We were clearly ahead of our time, chez nous; now it would appear that strung-out mothers across the Channel are likewise reaching for “art therapy” books, sold under an “anti-stress” banner.
“Because colouring-in requires focus, it is quite meditative and mindful,” concludes Sally Austen, a consultant clinical psychologist. “You are completely in the moment, not ruminating about the past or worrying about the future.
“There is also – and this is probably quite significant – no element of competition or possible failure, which is quite rare these days.”
In an age of social media, simply sitting still is also seldom an option, as the temptations to text or Tweet or send emails is too great. Here, again, staying between the lines can represent a refuge.
“Colouring in is as near to doing nothing as you can get,” says Austen. “It’s creative and peaceful; a lovely moment of inane happiness.”
Indeed, French Facebook and other social media are awash with tips and triumphs proudly posted online by colourers-in for the world to see, the way a silver-surfing grandma might Instagram a child’s first spidery drawing of a cat.
Except these are not children, but wives and mothers so wired from parenthood, profession and the pressure to be perfect that they need some sort of calming release.
At present, no fewer than seven of the current 15 best-selling titles in the nation’s “practical” category are colouring books, which now shift faster than cookbooks in France, according to trade publication Livres Hebdo.
But given that numerous studies have put the country among the world’s top consumers of antidepressants, perhaps there’s clinical merit in their colouring book craze.
Research carried out at San Francisco State University examined whether a diverse range of hobbies and pastimes could help employees recover from the demands of their jobs. The results, however, went beyond that.
The study, published last month in the Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology, found that people who pursue creative activities outside the office not only deal with stress better but their performance at work improves, too.
“It can be rare to find that what we do in our personal time is related to our behaviour in the workplace, and not just how we feel,” says Kevin Eschleman, the organisational psychologist who led the study.
The employees studied were free to define creative activities however they wished, so the pursuits ranged from creative writing to painting to online gaming. None the less, in most cases, these activities had a positive knock-on effect on creative problem-solving, increasing the person’s sense of control and generating a more helpful attitude towards their colleagues.
“Despite this diversity, the respondents usually describe [their hobby] as ‘lush’, as a deep experience that provides a lot of things for them,” says Eschleman. “But they also talk about this idea of self-expression and an opportunity to really discover something about themselves.”
But if the activities to which people resort vary, the reality is that when stressed, we do instinctively reach for everyday comforts. So, this can be anything from eating too many biscuits, drinking to blur the edges of the day, or reinventing ourselves, virtually, by playing simulation games like The Sims.
There are also subconscious responses to, and regressions from, the pressures of adult life, at work. How else to explain the old boy members’ clubs that serve nursery puddings or the repackaging of the Harry Potter series for high-functioning professionals who are bizarrely enthralled by the adolescent goings-on at Hogwarts?
Indeed, the psychological props borrowed from childhood are everywhere: commuters clutching the sort of warm, milky drinks that Mother used to make; the roaring trade in apps such as Candy Crush; and, of course, the onesie, essentially a great big snuggly babygro for grown‑ups.
“The onesie is a cry for help, if ever I saw one,” is the verdict of Gary Fitzgibbon, a business psychologist.
“When people are under stress, they want to put their head in a place that reminds them of a time they had no pressures and an environment in which everything was provided for them. For the majority of people, that place is their childhood.”
Perhaps, then, observations that as a society we are becoming more infantilised and refusing to put away childish things has less to do with self-indulgence than justifiable anxiety.
In his book Big Babies: Or: Why Can’t We Just Grow up?, social commentator Michael Bywater points to the rise of the health and safety obsession, creating a world where bags of nuts warn that they contain, yes, nuts and hot-water taps are labelled “caution, hot water”, amid which grown-ups wander about plugged into iPods and headphones like zoned-out teenagers.
According to Fitzgibbon, adults are increasingly looking for temporary escapes from reality. “Whether it’s doing a crossword or a sudoku puzzle, a few minutes’ opting out will have a uplifting effect. Comedy and laughing aloud will also have a beneficial impact.”
This would certainly explain why films of dogs eating ice cream or baby pandas sneezing go viral on the internet, but it’s rather an ad hoc form of coping.
Institutional methods of stress‑busting, meanwhile, are specifically aimed at boosting endorphins, ranging as they do from in-house choirs that practise at lunchtime (it might be fun, but it also might improve the afternoon’s productivity) to team-building sports.
But some souls need calming down, rather than pepping up – to which end Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, has gone so far as to create a puppy room during exam periods. The animals, hired from Therapeutic Paws of Canada, could be stroked and cuddled by jittery students having problems with their nerves.
Harvard Medical School, no less, has a resident therapy dog, Cooper, a shi-tzu which can be borrowed, like a book from the library.
Although corporate kittens haven’t quite caught on to that over here, mindfulness has become a buzzword everywhere from the NHS to FTSE-100 companies, schools to overseas charities where emergency field workers find themselves under huge strain.
By definition, mindfulness aims to shut out the buzz. A brain-training technique based on using the breath to achieve mental clarity, it has been discussed in Parliament as a therapy in relation to both unemployment and depression.
It is less about zoning out than zooming in; paying attention to the present and decluttering the brain. To that end there are a dizzying variety of courses and classes and workshops that can be taken in order to learn how to pause for a moment.
Or, of course, the women of Britain could take our lead from the French in this, as in so many things, and settle down with a volume of Art Thérapie. And if it’s anything like as good as Retail Therapy, I bet we’ll be hooked until the very last page.
The new relaxation craze: Can staying amongst the lines maintain us on track?
