Writing Yourself to Health

The road to good health has as much to do with the mind as it has to do with proactive medical care.  Often, emotional issues manifest as physical problems. Generally, the problems multiply from the stress infiltrating the person’s environment.  Stress builds because people bottle up their emotions and ignore their effects.  One way to ease stress and tension is writing out thoughts and emotions in a journal.  Once the issues are made concrete on paper, stress lessens.

Once emotions leave the body, the body’s natural defenses are more capable of keeping us well and content.  Certainly, journaling during an illness can help us take the edge off the issues surrounding any trauma.  However, being proactive and using journaling as an outlet before medical issues manifest is optimal.      

Journaling can take many forms and is easily adapted to a person’s experiences and style.  One of the most common forms of journaling, creative writing, is often mistaken as a practice only necessary for the professional writer.  Yet, the simple process of writing down thoughts is essential for all who by nature contemplate their worlds.  Like the creative writer, we all have stories to tell and what better place than our own private journal, a secret treasure of words and emotions, to record them.

Another type of journal, often used in psychotherapy, is the dialogue journal.  This type of writing allows the author to dialogue with him/herself and work out problems, dissecting irrational thoughts before they become debilitating.   Engaging in such a practice can provide balance in one’s emotional life and keep negative thoughts from building into the stress and tension that we have already determined cause illness.  Like any journal, this one provides an archive of thought patterns to which we can refer and from which we can learn.

Writing is therapeutic; it is an organic, creative, act that transforms lives.  Like taking medicine, journaling can become part of a daily routine, one that focuses on self and self care.  Start small.  Your goal is not to write perfectly.  Indeed, no one will read this journal except you—unless you decide to let them.  You need not worry about the rules governing those English classes in school.  Instead, make the journal a personal place for meditation and respite.  Develop a ritual surrounding your daily time with your journal and commit yourself to a healthy physical and emotional life.