Healing through Writing

Healing

Have you had a traumatic background? Have you been to therapist but rarely feel any better than when you began? Have you taken medication and still find no healing with the mental anguish that you’ve had to go through growing up in a dysfunctional life? I’m here to suggest something. Healing through Writing!

We all, each and every one of us, hold our mental instability hidden within us until eventually we blow, unable to handle the stress bearing down on us, like a claustrophobic climbing under the bed. We seek an outlet where we can release the pain and anguish inside, hoping one day to find healing.

Healing without some form of transformation leaves the door open for major setbacks. We might not find a true leap in the right direction away from our negative fixations that bind us to the past. We’re opening ourselves up to reliving it over and over again.

Have you ever heard of the story of two wolves?

Two Wolves: A Native American grandfather is talking to his grandson about how he feels about a tragedy in their village. "I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one." The grandson asks, "Grandfather, which wolf will win the fight in your heart?" The grandfather places his hand on his heart and replies, "The one I feed."

The pain that you don’t feed is going to come back and bite you unless you take it by the ears and rip into it like a feeding wolf. My point is this, if you write about your pain a lot of times you get the emotional healing you need. Through journaling I’ve seen many people find a healing place and went on to become strong upstanding people instead of the victim.

How do you begin the emotional process of revealing your deepest pain?

1) WRITE ABOUT IT – Take a step back, and in your writing, have someone observing a painful scene in your past. Have them tell the story as they see it. This person doesn’t have to have been there, but through them telling the scene, you will gain a different perspective from someone else observing the event you endured.

2) MAKE A LIST – We have positive and negative things that happened in our life. If we can take a traumatic event, list the negatives and counter them with a positive affect. This is a tough one but this will help us see no matter how bad something was in our lives, something positive came from it.

3) JOURNAL – Writing in a journal on a daily basis helps keep the things in the now, in perspective. Using our list from above we can see how much we grow through painful situations.

4) OBSERVANCE – Observe the way you do things today. Do you still hold onto negative thoughts and feelings? Have you tried to wipe them off like snow on your shoulder? Or have you kept them tightly wrapped around you like a warm blanket and carry the negative ions with you in every relationship/situation you have, thus making the circle of pain continue on and on?

5) START ANEW – Many of you know much of the things I’ve endured and recently I took my own advice (rare, huh?) and I stepped back from a negative situation and replaced each aspect with a positive. When I was ignored, I outstretched my hand. When they treated me like a prisoner, I broke free. When they tried to tie me down, I wrote and soared.

The story Rapunzel that I wrote is a perfect example of exactly what I’m saying here. I had a painful experience try to wipe me out in a negative fashion, with negative people rubbing their hands together in pleasure while trying to see me squirm, and this time instead, I smiled through each day, prayed daily for those folks, and made it through a difficult situation, proving my heart and soul had come to a healing place.

Writing is what got me through. For years I’ve used writing as my healing place, but this time the action I took was in a positive motion, and the outcome was my sweet reward. Turning a negative into a positive takes a lot of practice, sometimes years, but the benefits are worth it.

Find your healing place through writing.