What Happens When You Make Self-Care Creative?

What if the thing you've been missing isn't more rest, but more expression?

Most of us think self-care means slowing down. And sometimes it does. But I noticed something over the years of managing my own anxiety: the moments that actually brought me back to myself weren't always the quiet ones. Really, they were rarely the quiet ones.  What always brought me back were the moments when I made something. When I picked up my iPad and apple pencil, opened the adobe fresco app and painted (digitally). Or when I made my handmade notebooks.  Just anytime I sat down with no agenda and let something pour out of me that had been sitting too long.

Something shifted in those moments. My mind got quiet, and it wasn’t because I forced it to, but because it finally had somewhere to go. I stopped overthinking in those moments. I felt grounded in a way that a nap or a walk didn't always give me. And when I was done, even if what I'd made was messy and unfinished, I felt like myself again.

That's what creative self-care does. It doesn't just calm you down, brings you back.

Why Creativity Is One of the Best Tools for Anxiety

In all my years of managing my anxiety, I've come to understand that it needs abstraction to survive. It thrives in the "what ifs".  In both the replays and the conversations that haven't happened yet. The moment you anchor yourself to something real like a page, a pen, a scene you're trying to create, anxiety loosens its grip. It doesn’t completely vanish, but it gives you a break.  Sometimes it’s just enough.

Don’t listen to me, listen to the research.  Research shows that engaging in creative activities lowers cortisol, your body's primary stress hormone, and shifts your brain out of the rumination cycle and into a flow state. When you're in flow, you're present. And presence is the one place anxiety can't fully follow you.

Before we go any further, I want to address something I hear constantly, and you may be thinking it as you’re reading this: "I'm not creative."

I understand why women say this. We've been taught that creativity means you can draw, or sing, or make something that belongs in a gallery. And if that's not you, you opt out before you even begin. To me, that definition is too small and too exclusive and it's keeping a lot of us from one of the most powerful tools we have access to.

Creativity isn't solely a talent you're born with or without. It's a capacity. And it responds to use. Think of it like a muscle that may have gone unused for a while, maybe for years, but that doesn't mean it's gone. It’s just waiting. So, the more you exercise it the more it grows. The more you let go and have fun with creative activities, the better you become and the more natural it starts to feel. The more you start to see yourself as someone who makes things, the more you are someone who makes things.

You don't have to feel creative to start. You just have to start. The feeling follows the doing.

7 Creative Self-Care Practices Worth Slowing Down For

1. Write a Love Letter to Your Future Self — and Your Past Self

This one undoes something in me every time.

Write a letter to the woman you're becoming. Don’t think of some perfect version of future you, just one who’s a little further along, a little kinder to herself and a little more at peace. Tell her what you're carrying right now and what you got through. Tell her what you hope she remembers about this season.

Then turn around and write to the woman you used to be. The one who was doing the best she could with what she had. The one who didn't always know how things would turn out. Tell her she was enough. Tell her you understand now.  Tell her you forgive her.

This one is powerful.  I don't know a faster way to feel like yourself again than this.

2. Record a Voice Memo of Your Affirmations

Write out a few affirmations that feel true to you.  Affirmations that stop you in your tracks every time you read or hear them.  Don’t choose the super aspirational ones that feel a little dishonest.  Choose the honest ones, the ones that hit you in your heart. Then record them in your own voice. And listen back.

Something about hearing yourself - your actual voice, your actual cadence - makes the words land somewhere written ones sometimes don't. It bypasses the part of your brain that dismisses affirmations as performance. Save the memo. Play it in the mornings when the anxiety is holding on too tight and you can’t  shake it. 

Hopefully you have at least one affirmation that always resets you.  If not, you can borrow mine:  I am calm, poised and serene

3. Create a Sketch/Drawing/Painting of Your Mood

Instead of writing about how you feel, draw it. What color is your anxiety today? What shape is your exhaustion? What does "almost okay" look like on paper?

I know…I know -  if you don't consider yourself creative, that can sound intimidating. Not everyone sees emotions in color!  So let me simplify it. It doesn't have to be deep or meaningful or anything anyone else would understand. Maybe it's an eye with a tear. Maybe it's clouds covering the sun. Maybe it's a big, bright sun because today is actually okay. It can be whatever you feel, expressed however it comes out.

On one of my more frustrating days - a day where I felt completely misunderstood and unheard - I drew a mouth with bars over it. It was not good at all. But you know what? I felt better afterwards. I got it out of me, and that's the whole point.

Stick figures welcome. This isn't so much about making beautiful art, it's more like taking something invisible and making it visible. Sometimes that's all it takes to start releasing it.

4. Make DIY Bath Bombs or Shower Steamers

This is self-care you make, use, and even gift — and there's something about that layered experience that feels especially satisfying for an anxious mind.

Experimenting with fragrances, mixing ingredients by hand, pressing them into a mold, waiting to see what comes out — it's tactile, sensory, and grounding. And I love a good grounding exercise. When you drop one into the bath or set a steamer in your shower days later, it's a small gift from the version of yourself who was thinking ahead.

Choose your scents intentionally — they matter more than you think. Lavender and bergamot for calming, eucalyptus and peppermint for clarity, citrus for a mood lift. I am fully in my lavender era right now and I have zero apologies about it. Lavender body wash, lavender lotion every single night before bed - Bath & Body Works Lavender Vanilla is a serious player in my self-care routine and has been for a while.

The making is the self-care. The using is also the self-care plus the bonus. 

5. Make Affirmation Cards for Yourself and Your Friends

Write your favorite affirmations on index cards or cardstock. Decorate them or keep them simple - whatever feels like you (don’t be afraid to check sites like Pinterest for inspo). Keep a stack for your own hard days, and make extras to slip into a friend's bag, leave on a windshield, or mail with no explanation other than I thought of you.  (If you're extra fancy, you can do it digitally and drop them in the text groups.)  

There's something that happens when you give away the words you most need to hear. It reminds you that you're not alone in needing them.  Neither is she.

6. Draw or Paint Inspired by Your Favorite Song

This one also may seem intimidating to the self-proclaimed non-creatives.  But trust the process, girl!  Put on a song that means something to you - one that hits somewhere in your chest (for me, it will always be “Close My Eyes” by Mariah Carey) - and just start creating while you listen. Get lost in the music and let it lead. Draw what it sounds like. Paint the feeling it gives you. Use color and line and shape instead of words.

Don't plan it. Don't think about what it's going to look like. This one may surprise you - something meaningful almost always shows up on the page, even when it doesn't look like much from the outside. Allow the song to do the work of bypassing your inner critic so your hands can do the rest.

7. Write a Poem

Not a proper poem. Just some words you put together.

Write about what anxiety feels like in your body on a hard Tuesday. Write about something small and beautiful you noticed this week that you haven't told anyone about yet. Write about what you wish the people who love you actually understood.

Many, many years ago I wrote a poem about dreams. I don't have the words to express how proud of myself I was for writing it — I thought it was so good. And I still do.

I found it recently while cleaning out a nightstand drawer. Reading it again after all those years brought back the exact feeling I had when I first put it on the page — like I had carved a piece of myself into that paper. And there it still was, all these years later, that piece of me, exactly where I left it.

Maybe I'll share it one day. Maybe not — because as Erykah Badu said, I'm an artist and I'm sensitive about my sh*t.

And that's exactly the point. You don't have to share it. You don't have to show anyone. No structure required. No rhyme. No editing. Just honesty on a page - which is, when you think about it, one of the bravest forms of self-care there is.

More Creative Self-Care Ideas to Explore

Here are more ways to make self-care creative:

• Doodle for 10 minutes without a plan or a purpose

• Try expressive writing — write directly into whatever has been sitting on your chest, not to solve it but to release it

• Try a new recipe that requires enough attention to pull you into the present

• Make a vision board around a feeling you want more of, not a goal you're chasing

• Practice hand lettering or calligraphy — the slow, deliberate strokes have a way of slowing everything else down too

• Try origami or paper folding for a meditative, hands-on reset

• Create a gratitude jar with handwritten notes you can pull out on the hard days

• Make something with your hands — anything — and let the making be enough

What Happens When You Make Self-Care Creative

My mind gets quiet. Not silent, but quiet enough. The overthinking slows because it finally has somewhere to go. It feels immersive and I feel accomplished in a way that rest alone doesn't always give me. And underneath all of it, I feel like myself again - the version of me that exists beneath the anxiety, beneath the to-do lists, beneath the frustration and everything I'm managing on any given day.

That's what I want for you, friend. 

Your Turn

I’ve given you all of my favorite creative self-care ideas and I hope you will throw your inhibitions aside - if you are in the “I’m not creative” crew - and just try it.  Just pick one thing on the list that you feel like you can do ( to be clear, you can do them all).  Don’t worry about being consistent right away or doing it perfectly.  Pick one and do it the next time the spiral starts. See what happens when you give your mind - and your hands - somewhere to land.

You just might be surprised how much you have to say. 

With all my love and creative vibes,

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