Twenty Minutes That Give You Back to Yourself
Angelina Bliss | Art Therapist & CoachShare
Sometimes the smallest space you carve out is the one that saves you.
When I Forgot to Show Up for Myself
I'll be honest. There was a time in my life when I completely forgot about myself.
And I say this as someone whose job is literally helping others reconnect with who they are.
Ten hours a day. Sessions, group work, planning the next week's activities. Then home to small children, dinner to make, a mortgage to pay, my mother to drive to her doctor's appointment. There was no space for me—or at least, that's what I kept telling myself.
When the day was finally over, I'd collapse on the couch with a book that I'd inevitably have to pick up again the next morning, because I'd fallen asleep by page ten. The playful, deeply nourishing contact with creative expression that had once been so natural to me had become rare—almost accidental.
And yet, I already knew its power. I'd known it since I was a child.
When I was little, drawing, singing, inventing small stories—that was my refuge. My place to breathe. If I was angry, all I needed was to mess around with some colors, and the smile would come back. Everything would feel bright again. I could move fluidly from drawing to homework to playing outside, and the creative thread never broke.
But somewhere along the way, adult life absorbed everything. Important things had fallen apart, and I felt that all my energy had to go toward those responsibilities—to feel like I was doing enough. And that lasted years.
Then came the moment when something inside me became too loud to ignore. The need to feel my own arms around myself. The simple, quiet act of saying: Angela, I'm here.
I was tired. I was worried. My mind kept circling the same thoughts. And even though I loved everything I was doing, I also felt—how do I say this—a little caged.
I told myself: you don't need to find a lot of time. You can do what you did as a child—just be present for a few minutes, and let something flow. What I needed wasn't a big block of time. It was a different quality of presence.
And there was something else. It didn't feel right—or even coherent—to spend my days helping others find those spaces, supporting their journeys of self-awareness, while I had been so long without practicing myself.
I wanted my own expression, my own listening, to have a place in my life again. A continuous place, even if small.
What Twenty Minutes Can Change
Twenty minutes don't change your schedule. They change how you feel inside your schedule.
It can be before breakfast or right after. It can be when the kids are in bed, or during that mid-afternoon pause you never take but always need. The point isn't when. The point is that you make it yours.
Psychology has a name for this: ritual. Not routine—ritual. A routine is something you repeat because you have to. A ritual is something you return to because it feeds you.
Psychologists who study habits and ritual behavior keep finding the same thing: small, repeated actions are far more sustainable than big, dramatic changes—and they quietly reshape how we feel day after day. Short, predictable rituals help the nervous system feel safer, which in turn lowers stress and anxiety. Tiny daily practices of mindfulness or creative focus have also been linked to better emotional regulation and a greater sense of agency over our lives.
In practical terms: those twenty minutes may look like nothing on your calendar. But they're a quiet, daily training for your inner balance.
A Twenty-Minute Ritual: Arrive, Create, Reflect
For those of us who choose this path, twenty minutes become something close to a personal session. Not therapy—but something with a similar rhythm.
You arrive. Two slow breaths. A question: How am I, really?
Then you create. A line, a color, a mark, a few words, a hummed melody—whatever feels true in that moment. This isn't about producing something beautiful. It's about letting what's inside find a form—even an imperfect one, even one you might call ugly.
I remember the day, during my art therapy training, when I discovered that I could make something ugly, and it still mattered. That the point was never aesthetics—it was expression. Welcoming and appreciating whatever emerged from me. The impulse that doesn't care about being "pretty" or "correct", that simply needs to come out. That discovery changed everything for me.
And then you reflect. One word, one sentence, a small note about what came up. That's it. You've just translated something nebulous into something visible. Something confused into something with a form you can finally see. And that alone—giving shape to what you feel—makes emotions more manageable.
Even the uncomfortable ones. Especially the uncomfortable ones.
Leaning on Images Instead of Thoughts
Rosa—one of my clients, a professional and mother of small children going through a period of deep questioning—learned to give herself this space two or three times a week.
Her tool of choice is a visual journal. She often dips her brush in coffee—she loves watching the stains flow across the page, unpredictable and warm. She looks for shapes in them, the way you'd look for shapes in clouds. Then she transforms what she sees into small characters, tiny stories, single words.
Her emotional feedback is consistent: deep pleasure. The kind that makes you come back.
She told me something I haven't forgotten: "It's as if for a few minutes I could lean on images instead of thoughts."
That sentence holds the whole point. When we create, we shift the channel. We move from the mind that loops and worries to the hand that traces and discovers. We don't solve our problems, but we find a different place to stand while we hold them.
Why Twenty Minutes with Your Hands Change Something Words Can't
There's something that happens when your hand touches a material—paper, color, a brush dipped in coffee like Rosa—that thinking alone cannot produce. The hand moves, and the eyes follow. The eyes look, and the mind shifts.
Neuroscience and art therapy research both suggest that using our hands with real materials—paper, color, water, texture—engages parts of the brain that simple thinking or talking can't reach. Our sensory and motor systems get involved, and this makes it easier to process and regulate what we feel, instead of just spinning in thoughts about it.
That's what makes this ritual so particular. You're not only in your mind—you're in your hands. And in twenty minutes, that shift is enough.
What You Need (Almost Nothing)
You don't need much. A few colored pencils and a blank page. A watercolor set and a glass of water. Even a pen and the back of an envelope. What matters isn't the tool—it's the gesture. Press a pastel hard against the page, and something releases. Let color bleed freely across the surface, and something loosens. From the nebulous to the visible. From the confused to the shaped.
Kandinsky called it inner necessity—the impulse that doesn't care about beautiful or correct, that simply needs to come out. Your twenty-minute ritual is where that impulse finally gets its space.
What Happens When You Keep Showing Up
When this becomes a practice—not rigid, not forced, just something you return to—things begin to shift. Your nervous system starts to recognize it as a safe pattern.
Studies on daily routines and mental health suggest that these predictable anchors in our day support mood stability, clearer thinking, and a stronger sense of continuity with ourselves.
There's more clarity. A growing ability to recognize your own emotions as they come, not hours or days later. A sense of continuity—knowing there is a place you can always return to when you need it.
Some of my clients have told me that these moments replaced other habits—scrolling through social media, reaching for food not out of hunger but out of need. The nourishment that was missing found a different form. The art—let's call it what it really is: this listening to yourself through expression—became the meal.
And that's the quiet shift — an intentional habit replacing the automatic ones we reach for when we're tired, overwhelmed, or lonely.
And over time, something larger happens. You shape yourself. Not through grand gestures, but through small, concentric circles—each one a little wider, a little more honest, a little more yours.
If you've read this far, maybe something here resonated. Maybe you recognized a need that's been waiting quietly for its turn.
I created the Creative Mindfulness Kit for exactly this—starting points, not prescriptions. Paths you can follow, adapt, or set aside. Born from my own practice and from years of walking alongside women like Rosa.
What would change if you gave yourself twenty minutes?
🌸 Ready to begin?
Explore the Creative Mindfulness Kit—starting points, not prescriptions. Born from real practice, designed for your twenty minutes.
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🔹 Craft your soul every day. Little by little. A tiny action away.
👉 Take a moment: What would your twenty minutes look like?