How Can the Stress Relief Adult Color Book App Keep You Relaxed During the Hectic Holiday Season?

Paulina White
5 min readDec 24, 2018

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Image Source: rawpixel on Pixabay

Christmas is certainly one of the happiest occasions in the entire year and enables us to end the year on a happy note. However, similar to all festivals, this one comes with its own responsibilities and requirements. One has to get the Christmas tree, buy presents, decorate the tree, decorate the house, get the Christmas cards ready, send out the cards, wrap the presents, and do a lot more. In case you are throwing a party, then the responsibilities might seem endless and cause extreme stress and anxiety in your life.

These additional responsibilities on top of your regular responsibilities might not help you enjoy the holiday very much. In such cases, it is best to take some time off from all of the work and engage yourself in a creative, colorful, and relaxing activity like coloring in a Stress Relief Adult Color book app.

How can Coloring Book for Adults Help an Individual Recuperate Emotionally and Mentally?

If you think that coloring books and apps are just for children to keep them occupied, then you are quite mistaken. Stress relief coloring apps for adults often use the healing power of art to reduce stress and anxiety and help the individual focus on the moment and relax.

The popularity of adult coloring books and apps has grown significantly, and nowadays the Google and Apple app stores are filled with such apps that contain beautifully themed galleries, including Christmas, New Year, Thanksgiving, winter, and many more themes. Given that Christmas is almost upon us and we are in a frenzy to finish off the last minute chores, it is time to take a breather and enjoy the festivities around us, rather than running around preparing for it. Here are the therapeutic benefits of using stress relief adult color book apps:

  • Helps Reduce Stress and Anxiety:
    Coloring has been a common activity in our lives since we were kids and most of us love coloring. Whether it is coloring using our crayons or on our smartphone, this is one activity that makes us happy and engages us creatively. However, do we know what goes on inside our mind psychologically, while we are involved in this wonderful activity?According to Scott M. Bea, a clinical psychologist from the Cleveland Clinic, coloring apps and books help “relax the brain. When thoughts are focused on a simple activity, your brain tends to relax.” During this time, our mind is safe from the constant difficulties we face in our lives and that feeling is quite rewarding.
  • Engages Both the Cerebral Hemispheres of the Brain:
    Color therapy is said to stimulate both the left and right hemispheres of our brain, apart from countering anxiety and stress. For coloring, we need to use both logic (color forms) and creativity (mixing and matching of colors). Thus, this activity triggers various regions in both the left and right hemispheres of the human brain.
  • Effective Alternative for Meditation:
    Color therapy has been considered by many to be very similar to meditation. When we meditate, our brain is at its most relaxed. This state of relaxation is achieved by focusing on the moment and blocking out the constant thinking that goes on in our minds. Coloring pictures on a stress relief adult color book app are said to enable the brain to enter a similar state, as it helps us switch off our brains and focus on the task at hand.

Scientific Research for Stress Relief Adult Coloring Book App

Till date, many studies have provided support to the theory that the benefits of using stress relief adult color book app are very real and tangible. In a 2005 scientific study, a group of undergraduate students who were induced with anxiety were then provided with either a plaid print, a blank page, or a mandala and were instructed to color the respective items for 20 minutes. It was observed that coloring both the mandala and plaid designs helped reduce anxiety in the students.

In a 2018 study, researchers Mantzios and Giannou used randomized controlled experiments to understand the difference between the effects of freehand drawing and coloring on our brain. While in one experiment the researchers did not find any significant difference between free-drawing and coloring in terms of stress reduction, another experiment showed that coloring a mandala lessened anxiety in the participants to a greater extent than freehand drawing.

However, the effectiveness of coloring apps and books is not restricted to just reducing anxiety. Researchers at the University of Otago found that the daily habit of coloring logic puzzles leads to lower levels of depressive symptoms along with reducing anxiety.

Three Artworks to Color During the Christmas Festivities

Now that you know that even science supports the psychological benefits of adult coloring apps, it is time to indulge in the activity without any further delay. Here are three Christmas artworks found in the Christmas gallery of stress relief adult color book app that you can color to reduce stress and anxiety.

A Colorful Christmas Tree: Christmas is incomplete without a Christmas tree. A tall Christmas tree adorned with lights, ornaments, bells, and stockings is a delight to the eyes. However, here your Christmas tree need not be green. You can color it in pastel pink or electric neon or any hue you want!

Christmas with Children: It is a delight to see the pure joy on the faces of children during Christmas when they open their gifts. This artwork tries to capture that innocent emotion. All it needs is your imagination and creative skills!

Santa and Christmas: Christmas tree and Santa Claus have been a part of Christmas festivities since time immemorial. The jolly old man of this holiday brings us gifts on his reindeer sled. So coloring an artwork featuring Santa Claus is very conducive to this festive mood.

In Conclusion:

Coloring has become a popular form of art therapy in recent years and many adults have taken to this activity to cope with anxiety and stress. If you want to indulge in this activity as well, you can download the Stress Relief Adult Color Book App for free from the Google PlayStore, Amazon, or Apple iTunes Store.

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Paulina White

Having chosen to be a psychiatrist I find it really exciting to write about the progress medical science is making in the field of the human brain.