"Anxiety Art" by Richard F. Yates

[Felt pen on found cardboard with digital embellishments. 2019.]

Today was rough...

My wife had a surgical procedure, and I am MASSIVELY phobic about medical stuff---to the point of straight panic and terror.

So, as I was sitting in the waiting room, watching the "status" board for any information on how things were progressing---and breathing in shallow gulps---I needed SOMETHING to help cope. When I'm super freaked out, I've found at least one thing that can distract me and give me a focus...

I draw.

(To help cut some of the tension, my wife came through the procedure just fine, and we have the next few days off for her to recuperate. She's hurting, but she'll come through it!!! Thank Bob...)

As you can probably see from today's drawing, I was pretty freaked out. My lines are jaggedy and manic, the little repeated boxes are like a nervous tick, and the critters (all projections) feel lost and terrified. BUT!!! (there's always a but), by getting all of this OUT OF MY HEAD and onto paper (or in this case, cardboard), it made me FEEL better. I wouldn't say I was calm or relaxed, (I was in a surgery pavilion, after all), but I wasn't on the verge of freaking out anymore...

Distraction? Perhaps... Or, to look at it a different way, it was refocusing on something positive (creation) instead of obsessing over things which I couldn't control...

It helped... Mariah made it through without a hitch... And she has this next week off to get better. (I work in a couple days, but she will hopefully be over the bad stuff by then!)

The day was stressful but we survived... And I got a drawing out of the experience, which might not be a visual masterpiece, but it IS a representation of my coping process... A physical representation of anxiety alleviation in action. Definitely a performance piece...

Do you have a coping strategy? If so, feel free to share it in the comments!!!

---Richard F. Yates (Holy Fool)

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