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| Image by user Johntex from Wikimedia Commons |
I’ve really been getting into crochet lately, which is an
ideal hobby to indulge in when one has cats. My mother taught me how to crochet
years ago, but I hadn’t done it in quite some time before I decided to make Jim a tentacle scarf for Christmas. Making the scarf rekindled my interest in the
hobby, which gives me something productive to do with my hands while Jim and I
are watching TV, and is a lot less frustrating than coloring extremely
intricate pictures in adult coloring books.
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| What am I supposed to do with this, Dr. Coloring Book??? |
Indeed, journalist Temma Ehrenfeld, writing
in Psychology Today, speculates that the post-modern urge to constantly
play with our phones stems, not from a deep moral failure as my last boyfriend
would have you believe, but from a desire to make or do something with our hands. Researchers have found that knitting (and I’m going to lump in crochet
with that, which is not the same as knitting, BECAUSE IT’S BETTER), like yoga
and tai chi, can elicit a meditative state of mindfulness. The repetitive
motions involved in knitting and crocheting are physiologically soothing,
slowing the heart rate and breathing, but the activity itself is complicated enough
to distract the brain from the intrusive thoughts that often come with
depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder; knitting and
crocheting can even relieve chronic pain, because it distracts the brain from
processing pain signals.
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| WHO'S IN CHARGE NOW, BRAIN? Image by user flora from Wikimedia Commons |
That’s according to Betsan Corkhill, whose research with Cardiff
University in the UK found that, the more time people spend knitting, the
happier they are. Corkhill surveyed 3,500 knitters for a paper published in the British
Journal of Occupational Therapy; 81 percent of those surveyed reported
feeling happier during or after a knitting session, while 54 percent of
respondents suffering clinical depression said that knitting made them feel “happy
or very happy.”
Occupational therapist Victoria
Schindler tells CNN that knitting’s repetitive motions quiet the parasympathetic
nervous system, to quell the fight-or-flight response that’s out-of-control in
so many patients suffering from anxiety and PTSD. Knitting may further stimulate the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the
brain, accounting for the feelings of happiness knitters reported to Corkhill.
Of course, it’s not just the knitting or crocheting itself
that makes us happy. The hobby brings with it a host of other mood-boosting activities,
such as choosing pretty yarns, attending knitting circles (or, as I like to
call them, stitch-and-bitches), producing finished products, gifting or
donating knitted items, and receiving praise for one’s skill. In addition,
knitting, crocheting, and other crafty hobbies boosts your feelings of
self-efficacy, or your perception of how capable you are in the face of
challenges and disappointments. Knowing that you can crochet your boyfriend an
awesome tentacle scarf will leave you feeling more confident in your ability to
nail that big job interview, or at least that’s the idea, but I’m still awful
at job interviews so check and mate,
science!
Perhaps the most interesting part of all this is that it’s
not a new idea. In the aftermath of World War I, shell-shocked soldiers lay in
hospital wards, knitting their cares away as they contributed
to the war effort. Of course, that may have had more to do with the fact literally everyone was knitting stuff for the soldiers in the trenches than with any attempt to treat combat-related neurosis, but whatevs, I'm taking it.
