Anyone who’s truly suffered with clinical depression knows that it can feel as though there is no way out. When you’ve lost all hope, and find yourself trapped in and endless cycle of misery, just making a decision to do something seems like an impossible task. For those of us that are lucky, we have access to healthcare, therapists, doctors, and medications that ease our journey back towards a sense of normalcy. For many people though, access to healthcare is limited or non-existent. Finding your way out of the depths of depression on your own is a daunting task. Fortunately, there is a way, even for those of us that can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel, and the best news is that it’s free. All you need is a pen, a piece of paper, and a few minutes of your time.
The therapeutic value of writing has been proven effective time and time again, for treating abuse victims and recovering addicts, to trauma victims and cancer patients. There is a growing focus on writing as a helpful tool in overcoming depression as well. Putting pen to paper forces you to not only consider what you feel, but to confront your emotions head on, give them validation, and then to try and understand them. Sometimes the simple act of identifying and owning your emotions will give you a path forward, for once you can state how you feel, you can decide whether or not you want to keep feeling that way, or work towards something else.
Whether you are working with a therapist or trying to move forward through this trying time on your own, writing can help. The basics things to remember are that you need to write every day, you need to be honest with yourself, and you aren’t writing to anyone else. No one else needs to see these thoughts, so you can proceed without fear of judgment. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar, and feel free to add doodles or images. Just use this space to express. Sometimes the worst thing about depression is not knowing where to begin, and creative expression may just help you gain some insight into what it is that you need.
Don’t expect an overnight miracle. One 20-minute session of writing isn’t going to cure you of your depression. This is part of a process, but it’s an important and very useful part of healing. If you have trouble getting started, just begin by writing about what you did that day. Just putting down a short list of things that you managed to accomplish can help you begin to see even the smallest accomplishment as a victory. And once you’re in the habit of writing, your thoughts will begin to flow a bit more freely and you should begin to see more positivity in your life.
Keep your focus on the good things when you write, unless there is a specific topic or issue that you need to work through. Writing about the good things, even if they are few and far between, can allow you to go back and read every few days, to give yourself some perspective.
If you need to, you can also find writing prompts on various websites that can give you exercises specifically geared towards depression. Feel free to use this space to set goals for yourself, even if it’s just something as simple as taking a shower each day, or making an effort to reach out to just one person that you are close to. Follow up with how the experience was, and remember to record the details of how it made you feel.
Writing can be cathartic and enlightening, and any sort of expressive exercise is going to help you be present in the moment and force you to examine how you feel, where you are, and to help identify where you would rather be. Expressive writing is just one tool that can be used to begin your healing process, but it’s an important one. Journaling allows you to track your progress, as well as to help you find the small joys. It’s also useful for gaining perspective. If on Tuesday you were miserable, and wrote about how terrible things were, you might go back on Friday and reread it, and realize that things weren’t as bad as they seemed at the time.
Again, it’s important to remember that depression is a complex disease, and that there are numerous causes, and therefore widely varying treatment methods, that need to be explored and examined for each individual. Writing is not a cure-all for depression, nor will it have the same effect on everyone. What it can do is give you an outlet, or safe space, for you to delve inside yourself to try and figure out where your depression stems from, and how to move forward to take back your life.
ABOUT
David Grover is a Communications Manager at Timeo, a useful tool for business in the UK. He's also a freelance career coach, who's always eager to share his experience. In his free time he enjoys travelling.
Do you find yourself dwelling on missed opportunities? Or perhaps you're having trouble making sense of it all? Please download our free ebook, CreateWriteNow's Expert Guide to Therapeutic Journaling, shows you journaling can provide the tools you need to achieve the happiness we all deserve.
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