Expressive writing

Had the second session of the "Resilience" workshop yesterday afternoon. There's a lot to take in and we were running out of time even in 3 hours. I like a lot that the people taking part are very friendly and easy to get along with. This time they had someone there from the Black Dog Institute. As last week, there was something that particularly registered with me.

It's all about strategies to deal with life when bad things happen. I was surprised when we got to this bit, which I didn't know:

Expressive Writing Exercise.

Research over the past 20 years has shown that writing about traumatic or stressful events often has significant beneficial effects on both physical and psychological health.

The key is to really let go and explore your very deepest emotions and thoughts related to the issue. You might write about how an experience has affected your view of yourself, of others, or of the world in general. You might tie your topic to your relationships with others, including parents, lovers, family, friends, or relatives, to your past, your present or your future, or to who you have been, who you would like to be, or who you are now. The most important thing is that you really let go and explore your very deepest feelings and thoughts in your writing.

I read that and thought "wow". I've previously tried looking around on the net to explore why I find this blog so helpful to me, but I've never seen it explained so clear and concisely as that. It's how this whole blog started with me, as there was so much shit going on I needed somewhere to write it down and work through my thoughts and feelings connected with it all. It appears I've stumbled onto some sort of therapeutic method of dealing with what has been a total train wreck over the last few years. I honestly don't know how I'd have gotten through some of those times without a space to express it all and work through the issues in my head.

However, the above exercise is meant to be a private experience. Write it down and throw it away, was the thing said. Not meant for anyone else to read. Which makes me wonder about what I'm doing here. Has there been much research done in the last 20 years of doing the above exercise, but doing it as a blog where people can see it? I dunno. I suspect this is pretty new territory. It involves new technology, is interactive, and I've expanded it in recent times to include how information online affects or interests me as well. There's no specific rules to keep, it's simply about the life of this here person with HIV and all that that involves. Perhaps my experiences other people can relate to and be helped?

Can sort of relate to the "throwing away" what you've writen bit. I virtually never delete anything (no matter how fucked up I was when I did it) but I virtually never go back to read it either. It's like once I've had a rave, then it's helped to move forward in some way. Often just a little step at a time. Some of the things are frankly, just too painful to go back and read, a particular example would be the "I nearly died in hospital" thing that I've put permanently in the "other pages" bit. Had no internet at the hospital but put it into a Word document whilst I was there. It's posted now, for all to see, and I know it's there, but it hurts too much to read it. At the time though it was a vital way to deal with what I was going through.

It occurred to me yesterday that it's only the beginning of last year that that happened. It seems like so much longer ago now. I guess that's a good thing, maybe it means I've moved on from it.