Mental health can be a tricky beast: you can be doing fine one day and the next feel as though the world is crashing down around you.
I have lived with generalized anxiety and a panic disorder for over a decade, and while I’ve grown much better at managing my symptoms with medication, mindfulness and therapy, sometimes they pop up again for no identifiable reason.
This happened to me last week, after many months of uninterrupted calm.
My anxiety symptoms are often very physical: manifesting as pain, an upset stomach, and heart palpitations, as well as the spinning thoughts and sense of fear usually associated with the condition.
But, even when experiencing symptoms like these, the demands of life don’t let up, and most importantly, the dog still needs walkies.
Having experienced periods of agoraphobia in the past, it is vitally important to me that I continue to leave the house, even just for short spells, to prevent my world from getting any smaller. Dog walks are a great way to do this, plus they squeeze a little cardiovascular exercise into my day and provide me with valuable bonding time with my pet.
But in the mental state I was in, I needed a tool to pull my focus away from my spiralling thoughts and take some of the overwhelm away from the idea of going outside. That’s when I came across color walking.
What is color walking?
The idea behind color walking is simple: you select a color and try to spot it wherever it appears on your walk.
Here’s TikTok creator Jaz Hand demonstrating a color walk where she seeks out the color yellow.
You can add a level by taking photos of where you see the color, or just make a mental note when you observe it and take a few moments to appreciate it.
The trend encourages participants to reflect on the color, notice the exact shade, and see how it fits into the environment and interacts with other visual aspects, like light and texture.
By doing this, you engage with your environment and appreciate the details.
How color walking helped me
Having successfully tried walking yoga, I wanted to try a similarly mindful practice, but one that was slightly less focused on how my body felt, because I was in a lot of pain.
Having seen some colleagues try color walking, I decided this might be a good option to try myself, so I laced up my walking shoes, leashed my dog and went out to look for yellow things.
(Image credit: Getty Images / Kosamtu)
It gave me something to focus on
I can give myself panic attacks while sitting in a dark room with no external stimuli—they’re a consequence of my thoughts, which can spiral out of control very easily. There isn’t always a definite trigger.
Mindful practices are helpful in these situations because they interrupt the thoughts before they can spiral and fill the space in my head that would otherwise be taken up by worry.
Instead of focusing inward on my thoughts and how anxious I was feeling, I was able to think about spotting some yellow, and then some more yellow, and some more.
I found yellow in surprising places: blue flowers with yellow centers, the flash of yellow on the tail of a green woodpecker, even some graffiti on a bin. I was so absorbed in my quest that I was able to put aside my anxiety.
By the time I got home again, I was calmer, happier and had achieved something. All big wins on a bad mental health day.
It cheered me up
I chose yellow because it has been my favorite color since I was small. Something about the bright shades of sunflowers, bumblebees and lemons has always lifted my mood, and it’s the color I choose to paint my nails when I’m feeling particularly sad.
It’s also one of the first colors of spring where I live, appearing in daffodils and buttercups, meaning I also associate it with the promise of sunshine and longer days.
Seeking out little patches of yellow made me notice just how much of it there is in the world, which helped me to feel happier, despite my anxiety.
It helped me manage my anxiety
Anxiety management can take many forms, and although I try to lean towards holistic techniques like mindfulness and meditation, I need medication too.
However, taking a powerful benzodiazepine every time I want to go outside is neither practical nor healthy. They’re a dependence-building drug and one that I try not to take unless absolutely necessary.
So, instead of popping a pill before leaving the house, I started in my kitchen (the first room in my house), which is littered with yellow pots, pans, plants and crockery. I started my color walk indoors, looking for my chosen color in my own home before I took myself outside.
This period of transition helped me to adjust to the task at hand, without feeling overwhelmed by it. By thinking of what I was doing as just “looking for the color yellow” rather than the much more intimidating “going outside where there are people, cars and all sorts of other triggers and terrible things that could go wrong,” it took some of the fear out of the experience and made it more manageable.
I relied on color walks over this horrible week until I finally began to feel more stable, and will continue to do so on difficult days to keep myself feeling calm, comfortable and maybe even a bit happier.
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