Craft of Writing: Writing as Therapy.

 Dear Reader,

As I have mentioned a few times, I am disabled. My disabilities are related to mental illness. One of the tools I use to manage my condition is writing. Journal keeping is strongly recommended for people with post-traumatic stress disorder. It helps you to log what stressors are triggering your symptoms, the extent that the symptoms are causing you distress, and it helps you process the memories that come up.

There are many different ways to journal and use writing as a therapeutic tool. Bullet journals are popular right now. They're great for mood tracking and symptom tracking. They're alright for tracking triggers of flashbacks and psychological distress. It depends on the format that you use for the process. I have tried using a 'standard' bullet journal but I have so much going on between the bipolar II, the cptsd, and my anxiety disorder that it just turned into a muddled mess. I have ported things like tracking my mood and my symptoms into my day planner. I have a column on the right hand side of the planning page where I track my mood, my anxiety levels, how much water I'm drinking, my medications, and what my fasting blood sugar is like. On the back of the page, I give a summary of the day, including notes on if my symptoms are particularly bad and notes on how my doctors' appointments went.

I also keep a daily journal that I write in about my random thoughts during the morning. You could call it the equivalent of the bullet journal's brain dump page. I have a second daily journal that I write in at the end of the day (most days) and I do my best to get all of my anxieties and mental pain down on the page so that it isn't keeping me up at night. Some days, it works better than others. As I don't have a therapist to talk to about this stuff, I basically have to create my own system for addressing the high anxiety and low level terror that is ever present because of my mental illnesses. The trick with keeping these journals is to write in them daily. 

I haven't been doing such a great job because my anxiety is telling me that some random authority figure is going to use my journals to try to take my kids away from me. (Back in 2010-2011, life got really hard and we were facing that kind of situation due to a medical emergency because my mental medication provider refused to refill a psychoactive drug I was on and everything went down hill fast. At some point, I may tell that story. It's horrific and I am still traumatized by it, hence my difficulty writing.) 

There are many ways to keep a journal. I am primarily a verbal communicator. As such, most of my journal work is written. At the same time, people who are more comfortable with a visual medium or a combination of visual and written word can keep a journal that is a mixed medium thing. I'm still exploring that process. It's hard to find time to sit and work on it. But, my goal for 2021 is 'get shit done' and on my list is making artwork for this blog and for myself. I have done paintings and abstract pictures to attempt to process my emotions and memories via mixed media. I'm still trying to decide how I feel about this style of journaling. It seems to help when the words aren't working right but I have difficulty allowing myself artistic expression due to long term trauma effects. To say the least, it is a work in progress.