One of the best tools I’ve found to manage my feelings, emotions and thoughts, and also attempt to make sense of my altered world over the past 21 years with CFS / ME and Electrosensitivity, is writing.
This may not come as a surprise to you that a blogger loves writing, but I believe any literate person can benefit from using writing as a tool in life and illness management.
I’ve written in a diary or journal regularly since I was about 12.
I think I used writing as a way of trying to make sense of life in the years prior to that too, and I still do so.
At times I even write poetry, which I find a particularly therapeutic way of processing intense emotions.
What are the benefits of writing to help process emotions?
I could write a book on that one, and I’m sure many people have done.
My Honours thesis looked at elite athletes’ sense of identity and how that was affected by CFS / ME.
In my research I used narrative theory as a way of analysing the participants’ experiences, so narrative theory is one I am quite familiar with and believe holds true.
In very simple terms it explains/suggests that we create our identity (and whole view of the world) through the written and spoken word.
But for the moment, I’m just going to give you my personal views on how writing out your thoughts and feelings can benefit people in managing CFS / ME / Fibromyalgia.
5 Benefits Of Writing To Help Manage CFS / ME
1. It Helps You Process Your Emotions
Dealing with CFS / ME or any chronic illness is a rollercoaster of emotions.
Often we hear the advice that we need to “get our feelings out” or “process our emotions”, but it can be confusing as to how we actually go about doing that.
I’m planning to cover this topic more thoroughly in a later post, but writing is definitely one of the best methods of working through difficult emotions.
Often I find that once I’ve vented all my angry, sad, frustrated thoughts on a page – yes, mostly I handwrite due to electrosensitivity, but typing can be just as therapeutic – I feel a sense of calm and peace.
I’ve learned to really let my emotions out on the page – often crying at the time! – but it’s an extremely cathartic and cleansing process.
If you’re afraid of someone finding and reading your private thoughts (which are often just emotions talking at the time, and not really what you feel deep down!), you can always just shread or burn the writing after you do it (or delete on a computer).
Burning a page of angry, negative thoughts that have been written down can be even more cleansing and cathartic, I’ve found.
But I’m one who likes to keep my written work as a kind of ‘history’ of my life and experiences.
If anyone reads them, I hope they bear in mind that I was only writing my thoughts, driven by intense emotion, at that given time, and it doesn’t necessarily represent my true thoughts or feelings on the topic after that moment has passed.
I hope so anyway! 🙂
2. It Helps Clarify Your Thoughts
I also find writing is great to help me clarify my thoughts on topics that I’m trying to work through.
Sometimes I start writing and I have no idea what I’m going to write.
There might be just an issue that I’m struggling to deal with or trying to make sense of, and I just know that writing out my thoughts in black and white can often help.
If you’re like me (God help you!), your mind is often extremely active – like a jumping bean on steroids! 🙂
I sometimes feel like I have about 5 levels of thinking all going on at the same time. If only my body had the same energy as my mind often does!
Sometimes, to get my thoughts more in order, I just need to do a pros and cons list (eg. should I try this new treatment or not?).
Other times I find just ‘spewing’ my thoughts out onto the page (or Word doc) can be like a physical purging.
Once the thoughts are out of my head and in some type of concrete form, it helps me to find some order in the chaos, and see a situation more clearly.
Often whole new windows of revelation open up during and after I’ve written out all my thoughts and worries about a topic.
3. It’s Calming To An Active or Agitated Mind
As I’ve said above, I find writing my thoughts out in a journal (or even a blog) can help calm my mind.
The calm and peace that comes from this cathartic process then allows me to make decisions that are more productive for myself and those around me.
Often if I acted when I am particularly upset, scared or overwhelmed, my decisions and actions would not serve me.
This is not hypothetical. I know this very much from experience!!
Making decisions and acting/speaking when I’m particularly emotional or overwhelmed has rarely ended well.
If I can take time out to either speak to someone or write my stuff down, there are usually much better outcomes.
This can really help, for instance, when we’re upset at our doctor or other health professional.
If we write out our feelings and thoughts about the issue first, it lets out some tension.
Then if we write a list of points we want to make when we actually get a chance to speak to the doctor, our thoughts are more likely to come out in a clear, balanced way – and get our message across clearly, without being overcome with emotion.
This can work just as well when you are facing a difficult conversation with family or friends, whether it be due to an argument, or just a challenging situation.
4. It’s A Physical Action So It Grounds You & Brings You Back To The Present
Hah! You know how I said writing things down can help me see things I hadn’t seen before. This is one of them! 🙂
I particularly find the use of pen and paper/pad/diary helps to ground my thoughts and take my focus out of my head and into the present moment.
I often speak about the value of bringing our minds back to the present moment (See Day 6: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – Being Present – 7 Simple Mindfulness Techniques To Help Manage CFS), but I focus on this for good reason.
Bringing our minds constantly back to the present moment – the NOW – leaves little room for the creation of anxious or depressive thoughts.
If we are truly focussed in the present, there is no future to be anxious or depressed about and no past to feel sad about, or to compare with now (or to use as a guage as to what might happen in the future because of what happened in similar situations in the past).
So, although we may be writing out our thoughts, physically picking up a pen (or typing on a keyboard) is still a physical action that takes us out of our heads and into the present.
5. It Stimulates Creativity
As I said at the beginning of this blog, I have written poetry since I was in my early teens, if not earlier.
I have rarely shared that poetry with anyone, and I doubt it would win any literary awards, but I find it incredibly cathartic – and it also stimulates my creative juices and, thus, brings me a certain level of joy.
I just find poetry, written in free-form (non-rhyming), is sometimes a more potent, succinct way to express my feelings.
Sometimes when we are deep in an emotional state – whether pleasant or non-pleasant – it’s hard to find the words to express exactly how we feel – or at least in sentence form.
I often write poems that have one or two words per line when I’m in this deeply emotional state.
Sometimes those few individual words written down a page can be more cathartic than writing an essay about how I feel.
And by writing in that way, I often find, on reading it back, that I’m surprised at my creative ability, and quite impressed by it.
When I feel that way, it seems to stimulate more creativity, and I often find I want to write more poems around that topic.
I also find it’s the case since I’ve started this blog that the more I write, the more creativity I stimulate.
Writing these daily blogs for May has seen me go off-plan a number of times because I keep getting inspired to write on other topics, or have been exhausted and wondering how I can write my next post.
This has forced me to get creative (see Days 16 and 17, where I threw it over to YOU to answer a couple of questions, and Day 19 when I decided to link to a page that I had written over the past 12 months, loaded up on the blog, but hadn’t told anyone about yet!!)
6. It Can Lead To You Starting A Blog – And Finding Your Sense of Purpose Again
I have found blogging to be one of the most rewarding, stimulating and fulfilling benefits of writing, which has also become a tool in helping me manage CFS / ME / Electrosensitivity.
It has given me a way to further pursue my single motivating purpose (SMP) in life (refer to this podcast episode by Jeremy and Jason of Internet Business Mastery for further information).
In summary my SMP – the thing that drives pretty much everything I do and have ever done in life – is about doing everything I can to be the best version of myself that I can be in order to inspire others to also be the best version of themselves that THEY can be.
By writing this blog, creating my (soon-to-be-launched) podcast, planning and creating online group coaching courses for people with CFS / ME, I am able to follow many of my passions (ie. writing, interviewing, empowering, coaching), while also following my purpose – which then GIVES me a greater sense of purpose and contribution to the world.
As CFS / ME or any other chronic illness can have a huge impact on our sense of purpose, sense of identity and ability to follow our passions, I see blogging as a fantastic way for people with CFS / ME and other spoonies to regain or find their sense of purpose, whatever that purpose may be, and whatever their passions may be.
You can write about ANY topic when it’s your own blog.
You don’t have to write a blog about living with CFS / ME.
You could write about the technical aspects of ice skating, horse riding, crocheting, or whatever your passion is.
The beauty of it is that even if you cannot, at this stage, follow your former passions due to the effects of CFS / ME, you CAN still write about them in a blog and contribute to the community of ice skaters, horse riders, runners (or whatever passion you can no longer physically do) by contributing your knowledge and passion about the topic.
Now if THAT isn’t a very cool benefit of writing, I don’t know what is! 😀
If you want to go deeper into the theories behind why writing and story-telling are therapeutic, do some reading on narrative theory and symbolic interactionism.
As I said above, my Psychology Honours thesis came from the angle of narrative theory – “A Narrative Analysis of the Impact of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome on Elite Athletes’ Sense of Identity” (one day I plan to somehow make this available to you all).
“Symbolic interactionism asserts that we communicate and make sense of our world though socially constructed symbols such as the written and spoken word (eg. Rock, 1979)” – Louise Bibby (2000)
So, as this great scholar noted in her Honours thesis 😉 writing helps us to make sense of our world – our CFS / ME and our current life circumstances.
Today’s Action Step
Buy or find a pad/notebook and write how you are feeling right now – whether it’s in sentence form or poem form. If typing into your computer or tablet is your preference, create a folder titled “My Journal” or something more creative. Then start a practice of writing 5 minutes a day for a whole week and see what the impact of that is. THEN share it on this blog, Facebook or Twitter.
até amanhã meus amigos (Until tomorrow my friends in Portuguese)
Keep Smiling 🙂
Louise
Related Posts
Day 1: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – 3 Myths of Acceptance That Hold Us Back
Day 2: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – It Is As It Is. Choose It!
Day 3: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – 5 Ways To Control Our Thoughts When In Overwhelm & Despair
Day 4: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – 6 Things You Can ALWAYS Do Despite CFS / ME
Day 5: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – 7 Ways To Focus Your Thoughts On Something Uplifting
Day 6: 31 Day To A Better CFS Life – Being Present – 7 Simple Mindfulness Techniques To Help Manage CFS
Day 7: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – Learning To Ask For Help – 5 Simple Tasks You Can ‘Outsource’ To Help Manage CFS
Day 8: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – Discover Podcasts – 5 Steps To Finding & Listening To Good Podcasts
Day 9: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – Listen To Your Body. I Am Today!
Day 10: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – 10 Ways To Nurture Yourself & Fill Your Bucket
Day 11: 31 Day To A Better CFS Life – 5 Ways To Combat Spoonie Mother Guilt on Mother’s Day!
Day 12: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – My 5 Fave Ways To Connect With The Online CFS / ME Community
Day 13: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – How & Why Audiobooks Are A Great Illness-Management Tool
Day 14: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life -10 Top Audiobooks I Recommend
Day 15: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life: 5 Tips For Getting Tasks Done When You Have CFS / ME
Day 16: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – What Are You Struggling With Most Right Now?
Day 17: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life: What Are You Doing WELL In Managing CFS / ME / Fibro? What Are You NOT Struggling With?
Day 18: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – 3 Things I Struggle With At The Moment & How I Manage Them
Day 19: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – 101 Ways I Manage CFS / ME & Electrosensitivity Pain
Day 21: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – Gratitude is Healing – 5 Ways To Practise Gratitude
Day 22: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – A Letter To Partners Of People With CFS / ME
Day 23: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – 7 Healthy, Safe Ways To Release Emotions
Day 24: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – Letter To The General Public From Those With CFS / ME / FM – Part 1
Day 25: 31 Days To A Better CFS Life – Letter To The General Public Pt 2 – How You Can Support Someone Who Has CFS / ME / FM
Siobhán says
I’ve used writing for a long time to help deal with emotions or hurt I’ve spend hours and hours over the years writing, mostly in a totally illegible scrawl as I try to keep up with the thoughts. It’s fantastic and I recently converted a friend, who had just been through a devastatingly bad break up where alcohol was an issue with her ex. We had a ‘ceremony’ over a couple of glasses of Cava the Halloween before last to cast out the bad and welcome the new, where we both wrote down things that had been bothering us, we then squeezed onto my balcony (tiny and full of plants) with an empty saucepan and a box of matches! Our own personal mini bonfire. So much laughter ensued that it definitely made us both feel better, we swore we would do it every year. But funnily enough her life improved at a rate of knots; She moved onwards and upwards and is still on an upward trajectory she has moved to London to follow her dreams and is loving it. She attributes it all to that ceremony. I’m thoroughly enjoying this whole series each post has left me smiling so thank you again x
Louise Bibby says
I love that story Sibh! What a cathartic ceremony for you and your friend! And a lot of fun too, which is part of the bonding that you experienced, I think. I’ve done a similar thing with a group of amazing women at a winter solstice bonfire. We wrote all our worries out and then threw them in the fire. I felt a little like a witch in the 1700s, which was really fun, but earthy and grounding at the same time (and I felt like I was in the Diana Gabaldon Outlander series which is my fave book series!). I’d love to do those things more! An idea for this winter hey?!
I often find my writing is illegible too as I try to keep up with my thoughts, but I do find it so therapeutic to write my emotions out. They literally seem to fall onto the page and out of my head. If I’m really angry, I find that half way through I don’t feel half as angry anymore. If it’s in letter form – which it sometimes is (would never send it though!) – I find any venom has left me by 3/4 through and I’m ending it in a conciliatory or forgiving way. I’m such a softy!! 😉
Thanks again for sharing. I always appreciate it! And I’m so glad you’re enjoying my whole series. I’ve had to stop for a few days to refuel my energy levels, but the last 10 will be up soon.
Keep Smiling
Louise