Depression Help - Waking Up and Writing It Down
Jun 3rd, 2008 by zania
If you see a doctor or a therapist for your depression and anxiety, among other things, the doctor will often tell you to try to relax and get some rest and the therapist will tell you to “write about it”.
And the two recommendations could work together. For instance, sitting writing about your emotions can also be a way to calm your mind while you sit back and relax.
If you are a creative person who makes a living through their words, depression could leave you with writer’s block; too many things going on inside your head to focus on the job in hand. But writing down your feelings, in a blog or on paper, may help to bring those emotions and constraints out and eventually calm your mind so that you can get on with writing professionally again.
Personally, I find that resting is important to the creative process and I’ll tell you why:
When I first wake up, my mind is often full to the brim with thoughts; they are not always good I will admit, and often chaotic, but it helps to write them down to ‘clear my head’.
Sometimes I wake up with ideas buzzing away in my head and I have to grab a pen and paper to jot them down before they flitter away again. In those first few minutes of rapid (and very scrappy) writing, I often create the basis of whole articles I can use for days on end or new ideas for where I want my projects to go next.
This may not work for everyone who suffers from depression. Some are not ‘morning people’ and the most sense they can make is to get up and make a cup of coffee. And when things are really bad and your depression is at its worst, you may not feel able to sleep well enough to get that rest in the first place and, even if you do, the black cloud of depression may land on your head as you awake before you even have a chance to write things down.
But when waking up is ok (it doesn’t have to be great - just ‘ok’), but you feel you may have a problem with depression and lethargy later on in the day, why not take those few minutes of waking up to grab a pen and paper and write down your thoughts?
They may not be all good, but they could well be productive.
Just a thought…
[...] after all that talk of Waking Up and Writing it Down in my last post, I have actually been working so hard the last couple of days that I got little [...]