Someone once commented that spikes in knitting come with stressful times.\u00a0 I’d buy that.\u00a0\u00a0 I knit and sew more during stressful times than otherwise.\u00a0 There are a lot of theories on why this might be so in general.\u00a0 Part of it, I am sure, is the soothing nature of a repetitive physical motion (rocking a baby, anyone?).\u00a0 But I think it’s more than that.\u00a0 Sewing has a similar effect on me, and that’s not quite as repetitive as knitting.<\/p>\n
Most crisis intervention therapies have routines to promote a sense of competence and mastery to the patients.\u00a0 Basically, if you can’t feel in control of something<\/em> or accomplished about something, you run out of cope real, real fast.\u00a0 That’s a very normal human reaction.\u00a0\u00a0 While you can’t necessarily plot a curve from one point, I know the kick I get out of sewing my own wardrobe or knitting a garment for someone.\u00a0 It’s a sense of accomplishment.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s a<\/em> way to restore a sense of competence.\u00a0 Knitting and sewing are relatively simple skills to learn.\u00a0 Elizabeth Zimmerman, the Ur-geek of knitting, put it this way:<\/p>\n Really, all you need to become a good knitter are wool, needles, hands, and slightly below-average intelligence. Of course, superior intelligence, such as yours and mine, is an advantage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You can learn to knit a garter stitch scarf relatively quickly. And at the end of the project, you have something physical, tangible, and dare I say\u00a0 useful<\/em> as well.\u00a0 That kind of thing can do a lot to restore a sense of competence.<\/p>\n If it seems goofy to say, “I can’t control the economy, but by God, I can make this sweater!” don’t be too quick to sneer.\u00a0 That sense of competence can and does fuel intelligent action in other areas.\u00a0 Anyone who engages in a repetitive but ultimately useful and creative thing like knitting1<\/sup> will tell you that in the process of creation, your mind relaxes.\u00a0 You enter a meditative state and often that relaxation of the mind engages the creative centers that allows you to come up with the creative solutions you need in other areas of life.<\/p>\n It also has to do with how the brain works and how it encodes stressful experiences.<\/p>\n Psychological theory suggests that when we’re exposed to a horrifying situation, we take it in through two channels. One is the basic, primal sensory channel: the sights, sounds, sensations, and smells of the situation. The other is an intellectual channel: our brains trying to make sense of what’s going on, and putting it into words and a context that we can talk about.<\/p>\n The experimenters wondered what would happen if you specifically blocked one of these channels while the traumatic event is going on. And they found that if you were pre-occupied with a “visual-spatial task,” like typing a pattern on a computer, you didn’t encode the images and sounds of the traumatic experience as strongly. As a result, subjects who kept their hands busy had fewer flashbacks.<\/p>\n — http:\/\/www.sciencenetlinks.com\/sci_update.cfm?DocID=209<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Does make for an interesting take on the old saying, “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.”<\/p>\n 1<\/sup>Or woodworking (ever sanded a bookcase?), or cooking, or even scrubbing a floor (see Wintersmith<\/em> by Terry Pratchett for an interesting discussion of the principle). It needs to be physical, but not too <\/em>mentally demanding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Someone once commented that spikes in knitting come with stressful times.\u00a0 I’d buy that.\u00a0\u00a0 I knit and sew more during stressful times than otherwise.\u00a0 There are a lot of theories on why this might be so in general.\u00a0 Part of it, I am sure, is the soothing nature of a repetitive physical motion (rocking a … <\/p>\n
\n