The Therapeutic Benefits of Writing.
On my 11th birthday I received a gift that changed my life. It was a journal. Pink and cheesy, the typical design that’s always been thought to be for girls. I never really liked pink, so I didn’t like the gift and I stored it somewhere in my room where I couldn’t see it. A few months after my birthday, I wrote on this journal for the first time in my life. I wrote like if I was talking to a friend: “Hello dear Diary, how are you?”… To me it felt like the journal could listen.
What sort of problems can an 11-year-old girl write about? To an adult may seem trivial things, but on that entry I wrote that I was feeling worried about my grandma’s health and I was feeling lonely because I had a fight with one of my best friends from school. Those are the sort of things that can still be anxiety provoking on an adult. The thing is that society has conditioned us to keep those things to ourselves. It can be very difficult to let it out, even in the solitude of our bedroom with pen and paper at hand having a conversation.
This gift changed my life because thanks to that, it became a habit for me to write about my feelings. I wrote about the things I liked, the things I didn’t, all the boys I fell in love with and little self-help quotes that I found on other books that still sound very relevant to me today.
Those journal entries laid the path to self-knowledge and self-expression that has brought me here today and this is why you’re reading me. Writing became my therapy and the best tool I’ve found to communicate with myself and healing deep emotional wounds.
Re-reading my journals made me notice that I only wrote whenever I was feeling sad. Every time I felt stuck or had an emotional pain that I couldn’t process, I would grab my pen and purge my feelings out onto the paper. Ten or even 20 years after those confessions, I can see how I’ve managed to evolve as a human being and what patterns I’m still repeating on my relationships since I was very young. I can also feel proud of my evolution and have some sort of reassurance that the decisions I struggled to make ended up leading me to where I am today; feeling happy for where I’m standing and for the things I’m doing as a result of having followed my heart every time I had to make an important decision.
We tend to live feeling full of regrets for the things that could have been or thinking where we’d be if we would have made different choices, but the truth is, that everything is part of our evolution and even the things we consider mistakes can be taken as an opportunity to learn a lesson that we wouldn’t have learnt otherwise. Writing about all of these processes can help us to see what’s behind our motives and what things we need to work on to shape a better version of ourselves as we keep evolving.
It doesn’t always have to be about sad or difficult things…
In the past I used to write only once a month or even once a year. It was like I was using my journal as a way to listen to myself and feel better after letting out some sort of burden. That’s great, and I’m grateful that I did it like that, because it taught me how to listen and how to tune to some form of higher guidance that would encourage me to keep going despite the difficulties I was creating for myself. Somehow, I learnt to be my own therapist because I tapped with that inner wisdom that we all have inside of us, but from which we are very disconnected, because of the daily pressures of our lives and the distractions we surround ourselves with.
Almost three years ago I upgraded my writing practice to a daily basis, where I reflect on things that I learnt the day before or where I expose my deepest insecurities, the anger and frustration a situation or an interaction with a person awakens in me, or the things I’m failing or not wanting to see within a relationship with someone. After expressing these feelings I somehow open the door to an inner dialogue where another perspective around the subject is given to me and I gain more clarity and manage to find solutions to my issues.
It’s not always a straightforward process. Sometimes I can write about the same issue for months, and once I’m out of the situation and read back on my words I realise: “Oh my god, I knew about this all the time! Why did I get stuck on this point for so long?” Sometimes it’s not so easy to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that the reason for our suffering lies behind our decision to stick to the familiar, what we’ve always repeated time after time even when we know is not good for us and we haven’t learnt to do it differently. That’s why writing helps. As we learn from reading from other people’s experiences or stories, a regular self-reflective practice can lead us to become our best inner teachers.
Sometimes it’s not so easy to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that the reason for our suffering lies behind our decision to stick to the familiar.
Writing is a gateway to the soul.
Sometimes it’s easier to say to a friend how pretty they look, how smart they are, how much we admire them for their achievements. We surround our friends with compliments that we don’t even dare to tell ourselves on the first place. If it’s difficult for you to give yourself some compliments, writing is a great way to start.
Writing beautiful things to ourselves, where we recognise our own achievements and where we show gratitude towards the good things we are receiving for being in harmony with our inner compass, it’s a way to enhance nurturing and loving practices for ourselves.
Lots of studies have shown that having a gratitude journal and dedicate 10-15 minutes of our mornings to write about the things we feel grateful for, improves our mental health and supports a sense of direction, as we feel aligned with our purpose in life. Being aware of the things we are receiving can be a great sign that we are on the right track. Even feeling grateful for things that haven’t happen yet can help us to manifest them. ‘When you embrace gratitude, your body, as the unconscious mind will begin to believe it’s in that future reality in the present moment’. The emotions that make you feel grateful for something that is yet to happen ‘are the energy that is going to carry your intent’ (Dispenza, J., p. 82).
When we print our thoughts onto the paper, we are letting our soul speak through us, for us. A stream of subconscious thoughts flows down, to release things that we block as a way to protect ourselves from feeling the pain that’s hidden behind those experiences, memories, unachieved fantasies or repressed desires. The truth is that keeping them inside is more harmful than letting them express for themselves, and we do actually feel relieved when we acknowledge to ourselves all the things we’ve been running away from.
It can be embarrassing at first…
I get it, I’ve felt it too. It can be embarrassing to acknowledge that you feel anger because you don’t feel valued in a relationship, at work or at your home environment. It can be embarrassing to recognise that as a human, you too make mistakes. It can be embarrassing to write about the excitement you feel when you spend time with a person you’re attracted to, or very scary to recognise that you have deep feelings for that person. It’s even more embarrassing to read back on your words and to see how sad/depressed/in love with/angry/or whatever you were on a particular moment in time. It’s a very common thing. It’s not easy to confront these truths about ourselves, and sometimes looking back at our mistakes can be painful; but this shouldn’t stop you from writing and letting these things out. It gets better with time and the sense of embarrassment actually disappears.
There’s nothing more freeing than letting go of patterns that create shame, guilt and repeat themselves because we remain ignorant of them. When we write we admit to be victims of these patterns, but we also take responsibility to change them by expressing our discomforts and finding solutions while seeing the issue from a different perspective. This is also an act of self-love; we’re paying attention to our struggles and acting upon them.
Expressing is the first step towards letting go because you no longer keep anything silenced inside.
We can transform our sorrows into beauty.
With our voice we can transform our feelings. When we use a powerful feeling as the fuel to write a poem, a song or a letter; we’re using the language of beauty, art and love to convert what no longer serves us onto a learning experience that can serve others to find answers for themselves. It’s only when we are open and honest with ourselves that we can achieve that level of transformation, which will be noticeable through our words.
With our words we have the power to reach other people’s hearts.
Writing is not solely a therapeutic self-help practice; it can serve us to express difficult feelings to other people that we would struggle to express out loud. Being authentic with what we say can make a strong impact in whoever listens to us and it can help to dissolve boundaries.
One of my favourite ways of doing this is by writing letters; even when I’m not intending these letters to reach their recipient. I just write the letter to find peace and resolution by expressing something I couldn’t say otherwise, or simply because I don’t have the opportunity to communicate in person anymore.
It doesn’t matter if the other person ever gets to read the letter; the simple act of writing it creates a bridge for communication and understanding. You release a message that you’ve probably been holding on to for quite a while and you with releasing you can find a sense of peace.
I deeply believe that we’re all connected through our subconscious minds and communicating by letters can be an act of psych magic. You can find closure and put something to rest after you’ve written it. You can even burn the letter afterwards. There’s something really mystic about handing over our worries or concerns to the element of fire. To me it symbolises the end of a cycle and the deep trust I feel when I surrender my needs to a higher force.
You can find closure and put something to rest after you’ve written it.
A few prompts to get you started:
- Write a letter to the person you were 10 years ago. Before you start, reflect on the things that you were doing back then, where were you? Can you reassure him/her that your life today is even better than what you imagined at that point in time? What things have improved? Are there any things that still need some polishing or haven’t changed much? Give thanks to that younger version of yourself for having pushed you towards where you are right now. Seal the letter on an envelop and give it to a friend that you trust. Ask them to post it to you later on in the year when you least expect it. You can do the same exercise for your future self.
- Start a morning pages practice. This is something I borrowed from Julia Cameron’s book The Artist Way (a book that changed my life). It’s simply about writing first thing in the morning, after you’ve woken up and before starting your day. Simply write whatever comes to your mind without paying attention to what you write or what style you use. You’re simply letting the pen write for you whatever comes to your head. Even if it’s just for 15 to 20 min every morning, you definitely notice the effects of clearing your head before you get ready for your day and your writing style definitely improves. The more you do it, the more honest you become.
- Describe the memories of a specific day. Describe the places you were at, the colours you experienced, the weather, the smells, the sounds. Try to be as specific as you can about every single detail. The conversations you had or the lack of them. The feelings that arouse from within. What was good about that day and why would you like to treasure it in your journal?
- Write about the dreams/goals you want to achieve in life. This may sound cliché but expressing about your dreams and desires is the first step towards manifesting them on the physical reality. What parallel life would you be living if you listened to those desires? Describe it with as much detail as possible, inluding the feelings that come from imagining this paralel life.
- Write a letter to someone, saying something you’ve always wanted to say but you find difficult to say. Don’t worry about this person reading or not the letter. The objective is to express the feelings. Later on you’ll decide if it’s better to give it to the person involved or to the fire.
References:
- Dispenza, J. , “Becoming Supernatural” (London: Hay House UK, 2017), p.82.
- Yhonet Garcia’s Journals since she was 11.