This is a case where drawing a mandala really did serve primarily as a centering exercise.

It’s not easy to get me angry, but when there’s something to get really angry about, my brain gets obsessive. My husband and I received some upsetting news the day before we were scheduled to go down to Florida to visit my grandparents, and we agreed that we wouldn’t talk about it until we got back. Of course, we were both thinking about it the entire time. When we returned, we both had to deal with the situation, which I did by writing a 2000 word email. It took about 2 hours. The words had been brewing and stewing in my brain all week, and by the time I finished, I was in a massive state of agitation. Drawing this mandala helped me regain my composure. I deliberately used rainbow colors to lift my mood, although the skewing of the pattern shows to me how off-kilter I was at the time.