In 2019, when I began to rewrite what came to be called the Neverending Saga, I did a lot of research for a particular character who has a tendency toward anxiety, panic, and fear. An intensely private person, she isn’t the type who’d go to therapy or easily express those feelings even to people who love her and who she trusts. Somewhere in my research, I learned ways that “laypeople,” that is, untrained to act as teacher, guide, or mentor, can still help someone through a panic attack. I also found people who use art to help people develop coping skills.
I never anticipated all the ways the larger world, and my smaller one, would change in the years after that. I’m not sure who out there on the big Internet should get credit for the seed of an idea that developed into a self-soothing exercise for my character. It has also sometimes helped me when I have insomnia and my brain goes into overdrive.
You (the vague word that applies to anyone) trace your hands on a piece of sturdy paper, and as I developed it, my hands (with poor fingers misshaped by arthritis) take on two different manifestations. My left hand I connect to my heart and coping words. My dominant right hand is connected to the fears and anxiety my brain can throw at me. I always like color, so with watercolor pens, I gave my left hand colors that soothe me: blues, greens, purples. The right hand colors are the ones that stir me up (and rob me of rest and peace of mind): reds, oranges, yellows.
If I match fingers, my little fingers are “playful” versus “fragile”; my ring fingers are “loved” versus “painful”; my middle fingers are “strong” versus “worried”; my index fingers are “intentional” versus “assertive”; and my thumbs are “determined” versus “anxious.”
Just trying to remember and focus on those words, then process them as solutions versus crises, can pull my scattered thoughts into something either distracting or soothing enough to help me finally fall asleep.