Writing as Therapy

Here are some useful questions to ask yourself before using writing as therapy if you wish:

1. Am I ready to cope with what I want to write about?

In other words: "Can I deal with all of the ramifications of what I'm going to write about without harming my present life or my own sanity or the people around me?"

This is a very important question.

2. If I am ready to cope with thinking about this and processing it, how do I want to go about this that might help me and/or others in the most useful way possible?

3. If I'm not directly ready to process it could I make up a story with new characters trying to deal with the issues I'm processing?

This third alternative is what most writers tend to do. In this way they can process whatever is bothering them in a somewhat vicarious way.

However, even this can be tricky to process regarding some things.

But, once you go down this road where you are not having to tell other people what is bothering you, often you might be able to help other people with the same or similar issues you are trying to process to move forward in your lives.

For example, I started to write about Arcane around 1980 because I felt I was ready to deal with having to leave my childhood and Parents church at age 21. This was more painful for me to deal with than having had whooping cough or Childhood epilepsy because it felt more immediate as something that I might have had some control over whereas whooping cough and childhood epilepsy at every point I was either going to live or I was going to die. Both were sort of out of my hands whether I lived or died.

However, they also played a role psychologically in how I dealt with the church my parents went to and even why I believed in God and still do.

For example, if you believe in God why do you?

IF you tell me because your parents believed in God I'm sorry that's not good enough for me.

Why do YOU believe in God?

I can tell you that I believe in God or otherwise I wouldn't be alive now.

This is very straightforward and true.

Everyone has their reasons for believing in God and mine are very personal.

But, because God is a very personal relationship it really has nothing to do with any church or even minister (for me)

It is a personal relationship with God that supercedes any one religion even. So, this relationship with God to me is a friendship with God and so I can have conversations with God directly about why he creates religions for people here on earth. I find it very useful to be able to have conversations like this with God.

So, if you understand why religions exist it brings a lot more peace into your life understanding this.

So, religions are mostly about different cultures in which those religions spring up in. So, people who fight people of other religions are really making a big mistake because that isn't what God is about at all.

Religions can be thought of as different languages that God can speak to people in. That's about the end of it right there.

And even Buddhism is about elevating Compassion over being hung up about God. And this again has it's own cultural context and reason for doing this.

So, as you write you will find you understand yourself better often through this:

For example, you might write something today that you keep because you like it.

A year or two from now you might read this and say something like this to yourself: "Oh yes. That is what I was dealing with in my life then." And you might have compassion for yourself having gone through whatever you are going through now. And you might see yourself as a friend to the person you are now and have more love and compassion for yourself and everyone you know then as well as now.

So, writing helps the person you are now and the person you are later and if you share what you write with people having similar problems you might save their lives too if they understand themselves better from hearing about your problems.

So, just taking the time to really understand what is happening in your life often can save not only your own life but other people's lives too in the process.