128. Curating Your Psychological Environment: The Art of Inner and Outer Harmony

“The environment is where we all meet. Where all of us have a mutual interest. It is the one thing all of us share.” - Lady Bird Johnson 

In this episode, Dr. Amy Backos, psychologist and art therapist, explores the powerful relationship between your environment and your psychological well-being. Drawing from behavioral science, art therapy, and design psychology, Amy unpacks how your physical, social, media, and internal environments influence your emotions, focus, and creativity. 

You’ll learn six practical ways to shape your surroundings—from decluttering and reading habits to social boundaries and sensory design—to create spaces that truly support your mental health. Discover how small aesthetic shifts can bring you greater ease, clarity, and joy—and why your environment may be the missing piece in your creative and emotional balance.

Listen to episode 127 here.

Transcript

128. Curating Your Psychological Environment

“The environment is where we all meet. Where all of us have a mutual interest. It is the one thing all of us share.” This quote from Lady Bird Johnson gets us started today, and we are talking all about the psychological impact of our inner and outer environments. Welcome in. I'm Doctor Amy Backos, psychologist and art therapist and hostess of the Modern Creative Woman podcast. I am so glad you're here on this audio creativity journey. As we start to move into the idea of psychological impact around environment in the old ways of thinking about behavior, it used to be that a behavior was on the outside, something that two people could observe. We took action, we poured our coffee, or we tidied up the kitchen. More recently, behavior in psychology is defined in a much more specific way. It also includes private behavior, such as what you're thinking, what you're feeling, bodily sensations, the behavior that's only really observable by you. And the more we're considering that there's this inner behavior and outer behavior, the greater understanding we have now of how the environment influences us. Certainly, we know social context influences people's behavior, and it also influences our inner behaviors. And there's many ways that you can manage your environment to make things easier for yourself, both externally and internally. I assume everyone keeps their toothbrush in the bathroom near the sink, and it wouldn't make any sense for us to store our toothbrush, like in the kitchen, or in our office, or in our car. We keep it right next to where we're going to use it, and that idea can really inspire you to keep things in practical places, keep things tidy for a very specific reason, and we'll get into that in just a little bit. The idea that we can influence our inner psychology by both our actions and the things that we create around us, can help you feel better really quick, and it can set you up for feeling better in the long term. Let's get into this. Let's get this started. Here at The Modern Creative Woman, we focus on working inside out and outside in. And that's how I've always known to work with my patients in the hospital or in a clinic, that things on the outside have to change, as well as those things on the inside. When we want to feel better, we have to work in both directions and they really are happening at the same time, and they also support one another. There is a real psychological power when we think about environment. There's the power of place inside and place on the outside. I want to talk about why environment matters, and I'll give you four examples of different environments. And then I've got six ways that you can start to create behavior on the inside and on the outside. That truly gives you a sense of ease and well-being, and the consistent practice of these habits can make a huge impact on your life. Environment is more than just a backdrop. It's not an afterthought at all. It shapes our thoughts, our emotions, and our actions. Think of the state of your car. Is it tidy? Is it dusty? Is it dirty? Is there junk in there? These have a huge impact on you. The environment we're in shapes our sense of peace or distress. A neighborhood near your home that you're familiar with can give you a sense of familiarity. It can also give you a sense of peace simply because it's familiar. But it may not necessarily give you a sense of ease. It depends on what else is happening in any given moment. But familiarity tends to lean us towards a little more relaxed state of mind. There's an abundance of research that shows poor psychological well-being happens. When we are crowded and when spaces are messy. And being too crowded in a space makes it more challenging for us to have ease. Our mind needs to have a little bit of space, perhaps a blank wall to look at or a little space between pictures gives us a sense of openness, and that is psychologically really good for us. Of course, it's a great design aesthetic, and interior designers focus a lot on the craft of creating a space that's open or flowing. And realtors, of course, understand this. They're not bringing people in to look at a house that's for sale. That's all cluttered. They ask people to keep things tidy. If they moved out, they arranged stage furniture in a really beautiful way so that people can picture themselves there with a lot of empty, open space. It feels vast, and that makes it feel like a good investment if someone's buying a home. Our inner environment is. Incredibly impacted by the spaces we inhabit. And that's where you live and also where you go. It could be your car, your favorite coffee shop. We are deeply impacted by the books we read, and we'll get into that in a little bit. Of course, the shows we watch have a huge influence on us, and there's lots and lots of studies about that. The media we consume impacts us internally. If you find yourself doom scrolling the news, you're going to create an upset feeling on the inside. And finally, the people with whom we interact. Play a huge role on how we feel. Everything around us is a potent psychological force on our inner psychological experience. Let's talk about what exactly is environment in the field of psychology? There is, of course, the physical environment, and that's the built spaces that we occupy. Your home, classroom, office. Plus it also includes the physical environment of nature and the natural world that could be parks, forest, having tree in your yard. The second one that describes environment in psychology is the social environment. And this is the people that we're interacting with. And it includes our social circles, the people we want to hang out with, friends, family, plus the people that perhaps we don't want to hang out with. And that might be, um. Colleagues, neighbors. There's people that we have to interact with that maybe we're just not friends with. That social environment also includes our mentors, the people that lift us up, care for us, and it also includes these broader social norms of our community. Do we pick up trash on our block? Do we say hello to our neighbors, etc.? The third is our media environment. This is the books we read, the news we consume, and then all the digital content coming at us through social media and what we're watching on YouTube. It really is creating an environment for us. And younger generations are understanding that life is lived both online and offline, that they are present equally in both. They see how the online world has a huge impact on the real life. The fourth is our internal environment and as I mentioned before, Act considers behavior those inner experiences not simply observable by two people. A private inner behavior is how you talk to yourself, the thoughts that you think on repeat. It's where you direct your attention. Are you thinking about solutions or are you thinking about problems? Anything we're focusing on in the environment has an impact on our internal environment. If I'm looking around my office, I can choose to admire my two chairs. I have really great chairs. I love them, or I can look over a little further and notice there's some dog toys on the floor. It's making a little clutter. What I choose to look at and admire and focus on has a huge impact in how I feel. My favorite painting is a cross for me. There's always something pleasant to look at just for a moment, and reflect on which area of your environment you are most satisfied with. Is it your physical environment? Like what's outside you, your house, your car, your office? Your social environment? The people you're spending your time with that you're getting out and enjoying yourself? Media. That's social media and news, what you're reading. And the last one is your internal environment. Which one are you most satisfied with? Before we shift gears into the how we can create those hospitable inner and outer environments, I just want to sum up that in psychology, our environment is a multi-layered concept. So it's not just the physical room, but the information we're consuming, the social dynamics that we're engaging in. And most importantly, it's a reciprocal relationship. It really is a two way street that how we feel impacts the rooms that we're in and the rooms that we're in impact how we feel. We shape it with our presence and our activities, and we have a lot more influence than you might think. Let's have a look about how psychology suggests that we can really engage in a orderly mind using the environment. So I have six areas that I want to tell you about. And some of these may seem sort of obvious. And if you look around and you're not doing them, then it's not not so obvious. It requires us to take action to shape our environment. So the first one is your house, and a mind feels more orderly when the house is clean. And I'm talking about mostly clutter. We can reduce our stress quite quickly by tidying up our environment. A cluttered environment can really overwhelm our senses visually and aesthetically, and it increases cortisol, which you know is the stress hormone. Conversely, a clean space promotes a sense of calm and control. Every night, I clear everything off my desk so that when I walk into my office each day, I am faced with a tidy space and I feel really prepared to work. You can also increase your focus and your productivity. Here's why. Visual clutter is competing for your attention. It just makes it harder to concentrate. I didn't say it makes it impossible. What I'm saying is your brain has to work a little bit harder to tune out. Visual clutter and an organized space leads to that more organized mind without the visual clutter. You have increased your capacity to work mentally. A tidy space also gives you an improved mood and that sense of control. So if you find yourself struggling with your mood, tidying the house can actually help. The mere act of tidying, combined with the resulting order really does provide the tangible sense of accomplishment. It boosts your mood and your self-esteem. One of the significant problems with the environment being cluttered is that it gives us a sensory overload. Now our brains are constantly processing stimuli when our physical space is messy. Our brains just have to work harder. And what it leads to is mental fatigue. You've heard about decision fatigue, whereby the end of the day, we've made so many decisions, it becomes challenging to make good, clear decisions. Towards the end of the day, it becomes easier to just eat whatever's in the front of the refrigerator. Sit down on the couch. Scroll through our phone. But when we have things planned out, what we want to do with our evenings, we tend to do them. The same holds true with creating a tidy space. We have plans that we can rest with ease and look around. We have a plan to tidy up every evening before bed. It offers a sense of structure that simply can't be found anywhere else. The behavioral link is very relevant. The state of our outer world reflects our inner world, and creating order on the outside can help us feel less chaotic on the inside. Remember, it goes in both directions. A cluttered environment often happens when people are experiencing depression and anxiety. A cluttered environment can remind us of those emotions as well. Let's move on to media in particular. The reading guide. Reading offers empathy and perspective, in particular enhanced empathy. If you're reading fiction, it can improve your theory of mind. And theory of mind is your ability to understand the mental states of other people. It gives you perspective. If you are unable to understand someone's perspective, it's very, very difficult to engage in a conversation with them. So the better your skill of having the theory of mind, the better you're able to communicate with people you love. Reading also gives you emotional resilience, and when we're immersing ourselves into some kind of complex narrative, it's a real gift to our brain. Our brain is biased towards stories. We like stories. It allows us to practice experiencing different emotions. And reading a story lets us see how other people navigate difficult situations. We're experiencing it from a safe distance. Though. Engaging in narratives is a really important part of psychology, creating a coherent trauma narrative is one of the goals of doing trauma work. Children love stories, and so do adults. We are so much more compelled to understand something when it tells a story. Reading a book is so much more engaging for our brain than watching a short form video or a TV show. And finally reading for just a few minutes a day can lower your stress levels. That's huge. Are you reading a few minutes a day? I just started a book by bell hooks called Killing Rage, and I'm reading it with my anti-racism group. So I've got some reading, I've got some social activity, and I've got meaning making going on. There's a huge benefit from making a small action of reading. It gives you things to talk about with other people. It lets you engage your brain in a completely different way. I'll give you a little more science behind that. The narrative transportation is what it's called. When we lose track of ourselves and become fully immersed in a story, and by temporarily exiting our own narrative and stimulating the mental states of others, changes our perspective. Biblio therapy, of course, comes from feminist psychology. That is, the intentional use of literature as a therapeutic tool, and it's increasingly used to help people with all kinds of struggles you can read about grief, you can read about loss. You can read about joy. You can read about happy marriages or unhappy marriages. You can get out of your own story and experience what others might be thinking and doing in that same situation. Next up is the influence of our social circles. Chiron says you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Think of the five people you're spending the most time with. Our understanding of social influence on us starts in early psychology around child development, their social learning theory. And essentially it's where learning behaviors, values, and attitudes. By observing and imitating those people around us, it's unnecessary for us to all experience the consequence of a moral infraction or a crime, because we see that others have an impact on them. We observe. Vicarious learning happens that vicarious learning allows us to infer from others, so we don't all have to. Experience every little thing we can learn through observation. There's also norms and conformity. And in childhood, for all of us to survive our childhood, we have to gain acceptance and avoid being rejected. That gives us the compulsion to conform to the written or unwritten rules of our social group. It gets strongest in adolescence, and then over time, we have to strip away those old habits of looking to others and begin to develop our own inner sense. And that's so much what we do inside. The membership is focusing on your own decisions and values, and moving towards them and shedding the weight of negative social comparisons, or the I should kind of rules that we have in our head from living in the world. One very significant influence of our social circles is on our emotions. There's an abundance of studies that show happiness spreads through our social networks up to three degrees. That means if the clerk is nice to you in the grocery, then you'll be nice to someone else. That's two degrees and then they'll be nice to someone. It really does spread. So the more we're able to engage in positive interactions from our own source. The more likely we are to bump into them from others. The more we fuel anger or rage or judgment or we're spreading those things. I would like to be known for sharing my happiness with the world, and you can start to think of that as one of your goals as well. It directly impacts your community when you're kind and gentle to someone in your family, someone you live with, someone in your neighborhood. It's a huge investment in your community. It's a simple act and it makes a big difference. I do want to put in a word about social boundaries. Of course, we support our friends through difficult times. Of course, on a day to day basis, it's crucial to be intentional about surrounding ourselves with people who inspire and uplift us, and who are open to receiving our inspiration and uplift as well. I've had many times where I worked at a place and decided I wasn't going to engage in conversation with certain people, who only complained because I would leave those conversations feeling pretty bad and there might be legitimate things to complain about. However, pragmatically speaking, I want to feel good at work. You can set those same kind of boundaries for yourself. Let's talk the digital world. One of the big problems with social media is the comparison trap. And if we have yet to let go of those thoughts of comparison from adolescence, we can fall into a real struggle when we observe what other people are doing or having, and will compare our inner experience to one photo of their lovely holiday. When we step back and take a break, we realize that it's a curated reality and we can recognize if we're doing like an upward comparison. We're comparing our new business to someone who's been in business for 20 years. That kind of upward comparison can give us worse feelings. Doom scrolling. You know what that is? That compulsive consumption of negative news and content. It's been shown to increase anxiety, stress, and feelings of helplessness. And that's helplessness. And hopelessness is one of those things that goes with depression. It's one of the biggest predictors of depression. Heavy social media use, in fact, has been linked to higher rates of depression and anxiety and low self-esteem. The short form video content, such as stories and Instagram, Instagram, YouTube are causing changes in our brain. It's impacting the gray matter in our frontal lobes, and the gray matter kind of insulates things, keeps things moving, and our frontal lobes is for planning and predicting. And when we're losing that ability, we're in a lot of trouble. The news and social media is designed to be addictive. One mistake we can really make is consuming biased information. Content that's curated for us, it becomes biased or propaganda. And there are several ways that propaganda influences us to think things that simply aren't true. And if you're unfamiliar with how propaganda works, you can do a little search and understand the content has been universal around the world. When we're being subject to the influence of propaganda regarding social media, then the addictive component creates this constant need for validation, the constant need to know more. People will say, oh, did you hear about that thing that happened ten minutes ago? Our brains are simply not designed to absorb so much negative news so quickly. It makes us feel bad. And you can just look at the news, you know, read the newspaper or the news online once a week. You're not going to miss anything. There really is nothing out there that you need to know right this very second. If the goal is to protect your inner peace. You've heard me talk before about nature and about creativity. Being in nature reduces our stress. Spending time in nature lowers our blood pressure. It lowers cortisol. There's the attention restoration that happens. Nature provides us with this soft fascination, which gives our brain a rest, and it allows us to recover, especially after all that digital stuff. It improves our focus and concentration. That soft fascination, I would say maybe, is slow fascination. You can really spend a long time looking at a tree and you'll start to relax. Being in nature improves our mood, and there's a lot of studies that show just a couple hours a week in a green space is linked to higher self ratings around our health and our subjective well-being. We just feel better. There is an innate drive that we humans have to connect with nature. And if you're an urban dweller like myself. Small pockets of nature, like a city park or window with a flower box, gives you significant mental health benefits. The Japanese art of forest bathing can be obtained in small doses. Finally, the sensory environment I'm talking what you smell, what you see through your senses. Color psychology you're likely familiar with. They impact our mood. Blue is associated with calm. Red and orange. The colors used in fast food are associated with being hungry and having an appetite. Temperature makes a big difference. The right temperature helps you feel at ease. 68 degrees is studied on men as a comfortable temperature. For women, it's a little warmer. A pleasing scent. Light a candle. Bake some cookies. That real estate agent knows to bake some cookies before she has an open house. It helps the home feel more warm. Sound and noise play a significant role in our sensory environment. Noise pollution is a significant environmental stressor, however. Calm sounds, music without words, classical music, jazz, whatever you like that is lacking. Words can really help your mind relax and the sounds of nature are restorative as well. So many of these environmental effects are happening subconsciously. Your senses are always gathering information, and in the previous episode I talked about embodied cognition, all about how our senses are learning and taking in information. That's episode 127 called Your Body Knows. These are things that we can bring into our conscious awareness, and the more we're aware of them, the more savvy we will be out in the world. Think about how businesses use all of these principles to influence your consumer behavior. Specific lighting or scents, like I mentioned with the realtor, are used very strategically regarding our buying behavior. So when you practice that mindfulness around your senses, taking time to savor a nice smile, a nice color or texture. You are starting to take more control of your environment and reflecting on how your space, your social circle and your media habits, you'll start to see that these are things that deeply impact your mental state. How does all of this relate to creativity and art therapy? Well, I'm glad you asked. This idea of environment, the inner and the outer is a holistic approach. Understanding the environment really encourages your holistic approach to feeling good. It's considering these external factors alongside of these internal processes. Art takes a lot of these boxes. Being able to view art, in particular looking at landscapes, gives us a different sense. We can get lost a little bit longer. According to recent research that I've read as compared to a more abstract painting, I especially like modern art and abstract paintings, and I agree with the results of this study, that it is easier to linger longer in a landscape painting or looking at a landscape. Research with babies has shown preference for looking at faces, and that is true for adults as well. Babies will linger longer on images that include faces, and they prefer faces over anything else, objects or landscapes. The idea of using all of your senses to soothe on the inside and create that inner, hospitable environment for pleasant thoughts and pleasant emotions, requires you to cultivate your own aesthetic preference. So looking at images on your wall that you really, really enjoy having your screensaver of a place you really enjoy. All of these are small changes that have a huge impact on your inner experience, because you're targeting these images to please your personal aesthetic. Making art is also a whole body sensory experience. Moving your body, the sound of the paint, the markers engaging your right and left hand engages your entire brain. Many teenagers will draw what we call a stereotypical image. They'll figure out how to draw one thing, and they'll draw it over and over and over again. And it's generally attributed to not wanting to be judged. And yet, once they move out of that phase and create original pieces every time, not stereotypical for their art, then they start to get insight and enjoy. When you take control of your environment, you will start to feel better internally. Remember, you are not just a product of your environment, you are an active participant. Your mood contributes to the mood of the room and it just requires. Focus on what you would like to project outward, creating that inner environment that feels good and then sharing it with others. When you're at home and you want to feel calm and at ease. Creating intentional spaces where you can inhabit how you want to feel. How do you want to feel at work? Can you shift your office to reflect that? And then, of course, a bedroom is a great example. We want it to be something relaxing without a television, without bright colors, easygoing natural colors. But every space that you're in is open to you putting your fingerprint on it. Small changes in your environment really can lead to these significant psychological shifts. In psychology, we talk about the subjective experience of well-being. Someone's subjective well-being is their inner sense of how they're doing. And the environment that you create by making art and shifting things around on the paper or with clay and sculpture allows you to create that subjective well-being. It brings you into flow. You're fully immersed in the present moment. Those kinds of experiences then allow you to direct your energy where you want it to go. Internally and externally, the more you practice in your art, the easier it becomes in your life. So now that you know, what will you create? I would love if you could drop a review, subscribe to the podcast, drop a five star review, and if you have a moment and a review in words, this is the way that Apple knows to present the podcast to other people and the more we can allow many women around the world to hear this, the better. We want to share the creativity and how we can live a better life for ourselves, for our communities, and make a world a more creative, better kind of place. And I would also like to give a special hello to my Hungarian listeners. We have some new listeners from Budapest and about that I am very excited as a Hungarian American woman. I'm delighted that you're here. I look forward to speaking with you in the next episode.