Start Journaling
When I was around eight years old, the one activity that helped me the most, and that I was glued to doing was writing. I wrote whenever and wherever I could. I first began writing short stories for children’s books (my far away dream at that time). It acted as my escapism to create these beautiful (cringey, now thinking back) fantasies of worlds I came up with in my head.
Most of the time, it served as a good distraction. Other times, when what I was dealing with (or even now) was tough to take, more intense, I would ramble through my room for a journal to write extremely indecipherable scribbles on a page.
I would write intensely, holding the pencil as hard as I could, and so fast as to catch every aching thought I had that my wrist would cramp afterwards. Even though I could BARELY read what I had written, the release of it from my head to something physical I could see gave me such a relief. To see everything I was holding in on a measurable scale gave me that feeling of letting everything out.
Writing is the best way to understand ourselves and what we experience.
soo…
How can writing help?
In most cases, when the build-up of stress, negative-positive emotions, and experiences replay in our heads, our bodies will hold all of that.
That’s why we can go and say “I’m fine” “I’ve been good” so easily when we clearly aren’t.
Our bodies begin to hold the tension our minds want to hide away or not deal with. And your body will need a way to release that.
Writing helps by being that release of weight and tension
- writing down your thoughts, feelings, anything can be a more calm version of punching something, working out, etc
You have a better understanding of yourself
- No one should know you better than you, so why not take the time to figure yourself out.
- You’ll be able to see patterns of habits, triggers (both good and bad) that you have.
Response versus reaction
- Writing can help you express what you need to before you reach that point of exploding. Almost like reversing that habit of bottling in what you feel. It’s having the control to respond, just let your feelings be rather than letting any little issue tick them off. This is basically letting go of tension, but the point is to stray away from bottling in. Learning to deal/sit with yourself rather than ignore. Or react.
If you’re not a fan of plain old writing left to right then I’ll let you choose.
My favorite part; creativity.
Different ways to write
Option #1: Word dropping
Start by having a page in a notebook or a google doc. This could act as your word(s) of the day, week, month. You can change how often you want to write a word and how many. Essentially with this activity you’ll want to write a word down that you think sums up your day.
For example, if I started a word a day and my first one was “blue” for today. That’s all I’d do. Gradually, you’ll have a page of words for the week and so on. It acts like a super quick journal entry. Later on, you can choose whether you want to explain those words. Ex.) Blue- went to the beach with my friends and had a really calm day.
The word you choose can be based off moods, attitudes, experiences, emotions, etc etc. This is a easy way of learning what things make you feel certain types of ways.
Option #2: Short Writing
This one is easy, just write a few sentences. Maybe paragraphs and a sketch to go along with it.
- as a sub-option: create a storyline using drawings of ANY level to reflect what you feel. Sky’s the limit!
Option #3: Write poetry
Go ahead and try blackout poetry. (This is taking any writing, not yours, and circling out words you want to use in one poem, preferably staying on the same page. You could even create a poem out of an article you found.)
These are just a few ideas, but I hope you try them! So much of what happens with us can be simply understood if we took the time to reflect.
