Writing is Therapy
Author: Coby Seaver
When family members, friends, and influencers give us ways in which we can improve our overall health, they usually consist of telling us to read, exercise, meditate, or see a therapist. Don’t get me wrong, these are all fantastic options and I would highly recommend picking up any of those habits. However, there is one activity that is widely taken for granted: writing. Most of the time, we do not realize that writing is all around us. It is located on emails, the social media platforms we scroll through, the billboards we drive past, and on articles. Additionally, we do not recognize that we are writing all the time. Writing is required in several situations such as responding to emails, texting others, creating reports, and taking notes.
When having to complete tedious writing tasks and constantly seeing advertisements, I can clearly understand why writing is not widely viewed as a positive activity with substantial benefits. In fact, I viewed writing negatively until the end of last year. For one of my business classes, I was tasked to write an argumentative paper on whether NCAA athletes should get paid or not. I genuinely enjoyed writing about sports and this is when I realized that writing allowed me to express my opinion on topics I care about. From there, I started writing articles for multiple companies, wrote scripts for YouTube videos, and bought a journal. Currently, I not only appreciate the power of writing, but have noticed several mental and physical benefits of writing, and I wanted to share five of those with you today as well as five ways to get started with writing. I hope that this information helps you and your loved ones deal with some of the difficult situations going on in your life and in the world we live in today.
5 Therapeutic Benefits to Writing
Writing Helps you Work Through Thoughts and Emotions
The ability to write about a traumatic moment in your life or something that has been stressing you out recently can help you overcome the negative energy you feel about the experience. Mentally cycling through these thoughts without expressing your emotions can have a toll on your mental health. Additionally, when speaking about the issue, you might leave certain things out and say things that sound better in your head. Putting your thoughts onto paper allows you to clear your mind, analyze your emotions, and connect the dots.
Writing Boosts the Immune System
Being able to express your emotions and analyze your thoughts provides physical benefits to writing, most notably, a boost in the functioning of the immune system. This decreases the chance of becoming sick and increases your recovery time from diseases. One study done by Kira Newman from the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley suggests that the boosted immune system that results from expressive writing helps patients respond healthier to a vaccine than patients who do not.
Writing Reduces Anxiety and Depression Symptoms
Various experiences in your life have the ability to cause stress, regardless of how big or small they are. It is unhealthy to keep all stressors stored inside your mind, which leads to you becoming overwhelmed. Writing helps prioritize the most daunting stressors you currently face. Furthermore, writing every day consistently helps effectively track your stressors. This control leads to better management of your stressors which leads to an improvement in mood and overall mental health.
Writing Improves Memory
Writing allows you to reflect on important pieces of your day. Exposing these moments on paper helps better memorize and prioritize the most essential experiences. In addition, when you are attempting to memorize something important that you learned from the past, you can easily refer back to past journal entries for recollection. Lastly, when writing about various topics, the simple action of writing increases the amount of information you have on a topic and allows you to make a better intellectual connection with the subject.
Writing is an Effective Way to Track Progress
Whether it is to keep track of daily tasks, weekly goals, bucket lists, new year's resolutions, or managing other people, writing out goals you are working towards as well as your progress allows you to meet important deadlines, maintain productivity, and helps you reach closer to living the life you want to live.
5 Ways to Get Started Writing
Free Form Journal Entries
An easy way to start writing is to journal about whatever is on your mind. These journal entries have no specific structure and are meant for you to write with minimal stops. Free form journal entries helps you feel less overwhelmed because you are letting loose on the thoughts that are going through your mind. To start, set a five minute timer every day and write about whatever is on your mind. Do not stop writing until time is up.
Therapeutic Journal Entries
What makes therapeutic journal entries different from free form is that you usually write from a prompt. This prompt is designed for you to express specific thoughts and emotions you feel about the prompt question. An example prompt would be, “What is one thing that has been bothering you this week.” or “What are three of your greatest strengths.” Various writing prompts are available to find on the internet. Similar to free form writing, set a timer and write as much as you can about the prompt in the allotted time.
Create Lists
Lists are a fun way to get in the habit of writing. For example, write down a list of 10 of your favorite songs, 10 things you are grateful for, 50 things that have been bothering you, or 100 things that you want to learn during your lifetime. Make three of these lists every week.
Become a Freelance Writer
Writing is not only beneficial for personal health, it can make people money. As I mentioned earlier, money is everywhere. Businesses need writers to create websites, instructions, contracts, articles, product descriptions, and social media content. Freelance writing can be a very effective way to make extra cash and can even be a full time job in the long term. The easiest way to get started is to make freelancing accounts on platforms such as Upwork and Fiverr. Lastly, with freelance writing, you can truly enjoy your job since you have the ability to choose positions where you get to work on writing projects you are passionate about.
Reflective Journal Entries
This type of journal entry is where the benefit of improved memory comes into play. Reflective writing allows you to recollect important learning points from school, work, experiences, and life in general. Start by writing at the end of each day a summary of what occurred that day as well as important takeaways moving forward.
Sources:
https://www.psycom.net/mental-health-wellbeing/the-healing-power-of-writing
https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/health-journal-california-berkeley.html
https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentID=4552&ContentTypeID=1
https://blog.zencare.co/therapeutic-journaling/
https://positivepsychology.com/writing-therapy/
https://www.niu.edu/language-literacy/_pdf/the-benefits-of-writing.pdf