Stress is a natural emotion that everyone experiences sometime in their life. From time to time, stress can cause issues that alter our mental, physical, and emotional health. When stressing for a long period of time, the stress hormones can affect our respiratory system. During the act of stress, we begin to breathe faster in an effort to quickly distribute oxygen blood to go back into our body. It starts as a minor concern but can lead to severe health issues. To prevent this, here are some ways to cope with stress.

People deal with stress in different ways. Some do physical activities like running or hiking, some listen to music, and some do creative things. For me, art is one way I let stress out.

I started to paint when I was around five, my parents bought me an easel, and I would spend hours painting with watercolors. Throughout the years, my creativity had no limits. I would use strokes of different colors and paint random shapes. I believe that the easel they bought me was what really sparked my creativity.

As I got older, I realized that my paintings related to the emotions I was feeling. When I was upset, I would paint rainbows, skies, clouds, and landscapes, and any beautiful scenery that came to mind to feel better. At the time, I hadn’t realized that painting was something that really soothed my nerves. I started painting less from ages five to twelve. I really got into painting when I started to use my younger brother’s paint. Trying out the paint made me think back to how painting made me feel, a peace of mind. Whenever I felt down, the sunsets and landscapes I would draw made me feel happy. Once I tried those paints and recalled the memories of how good it felt to paint, I decided to get a set of acrylic paint.

As my painting became a little more advanced, the paintings turned into emotions that I was feeling. I would start by sketching, then I’d go over the sketch with a darker line, and proceed to paint each color. When I was feeling creative, I would sketch a character, and I would paint over the sketch, and later add details little by little. Art was my way of calming down and I believe anyone can paint anything. When I was younger, I would just paint using random colors, not painting real objects, the biggest difference now is that I use a set amount of colors rather than random strokes, creating an actual picture. Sometimes I like to go back to my old paintings and admire when I used to paint five colors on a canvas and move the brush left to right, and whatever came out, came out.

This year, painting became a trend. People now make videos about painting clouds, characters, landscapes, animals, the list goes on, and that’s when I realized that painting was whatever I wanted it to be. I began to take characters from TV shows and put them on paper and then I would throw colors and a set shape, making a painting out of it. 

Stress can be whatever you want it to be, just like you do with a painting. We can stress to where we feel like bettering ourselves, and if it ever becomes too much, we can always find new ways to deal with it.