Writing can keep you alive (if you want to stay alive). There are two aspects (or more) to physical survival. One is psychological and one is physical. Of course you can take it out from there too. Do you have a general sense of well Being? Do you believe in God and if so is that a comfort to you or not? What do you believe in? If you don't know what you believe in how can you make useful decisions in your lives?
I was talking to my 17 year old daughter who was watching old "Twilight Zone" episodes from 1959 on on Netflix today. She was asking about what she was watching and I told her I watched all these episodes from the time I was 11 in 1959 because they interested me because of the inquisitive kind of mind I have always had. I have always wanted to know how everything worked in reality rather than the mythologies people tended to be taught still in the 1950s. So, I was always more interested in learning about new ideas and technologies rather than hearing more "Old Wives Tales" told down through the centuries about the "Boogieman and things that go bump in the night".
So, I was telling her about how shows then were about what was then called "psychodrama" which just meant a whole lot of extreme feelings were expressed on TV back then because in the 1950s especially they didn't have the budget yet much for special effects. So, only a few programs like STar Trek and Lost in Space and a few other programs used special effects that much. So, most of what was happening was in people's imaginations then on TV. It wasn't what was happening in front of you it was how freaked out people were getting in their lives and how they were dealing with their terrors and fears. When you have a whole lot of ignorance in a population psychodramas are really going to shake people a lot from their moorings and "Twilight Zone" did this a lot to people then. So, as you watch these now they don't have the same effect that they did then on people because people knew about 90% less about life than people know in general now worldwide because of the Internet and Youtube and social media and bloggers worldwide and pictures send from cell phones all over the world both videos and stills.
I guess where I'm going obliquely is therapy can be different things at different times for people in their writing. When I was really young I wrote about my fantasies of girls I knew that I thought were wonderful but also about alternate realities.
As I grew up and got harmed a lot by things that happened in my life I wrote just to want to try to stay alive one more day and not off myself because I didn't want to do that to my parents. Later on, after I was a parent and husband I wrote things to help heal the wounds inside my emotions and psyche from the harm people had done to me both knowingly and unknowingly.
There are just so very many ignorant and unenlightened people in the world and you have to find a way to get away from them and to live your own lives somehow without them causing your death both directly or indirectly as you move through your lives. The fact that they need therapy that most of them are never going to get doesn't matter. You and I just need to separate ourselves from those kind of people otherwise they might result in our deaths or worse.
So, writing is a way to start to think about how you are going to survive your lives. When I was in a bad way what I wrote about my mother found and threw away because she wasn't progressive enough. She had never been to college because she was dyslexic and people who were different learners had NO teachers who understood how their minds worked yet. So, my mother worked for the telephone company starting in 1938 when she graduated High School and supported both her mother and herself because he mother had not had a trade other than wife and mother which was true of many women then in the 1930s. So, my mother made handbags and shoes to support them both out of high school at age 18 and then got a really good job at Bell Telphone first as an operator and then as "customer service" representative. She stayed with this good job before she married my father and had me and still was in good standing with the company even when we moved to San Diego in 1952 so she worked part time there for Bell Telephone then too I believe.
So, the point I'm trying to make here is that what you write may keep you alive. So, writing can help you want to stay alive depending upon how you write, what you are writing about and where you are going with your writing.
What I'm saying here is if you are not balanced before you start writing your writing might also drive you insane if you take your writing in the wrong directions. What are the wrong directions? That greatly depends upon the person what good and bad directions are.
What works for me might not work for you. Also, as you move through life and often see more mayhem and death I find (after 50 or 60) my writing became less strident and intense in some ways. I found myself not watching certain kinds of movies as much because I found them too disturbing. When you haven't seen real death and carnage of people you know in life yet you might see movies, write things, that would be very disturbing to people who have seen much more death of loved ones over the years. For example, I have lost at least 30 people (family members like my Mother and father, All my Aunts and Uncles and before that all 4 my grandparents, and in the last 10 years I lost two of my best childhood friends. So, basically I have my wife and kids and one of my cousins that I still sail with and one of my childhood friends that I still ski with and 4 wheel drive off road with and swim in mountain lakes and kayak there with he and his girlfriend and other friends there in Mt. Shasta.
So, what you write is going to change over the years and what interests you will change over the years and this is to be expected. However, writing things that get out emotions that you might not feel safe getting out any other way might be helpful. IF you don't want those things to be public either write them on paper in longhand, in diaries, or in files you write on a computer then print them out and then delete the files on the computer. Sometimes, just writing something anywhere on paper and then burning it in the fireplace might be helpful to release yourself from an old love gone wrong, people who abused you etc. So, writing can be amazingly therapeutic just like writing music and lyrics and doing various kinds of art or dance can be very therapeutic too. Sometimes if you are alone you can write, cry process and be done with it affecting your mental and physical and spiritual health anymore. You can Free yourself completely writing, dancing, doing art, writing or playing music, hiking, skiing, swimming, traveling. There are many ways to free yourself from things not useful to you anymore.
And then there are the lessons you have learned that kept you alive when many others died instead. This kind of stuff is worth sharing at a blog or in any way you can to keep friends and relatives or even people you don't know alive if they encounter similar difficulties in their lives.
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