I’m in the process of writing a book right now, and the theme is based around perspectives and learning to not see yourself as broken.
In writing this book I have been learning a lot. In fact one of my main learnings has been that this book is writing me, I am not writing the book!
The book has been teaching me to look at my own life, through new perspectives. I have been learning how my body stores emotions and releases them, even when my mind is completely aware and unaffacted by the emotions on the surface.
As I sat down to write, what I felt at the time, was the most difficult part of the book my body started to react! This was strange and interesting, because in my mind I was clear. In my mind I was ready to tackle this.
In the book I was addressing a past relationship trauma but although I was ready to get writing, my body wanted to run. The more I made myself sit down to write, the more my body would become agitated. It would distract my mind and give it reasons to stand up and do something, procrastination. I did this several times, standing up and sitting back down, before I realised what was happening. Wow! My body was in not happy with being forced to write, and it was manipulating my mind to move me away from the very thing which was making it uncomfortable. How clever!
In the same way I had learned with mediation, I became aware of the distraction and without placing too much attention or attachment on it, I gently let it pass. So, I sat myself down once again, this time prepared for the body’s reaction. There is was, it wanted to get away again. It wanted to move. Previously I would have stepped away, not knowing why, but now I was aware and I was going to stay where I was. I would become aware of the sensations in my body and allow them to pass.
It was uncomfortable, my body felt tortured and so my mind reacted to that discomfort. I have eczema and I found myself doing lots of scratching and itching, which was again another distraction but one the body could use while sitting down. It was doing everything it could to stop me from writing this art! I felt as though I was in right angles, inside myself. I felt angular and awkward and had random pumps of energy pushing its way around me. But I wasn’t moving.
When I began to write, I noticed my body quietened a little. It was as though the thoughts of writing about this subject, which must have been affecting the body as a sub-conscious level, were worse than the reality. In fact as soon as I began writing, it flowed from me and I was on a home run and couldn’t be stopped.
When I came to the more difficult parts, the emotional memories, and writing about them, I noticed my body began to shake and become tense. I felt rigid and all my muscles had tightened. I felt cold and shivery, yet I wasn’t cold. My body was reacting again. This time it felt as though I was experiencing some sort of PTSD. It was as though my body was reliving and releasing the shock from the experience I had been writing about. However as my writing was in flow, my sub-conscious body shock reactions had come in flow. Thought alone, memory alone, was enough to trigger a response in my body. A response that mirrored the reactions as though it were happening right then and there, reality, right in that moment. Wow, I thought! How powerful our minds are! To replay memories as though they were live.
I felt so present and aware of my reactions. Where in the past I would have blamed my shift in mood to be on something I ate, or perhaps a conversation I had with somebody, or even blame it on hormones or whatever, here I was learning that the body was once again communicating with me. It was telling me it was reliving the experience, it was frightened, stressed, scared and felt unsafe. By placing my awareness on it, gently, with compassion and love for it’s communication, I felt it release a little Like a mother comforting a child from a nightmare, I spoke to my body and told it it was all okay. I couldn’t help but feel I was undergoing a kind of therapy as such.
Writing has always been something I loved. From a very young age I was writing poems and keeping journals, I never thought it was something I could do as an adult in a serious way. I always saw writers as academics and smart, intellectual people. I always saw myself and curious and creative, and therefore not a writer but a creative. However, I guess my creative and my artwork, is now my writing.
I’m not sure whether anybody will ever read my work, I’m not even sure whether anybody will ever like my work, but for now I am enjoying the process and the unfolding that comes with it. Writing is most definitely an excellent form of self- therapy.
If you have ever written or published any work, I’d love to hear your experiences. If you have found writing to be a therapy in itself, I would also love to hear what you think.
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