Today I want to write and share my experience about writing, and how it has helped me heal, or at least helped me in the process.
So, first things first. Back in 2019, I had one of the biggest bouts in my life of anxiety, intrusive thoughts, psychic stuff, etc., my mind was completely crazy. This got to the point that it was preventing me from functioning in the everyday world. The condition got so bad that I couldn't even carry on a normal conversation because I was completely absorbed in my own thoughts. I spoke slowly and was more attentive to what was going on in my mind and what it was perceiving than what was going on outside my head. And while I'm not going to talk about the events that led me to that point, I will say that it was relatively serious. In the end, I had to consult a doctor, a psychiatrist/psychologist. My situation got better, then it got worse for a while, and it went back and forth over time, and finally, it has improved quite a bit. But today I'm going to talk about something that during that whole process, helped me recover and heal in some way, and that was, writing.
I think you can tell I'm not an experienced writer. I've been writing here on and off for almost eight years, but other than that, I only started writing for myself almost two years ago. But I think nonetheless that writing has helped me a fair bit in the process of centering and keeping myself grounded.
Writing has become for me a way to clear my head and organize my thoughts. Many times my head is full of thoughts that don't let me concentrate on anything else, and when I write them down it seems that those thoughts leave my head and are captured on paper. It's like, I can give myself a break and not think about it anymore for a while. And writing is very similar to speaking. When we write about something, we have to organize what we say so that it makes sense. This very act is what makes us organize what's happening in our minds in real time while we write. And through this same process we can realize how many of our thoughts and feelings are insubstantial, by writing them down on paper we can realize that many of our worries or insecurities are really absurd and/or have no basis in reality. Many of them start from fictitious situations made in our minds that have no connection with reality.
Sometimes we simply don't realize the difference between the fictitious world of our mind - constructed by a series of assumptions, beliefs, thoughts and so on - and the real world outside our head. We can get trapped in this mental world that is simply imaginary. By writing all these thoughts down on paper, you can notice the vanity behind them. And over time it can help us discern what's real and what's not about it all.
I like to write down my thoughts, whatever I'm thinking if this thought has been haunting me for a while. If you look carefully at my profile you can see that most of my posts are under the “thoughts” tag. This has not always been the case. I used to post more on other topics, and I enjoyed writing about philosophy. While I hope to continue to post more about philosophy soon, and I still love to do so, what I mostly do is talk about my thoughts and what I'm thinking at the moment. For me, writing about whatever I'm thinking about helps make my mind sharper and wittier, as well as cleaner and neater.
What I have personally done is to write down my thoughts on paper, of whatever subject catches my attention at the time, and write down everything I think about the subject, leaving nothing unsaid. Sometimes what I write can contradict itself. Sometimes I write questions that I seek to answer. Sometimes I feel like I am writing the same thing and the same thing many times in a row. I write, basically, what are my concerns at the moment. But it doesn't really matter. The important thing is that just by the act of writing you gain mental clarity and begin to bring order and clear your mind.
And I know you can write for many reasons and different purposes, but this is mainly why I do it, what it has done for me and how it has helped me personally.
Over time, if you keep track of what you write you may see certain things about yourself, notice recurring themes, patterns, etc., and see how over time you get more clarity about what you were writing. You may get answers to your doubts, or simply see things from a different perspective. You can also keep track of what your thoughts and concerns were at a historical point, or how far you have progressed since then.
If you can't think of what to write about, you can simply write what you want to talk to someone about but don't have anyone to talk to at the moment. Or you can write what you want to say. You can write about your feelings, or your thoughts, like I do. You can write to someone you're not going to talk to.
Lately, I've also been interested in the writing challenges that are on the web. They're good because I don't choose what I'm going to write about, I'm simply forced to write about whatever it is. And since there are no rules, I can write honestly, the way I want to, a little or a lot, and see the result. In fact, I've liked it so far. The point is that whatever it is, you write about it.
In general, writing has served me as an outlet, as a way to express all the accumulation of thoughts that I had in my head and that took all my attention. Somehow it has helped me to decongest my mind from all that was clouding it, leaving me more attention for what I really want to focus on.
For me it has made a big difference, and although I am not going to say that it is the only thing that has helped me heal, because I have done many other things as well and it would not be accurate to say that, writing has played its part and it has had a role during this process.
So I guess I just wanted to share how writing has helped me in my personal battle against thoughts - they are not a good place to get lost without directions - and how it has helped me heal in a sense and get out of that place. So, this is a sort of free-flowing post, I hope I have covered all the angles and left nothing unsaid.