it. I couldn’t pay my bills and I was in big trouble!

You see, I had been living off my savings for the last few years. Before that, I had owned a very profitable business so I was able to build a nice savings. But, while running that business, I developed a pretty severe anxiety disorder. I was on medication that made me feel terrible. I was so disconnected from my own feelings that I felt like a robot. I had to quit taking that medication.

But that meant my anxiety symptoms would be back, with the terrible panic attacks that came with them. Life sucked! I had to figure out something. So, I decided that I had to quit my business, hoping my anxiety would go away when I did. The business is why I had anxiety, right? So if I didn’t have my business, I wouldn’t have anxiety anymore. It seemed logical to me at the time and so I did.

Unfortunately, I was wrong.

I walked away from my business, let it just crash down. But I still had anxiety. I had no business, no job, no income, and nothing to do with my time. And I still had anxiety!! I had no idea what to do now.

I didn’t want to start another business. I didn’t want to work for anyone else. Lucky for me, I had saved some money so at least I didn’t have to worry about getting the money to pay my bills. But otherwise, I was a wreck at this time. My anxiety was ruling my life!

I knew I had to do something to fix this or things might get really bad.

So, I worked hard to improve my diet and add in a real exercise habit. This helped a lot, but it wasn’t enough. My overall anxiety was improving (along with my energy levels and how my clothes fit me), but I would still get panic attacks and have those days when I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Worse, I was still unfocused and not able to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

Diet and exercise alone were not enough to get me going again. I needed to try something else.

I decided to try meditation. I had read quite a bit about how it helped other people and I thought this might be the exact thing I needed to get everything else in my life back on track. You know what I found out?

Meditating is hard!!

I found it difficult to meditate, trying to clear my mind of thoughts (this is not meditating by the way), or counting my breaths, but I just couldn’t get this habit rolling. I didn’t want to meditate because I thought I was doing it wrong and it wasn’t helping me.

Then I read an article that talked about coloring as meditation and how this adult coloring craze was exploding. I researched it some more and thought maybe coloring would help me get this meditation thing going.

So I printed a coloring page, grabbed my Sharpies, and sat down to color. I did this for a little while at first because my hand would start to hurt. I wasn’t used to the coloring motion! But I kept at it, a little bit every day. And after several days of coloring, I finished my first mandala pattern page. I thought it looked pretty good, and I actually started to really enjoy coloring it.