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There’s been a lot of talk lately about “creative writing” or “therapeutic writing” as a way to release thoughts or emotions that can’t be put into words.
But in fact, psychology has been using writing as a tool since the 1980s to help patients better understand themselves, increase their self-esteem, resolve recurring thoughts, or improve their relationships.
For as long as I can remember, I have been writing in a “therapeutic” way.
When I was a kid, at Christmas time I always asked for a journal with a little lock as a gift so that I could freely capture everything that was in my mind.
At school, when something was bothering me, I would turn to the last page of my notebook and let it all out. Every time we had an argument, I would write to my mom. And the same with my friends.
However, it was not a conscious exercise, or rather, it did not have a theoretical basis that defined what I was doing and that doing so would bring me certain benefits.
Honestly, that’s a way to not explode and destroy everything.
Early last year, things changed in the most unexpected way. I signed up for an online training program to try to learn some techniques and create “muscle mass”.
To my surprise, this challenge involved a lot of mental work (and a strong commitment to rest), including creating lists, celebrating each “check-in,” watching this or that conference/documentary, etc., and of course: writing.
When we woke up, we wrote a kind of “morning page,” a technique proposed by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way, first published in 1992.
The exercises included quizzes etc. In fact, before going to bed we also had to list the things we were grateful for during the day.
Anyway, I, as one of those people who finishes the book or movie even if they didn’t like it, accomplished my task, despite some resistance.
This “denial” is my way of realizing that something is bothering or hurting me, which is why my brain reacts by saying:
What a stupid thing to say! What does this have to do with the Bulgarian squat or the Romanian deadlift?
The point is, a few days ago, I stumbled upon the notebook I was using during those weeks.
I decided to take a look and discovered that when Jessica was asked to “list 5 things you hate and 5 things you like about yourself on a physical level, and another 5 and 5 things in general,” she listed 12 on the hate list and only 3 on the like list.
That version of me couldn’t even identify 5 lovely aspects of his body or 5 positive traits of his lifestyle. On the other hand, he did say that he hated his thick legs, his size, his impatience, volatility, anxiety, etc.
Not to mention the words I had to write to myself. The rudeness hurts me when I reread them. I even say to myself out loud: “That’s it, but that’s not how I think. I’m not like that.”
Reuniting with that part of me helped me understand that some ideas do not define us.
The truth is, our perception of ourselves is created by our internal dialogue. By telling ourselves too much that we are savage or ugly, we end up believing it, but that is not necessarily the case.
The last part of the program is precisely noticing how the mind plays tricks on you, how it normalizes and assumes subjective, limiting, exaggerated, catastrophic thoughts, etc., which appear almost automatically as if they were absolute truths: I’m not good at this, I’m not capable, I can’t, everything will go wrong.
To achieve this, there is a technique: ask yourself if what you are saying is true, what is the worst that could happen, what is actually most likely to happen, what you need to feel more secure, etc.
In fact, this Saturday the 13th is my birthday, and my birthdays are usually filled with those bad thoughts. Maybe that’s why “life” put that notebook in front of my eyes again, trying to make me remember that I don’t have such thoughts about myself, I have walked a lot, observed, learned, and I like myself…even though my thoughts sometimes destroy me.
PD: In the same therapeutic writing style, I recommend the miniseries Something to Clean (Maid), which is based on Stephanie Land’s autobiographical book Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, which became a bestseller in 2019.
go through: Jessica Dos Santos
Tell me your story, write it as you like, let’s shape it together and share it. In life, it is always necessary to spread love in different forms: lasultimasnoticiasdelamor@gmail.com
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