Gayani DeSilva, MD, a psychiatrist and author, explained that doing something creative — like drawing, painting, or even colouring — helps the brain use different pathways than the worrisome ones. "The brain is extremely powerful, but lazy. It tends to use the same pathways that generate the same thoughts over and over again," Dr. DeSilva said. "So, the more time we spend worrying about something, the more often we'll worry about the same thing."
However, if we task our brain to solve a new problem, it switches into a more powerful mode and begins to make new connections, which means that new thoughts are generated. "The more often we task our brain to think in different ways, the less likely we are to get stuck in the same useless thinking patterns," she explained.