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Does Writing Help with Depression?

Some additional information in one line
Vlad-1.jpg
Vlad Osipkov July 22, 2017
Writing-can-cure-depression.jpgA few years back I used to work a lot on my writing. It wasn’t anything professional, it wasn’t even in English, I just really enjoyed writing different role-playing settings.  Very fitting for a geek like me, but I digress.

A few years later, when I joined the army, I forgot all about my writings.  I still enjoyed making up scenarios and the like, it’s just that I was busy 24/7 with boot camp and some “specialized training”.

At the time, my way to escape from reality my connection to these scenarios – my imagination was key. Thinking about of all of those impossible scenarios, of fantasy and possibilities, is one of the few things that allowed me to cling to my sanity. To not grow too comfortable with my depression.

When I met with a proper therapist, we talked about some of the things that I used to do before becoming depressed, and he introduced me to a new concept.

Journaling for depression and anxiety

The idea of using writing as a form of treatment for depression and anxiety wasn’t something that I disliked. Unlike many forms of obscure therapy, it did make a lot of sense to me. The idea resonated with me, and I was ready to apply it.

There was just this one tiny problem. I had a bit of a stigma.

No, not against writing or anything, but against “journaling”.  I imagined myself sitting down and writing “dear diary” in some notepad.  Bah.  It took my therapist only a while to notice this fact and explain the matter to me more clearly.  I haven’t looked back ever since.

My website is a part of my “journal”.  If you really think about it, this very website is essentially one big journal. I write about my research, data and personal thoughts here.  I do so to spread my ideas, but the basics are still very much journal-like the way I see it.

So, why am I doing this?  Or more specifically, why should you write a journal/in general.  In one study on the subject of ‘expressive writing’, a fancy term for ‘expressing yourself through writing’, they gathered 40 major depression sufferers.

On day one, they split all participants into two groups and had each group perform a different task.

1.) Group One Was to write about their feelings surrounding an emotionally-charged event for 20 minutes a day.

2.)  Group Two wrote about their, non-emotional, daily events.

After five days they checked both groups condition using a standard questionnaire.  The people from group one showed a significant decrease in mental symptoms, one that lasted for up to four weeks. This isn’t the only piece of data on the subject, either.

It is largely agreed that expressive writing does the mind well, some data shows that it actually produces therapeutic effects on the brain.  Although some studies show that many people demonstrate some negative symptoms at the beginning, the eventually relax.  This is probably due to the uncomfortable nature of journaling.

After all, pulling words out of your very core is a very difficult thing to do.  Still, why isn’t this method more popular?

The resistance to expressive writing.

Like I’ve said before, there’s a certain stigma around the subject of “writing”. The imagery most people have for writing in a diary is childish at best and laughable at worst. I know this much from personal experience, as do you (probably)

But when desperate enough this problem can be overcome, it isn’t the main issue here.

The worst thing about writing as a form of therapy is the fact that you actually have to put your darkest and most painful feelings into words.  And that’s not an easy thing to do.  

Depressed people tend to be very closed, floating inside their own little world.  It can be argued that they are remarkably self-centered, and us such don’t actually put their problems into words.

And when they do, their friends end up being their personal therapists, which is very annoying.

Once your thoughts are out of your head they become defined. They aren’t ‘concepts’ to ‘ideas’ that you have, they deal with actual, tangible, problems.

And that process of “defining” your thoughts is hard and isn’t something that depressed people really like going through. They don’t have the will for doing “hard” things.

Yet the benefits far outweigh these difficulties, and there are no ‘long-term’ negative effects of expressive writing on either the mind or the body.

Did I say body? Yeah, as it turns out, writing also reduces stress. And we all know how bad stress can be.

What kind of writing helps your mental health?

We already established that expressive writing does the body and the mind good. We already discussed how is has to be “expressive” writing – general writing didn’t produce any results in terms of lessening depression. But if we were to be more specific, how should you write in order to get the best results?

Here are a few of my ideas:

Writing a journal

Best-selling author, investor and entrepreneur Tim Ferris has a personal journal. He writes in it in every morning. Things he’s grateful for, his hopes for the day and some daily positive affirmations. At the end of the day, he writes about the best things that happened to him and things that he could’ve done better. According to him, it helps him de-stress. They call it “The five minute journal”.

So what am I saying? Do you have to follow Tim Ferriss’s method? Of course not! Write about your daily experiences, the best of them and the ones that can be improved – that’s great! But that doesn’t have to be the end of that.

Write people that you have met, your opinions on certain events and any future possibilities that you may experience.

The biggest advantage of journaling is that it gives you a very clear system, a schedule of sorts. It’s the easiest way to write consistently and helps you get into the habit of writing. If you have about 20 spare minutes at the end of each day, and you probably do, you should give journaling a try.

Vlad-1.jpgAuthor Bio

My name is Vlad Osipkov and I have been suffering from anxiety and depression for many years now.

I started this website in order to share everything that I have learned, as well as all of the stuff that helped me out with my struggles. 

Spirituality is an important part of your overall well-being, but is often pushed to the back burner. Get back in touch with your spiritual life with our self-paced journaling course, 15 Day Spiritual Journey

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