Color Me Stress Free

Feeling stressed out during the holidays? Treat yourself to a coloring book, either physical or virtual. Science says the act of coloring will help to keep you calm.

Coloring books for adults are all the rage and have been for the past several years. According to CNN, the first commercially successful coloring books designed specifically for adults were published in 2012 and 2013 and, since then, the market has grown exponentially. In fact, for years mental health experts have been touting coloring for adults as a way to alleviate stress and help them relax. “Coloring definitely has therapeutic potential to reduce anxiety, create focus or bring [about] more mindfulness,” says Marygrace Berberian, a certified art therapist and the Clinical Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator for the Graduate Art Therapy Program at NYU.

Now, I’m not one to toot my own horn, but I knew this. I love coloring and have been doing it since I was old enough to hold a crayon. I used to pride myself on the fact that I could color Barbie’s lips and eyelids without going out of the lines. (Yeah, yeah, I know of the school of thought that says it’s important for kids to express their creativity by coloring outside of the lines but, as a little kid, it was important for me to color perfectly and expertly inside the lines of Barbie’s lips and eyelids in my Barbie coloring books.)

I colored for my entire childhood. It wasn’t cool after the age of, I don’t know, maybe 9, but I didn’t care. I’m not the most artistic person so left the drawing to others while I exercised my creativity in color choice, depth of color saturation and three dimensionality. Oh, I had coloring down to a creative science and growing up wasn’t going to dampen my affection for it. In fact, I bought a Winnie the Pooh coloring book that I displayed in my dorm room when I went off to college. I’d ask friends and visitors to my room to color in it and to be sure to sign and date their masterpieces. My thought at the time was, “Wouldn’t it be cool if one of my friends turned out to be famous? I’d have an original work of art by them.” I still have that coloring book but, alas, no famous friends.

I discovered “art coloring books” in my 20s which is when I graduated from crayons to colored pencils. I’d spend hours coloring beautiful drawings of cats, Victorian houses, works of art by the masters of Impressionism and more. And when my daughters were old enough to hold crayons, I bought them dozens of coloring books with a variety of themes. (Barbie remains a favorite to this day. But it has to be a really good Barbie coloring book, the kind that emphasizes fashion in delicious detail. Book publishers – take note. My daughters and I cannot be alone in our love for coloring Barbie’s fashions. How about making a bona fide adult coloring book of Barbie fashions from designers who’ve dressed her?)

So you see, to me, the adult coloring book craze is nothing new. I’ve been doing it for years. I mean, I don’t spend every day coloring. I go on coloring binges where I color a few pages and then don’t revisit the book for months. But when I do go back to it I always think, “Now why did I stop? This is so much fun.”

I color not only for fun but also to relax and de-stress. Whenever I sit in a doctor’s office, I think that I’d really like to be coloring. I’m a bundle of nerves in a doctor’s waiting room and certainly, the  most recent People Magazine does nothing to quell my anxiety. Wouldn’t it be nice if doctors’ offices had coloring books and colored pencils for adults? But, since they don’t, I’ve taken to using coloring book apps. Surely you’ve heard of them? You download an app in the app store of your phone. There are dozens from which to choose, pick a drawing, choose colors from a variety of palettes and tap your finger to fill in the color. You can get quite creative with these apps and the end result is as satisfying as the finished page in a coloring book. An app I like is Coloring Book for Me by Apalon Mobile. I’m not alone as Coloring Book for Me is Apalon’s most successful app launch to date. You can save your designs to your phone, share them on social media or email them to friends or to yourself so that you can, if you really want to, hang your finished masterpiece on your fridge. Hey, why not?

Coloring Book for Me is a free download which allows you to color many drawings with many palettes from which to choose. In app purchases will unlock additional palettes and will also remove ads.

Check out Coloring Book for Me in the app store of your mobile device and use it the next time you’re in a doctor’s office waiting to be seen. I highly recommend it for stress relief.

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