Writing As Therapy

It’s no secret to anyone that things are a little bit stressful here in the SJ household.  We’re in a new location, not even in our own home, and we’re both job hunting.  With so much up in the air, yes, anxiety levels are sometimes a little bit high.

So how am I, a woman with a mild-to-moderate case of GAD, coping with the extra stressors that have been piled on since July?  You know, other than resenting the ever-loving crap out of my husband’s former employer.  There are definitely better, more productive ways to manage my stress.

One such method is something I had started back in the dark, dark days of PPD hell – a focus on the positive.  My therapist at the time urged me to try to find positive things about each day and write them down.  I kept with it for a while, and I did notice a difference.  I’ve done it sporadically since then, when things felt particularly bleak, but it never became a real, solid routine.

A week and a half ago, though, one of my dearest friends started posting Daily Positives in her journal, and urged her readers to do the same for a period of eight days.  I latched right on to that bait, and immediately started to notice a difference.  In so doing, I determined that it was something I should keep doing.  Not just for eight days, but for as long as it feels right.  I’m starting with a month (today is day #11), but it may well continue after that as well.

In this time of recession, job loss, and personal turmoil, it is really easy to get lost in negatives.  Every day is NOT all sunshine and roses, even here in tropical Florida, where it’s hard to even remember that it’s autumn.  But every day does have at least a few rays of hope.  No, those rays don’t take away the worries.  They don’t stop my brain from obsessing about finding work, missing loved ones, or trivialities like Christmas plans or something someone said to me in passing.  But remembering the positives forces me to shift my focus, at least for the length of the journal entry (and usually quite a while beyond), onto something good and away from anything negative.  That can only be a good thing, as far as I’m concerned.

Inspired by Your Face(book)

I think we talk to ourselves and secretly hope that someone else is also listening.
– Kolys from TOBWOT, quoted on FaceBook

I’m a long-time journaler. Somewhere, packed in a box somewhere, there are old books – many with cheap, flimsy locks on them – detailing my daily life as a preteen, as a teen, and through my twenties. I have a paper journal even now, as well as maintaining multiple blogs and online journals. With online media, one expects to be read – by our friends and family, or by the Internet at large. We know we have an audience, and we hope they’re paying attention and not bored to tears by the ins and outs of our every day lives (or maybe that’s just me.

Funny thing is, though, what struck me about my husband’s comment wasn’t its relation to blogging. It resonated with the paper-journaler within me. After all, it’s no “secret,” as he puts it, that we want to be heard when we’re typing away at our screens. But paper journals are private. Aren’t they? Still, what aspiring writer hasn’t thought, at least occasionally, that their diaries might be found someday, long after they’re gone. (or, again, maybe that’s just me).

I write for myself, yes. I write to get my feelings outside of my head, and to thrill when I find just the right turn of phrase.  But I also write for my audience, real or perceived.  I write with the hope that someone will read my words and be affected by them.

I write because I hope someone is “listening.”

Photo credit

(Dis)content

My attempt to blog every day this month fell by the wayside, and I’m struggling to not beat myself up over it. It’s easy to let that sort of thing get me down and make me feel like a failure. I can sit here and list all the reasons I think it hasn’t worked out (and believe me, I’ve been doing just that on the inside), but that’s not productive in the long-run.

As a student, I remember learning that it takes 21 consecutive days to build a new habit. Those 21 days needn’t be started on the first day of the month, or on a Monday, or at any time in particular. They just need to happen.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if life gets in the way, or I feel totally uninspired, or the words simply refuse to come. So long as I keep coming back here, I am not a failure.

This is me, putting aside the blame and climbing back up onto my horse writing chair.