They say the only constant in life is change. I believe that to be true. And if there is anything certain about change, it’s uncertainty. Just when you think things are moving along according to plan, Blam! something changes. Jobs, relationships, homes, and people come and go. Even when we look forward to a particular change — the beginning of a new year, a new job, or a new relationship — it’s natural to feel a mix of anticipation and fear. What if the job, relationship, or year doesn’t work out? What if the house deal falls through, or you aren’t able to finish that degree?

It’s natural to want to know the answers; we feel most secure when we do. I’m reminded of how my children, especially when young, always wanted to know what was going to happen next, and they rebelled when sudden changes were thrown their way. As adults, we may have learned to deal with the emotional curves more adeptly, at least on the outside, but the uncertainty that comes with change can still throw us for a loop.

Uncertainty makes me edgy, as though I’m walking in the dark. At any moment I might stub my toe, walk into a wall, or off a ledge. Uncertainty — the insecurity of not knowing if I’m going in the right direction or if I’m safe — prevents me from moving forward as boldly as I would like. I respond by inching my way along. I make lists, weigh alternatives, create the insurance policies of Plans B and C.

Yet uncertainty can lead to something wonderful as easily as to disaster. In a recent flying dream, just before my feet left the ground — that moment, that second when I didn’t know if it would work, my heart fluttered in my chest and seemed to move up into my throat. And then, suddenly, liftoff and elation! But the elation was mixed with dread: Would I stay aloft or would I crash to the ground? Only when I was certain that I really could fly did I allow myself to soar and take joy in the flying. But that brief moment of uncertainty seemed an eternity of torture.  And so it is in real life.

This Week’s Writing Prompts:

1. Freewrite for ten minutes about uncertainty.
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2. Do you remember feeling uncertain as a child? What did you feel uncertain about, what did you do to handle it, and how have your responses as a child affected your relationship to uncertainty as an adult?
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3. What do you do when you feel uncertain about your future? How do you handle those feelings and in what ways do you try to take control?
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4. What is uncertain in your life right now? What do you hope for and what are you afraid of relating to that uncertainty? Write two scenarios: 1) what you imagine life will be like if what you hope for occurs, and 2) what you imagine life will be like if what you fear occurs.
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5. What are the positive and negative aspects of uncertainty? Which weighs more for you, and why do you think this is so?
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6. If there was one area of life you could choose to be absolutely certain about, what would it be and why?
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7. If you could remove all uncertainty from life, would you? Why or why not?

I invite you to leave a comment and share your thoughts on this subject.

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Image Credit: Nicu Buculei

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

What do you picture when you think of courage? I picture children and adults with serious illnesses who manage to inspire others by maintaining positive outlooks; activists for social justice who peacefully stand their ground in the face of police brutality; people who put their lives in danger to save others (firemen, police, and heroes); and mountain climbers, astronauts, and explorers of unknown territories. These images of people gracefully facing their fears are probably typical associations with courage.

I don’t think of myself as a courageous person. But there are smaller, everyday versions of courage, too. Versions that I have exhibited: speaking up when I observe someone mistreating another; holding my own when someone tries to intimidate me; interviewing for a job; asking for a raise; and—even—saying “no” to a child who desperately wants something, something I would love to be able to say “yes” to, but which would not be in his best interests. Smaller ways of being courageous, but still requiring facing fear of some kind.

I guess that’s my personal definition of courage: facing one’s fear and doing what you feel is right in spite of that fear.

This Week’s Journal Writing Prompts:

1. What’s your personal definition of courage? Have there been times in your life when you’ve needed to be courageous? Write about one of those times: what was the situation and what did you do?
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2. Is there someone in your life whom you would characterize as courageous? If so, in what ways? Write about what, in this person’s courage and demeanor, you admire. Then write about the ways in which you, also, exhibit these same qualities (you know you do).
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3. What do you think C.S. Lewis meant by, “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” Describe how courage might come into play when another virtue is challenged in some way.
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4. Complete the following sentences: “Every day, I am afraid of …” and “Every day, I show courage by …”
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5. Write about the ways in which your views of courage were shaped. How did family attitudes, movies, and books influence your beliefs about courage? Of these, which seems the most important or influential? (Hint: it’s the one that pops into your mind as a powerful memory image.) Do you believe these influences were beneficial, or not, and why?
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6. Sometimes, it takes courage just to be yourself in the face of a societal norm that doesn’t accept you. Are you or do you know someone like this? Maybe you’ve always been told you’re too loud, draw too much attention to yourself (or not enough), take too many risks (or not enough); maybe you have the wrong sexual orientation or religious beliefs to be accepted by your neighbors; maybe you’ve had to fight to accept yourself. If so, in what ways do you hide yourself and in what ways do you express yourself? In this context, would you say you’re courageous or not, and why?
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7. Describe an area of your life in which you wish you were more courageous? What is it, and how would you benefit

I would love to read your thoughts about courage—please leave a comment.
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Image Credit: Dougal McGuire
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Do you regret wrong decisions you’ve made? What does it really mean to feel regret? And is life better without it?

In the following TED talk, Kathryn Schulz makes a strong case for accepting regret as a positive and reasonable emotional response to bad decisions and mistakes. “We should feel pain when things go wrong,” she says.

Schulz lists the ways we commonly deal with the pain of regret—most of them, negative—including denial, bafflement, self-punishment, and obsession. I encourage you to watch her 16-minute video and then continue on to ideas for journaling about this sensitive topic.

If the video isn’t displaying correctly, use this link: Kathryn Schulz Talk

Based on her lecture, explore your unique ways of responding to regret by writing about it:

• What does regret feel like to you? Describe regret using images.
• When you feel regret, in what ways do you cope with it or try to make it go away?
• In what ways do you punish yourself for your perceived mistakes?
• In what ways do you obsess about the mistakes or wrong decisions you’ve made in life?

Schulz leave us with the following words: “The point isn’t to live without any regrets. The point is to not hate ourselves for having them. We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things we create and to forgive ourselves for creating them.”

• Do you agree with her? And if so, how might you incorporate her advice into your life?

I invite you to join the conversation—leave a comment.
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Halloween, All Hallows Eve, Día de los Muertos, Samhain — ritual celebrations of death, the end of harvest, and the transition into the cold, dark winter. The ancient Celts believed the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead to be thin and permeable this time of year, when ghosts roam the earth causing trouble. The Celts built giant bonfires and wore animal skins and heads as costumes to ward off the ghosts. They also left treats on their doorsteps and set places at the table for their deceased loved ones.

The customs of wearing costumes, creating altars honoring the dead, and leaving treats or candy for them are practiced, in one form or another, throughout much of the world. Here in the U.S., our ghosts (and therefore the costumes depicting them) are malicious, evil, and frightening.

Halloween movies are full of zombies, vampires, horrible bloodthirsty creatures that never die. The fear titillates and repels us in equal measure. In fact, based on the many thrill-seeking pastimes we engage in — scary movies, bungee jumping, parachuting, and riding roller coasters — you could say that we like to be scared.

In a 1949 article, “The Enjoyment of Fear,” Alfred Hitchcock wrote:

For every person who seeks fear in the real or personal sense, millions seek it vicariously, in the theater and in the cinema. In darkened auditoriums they identify themselves with fictitious characters who are experiencing fear, and experience, themselves, the same fear sensations (the quickened pulse, the alternately dry and damp palm, etc.), but without paying the price. (Italics mine.)

At the bottom of all this thrill seeking is a primal fear of death, which we all experience to some degree. And each of us responds to this fear differently. Some face it in small ways through the above mentioned movies and activities. Others deny the fear by refusing to think or talk about death, yet find themselves confronted with it when they or someone close to them becomes seriously ill or passes on. (Even the phrase “passes on” is a gentler, more palatable term for death.) Some find comfort in the idea of an afterlife.

Perhaps, in addition to dressing up in costume and handing out candy, this is an excellent time of year to explore our own feelings, attitudes, and behaviors surrounding death.

1. How do you deal with fear of dying? Close your eyes and imagine that your own death is imminent. Write about any thoughts, emotions, and physical reactions you experience.
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2. What does “to die” mean to you? Does it mean oblivion, a final ending of life? Does it mean some sort of afterlife or rebirth? Freewrite for ten minutes about your perceptions and beliefs. Then freewrite another ten minutes, exploring their opposite. If, for example, you believe that there is no “death” and that consciousness is reincarnated into new bodies, explore the idea of finality, of nothingness. What do you notice as you write?
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3. Which do you think would be worse: your own death or the death of a loved one? Why?
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4. What do rituals and/or celebrations this time of year mean to you if anything? In what ways do you participate in them, and how do they influence your thinking or feeling on the subject of death?
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5. Consider the following quotes:
   • The fear of death follows from the fear of life.  A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. ~Mark Twain
   • We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love. ~Madame de Stael
   • I knew a man who once said, “death smiles at us all; all a man can do is smile back. ~From the movie Gladiator
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     Which quote most resonates with you? Write about what the quote stirs up for you, including images, memories, and emotions.
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6. Write a short fictional story using thoughts, ideas, and discoveries that came from writing in response to the previous prompts.

As we transition through fall to winter, it’s natural to turn inward and to reflect on symbols reflected in nature: waning, death, decay, hibernation, and darkness. Using writing to explore topics we most want to avoid thinking about can be illuminating. I encourage you to try it — see where it leads.

And, if you’re so inclined, share a comment below.

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Related Articles:

A Week’s Worth of Journaling Prompts: Vulnerability
A Week’s Worth of Journaling Prompts: Fear of Failure
Día de los Muertos

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Image Credit: Doug Wheller

Have you ever noticed how some people are able to tolerate a great deal of discomfort and pain, while others yelp or yell or complain about the slightest little things (or at least that’s how it seems to you)? Discomfort is a term that covers a wide range of emotional and physical responses, from the mild discomfort of confusion all the way to physical pain. Levels of tolerance for discomfort are individual and subjective experiences, and what we consider uncomfortable seems to be more about us–our reactions to things–than to the reality of the things themselves.

Most of my life, I considered myself to have a low tolerance for pain and discomfort, because my mother used to tell me I was a big baby. That I cried and complained too much. In context with my five brothers (I’m the only girl), it must have seemed that way to her. But over the years, the feedback I’ve gotten from doctors and others is that I have a fairly high pain tolerance. And I’ve noticed that I don’t tend to get ruffled by the small stuff (it feels small to me, anyway). I wonder, then what’s low and what’s high? And why do we all have so many different reactions to discomfort?

Searching the Internet, I’ve discovered that studies don’t shed any light on the subject. Some studies say that pain tolerance is gender-based, with some contending that women have a higher pain tolerance than men and others concluding the opposite. Some say it’s age-related. Others say it’s all up to genetics. I read one headline stating that laughter increases pain tolerance, and another saying that swearing relieves pain (now you have an excuse for all those expletives when you knock your shin against something).

This week’s journaling prompts are designed to help you explore your attitudes and beliefs about discomfort and pain.

1. Do you consider yourself to have a high tolerance for discomfort and pain? Why or why not? And when did you first begin to categorize your way of dealing with it?
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2. When you think of “discomfort,” what kinds of things–physical, situational, or emotional–do you think of? What about “pain”? Where do you draw the line between the two?
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3. When you were young, was it important to you to “be brave,” and hide your discomfort? Write about the ways in which this was or was not true for you, and who influenced your attitudes.
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4. Are you experiencing any discomfort or pain in your life right now? If so, write about its physical sensations (even with emotional discomfort, you will have physical reactions). If not, try to remember the last time you experienced discomfort and write about its physical sensations. What do you notice about the experience of writing on this topic?
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5. In your opinion, what kinds of people have high tolerances for discomfort and what kinds of people have low? Can you picture them in your mind? Write a brief (2-3 paragraph) description of each kind of person. When did you begin to believe in these characterizations? What or who influenced you?
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6. When you are in minor pain or discomfort, how do you usually deal with it? Do you talk to friends? Seek counseling? Head for the bottle of pain killers? Do you resist pain killers? Freewrite for ten minutes about how you deal with minor discomfort.
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7. Create a discomfort scale. On a piece of paper, draw a horizontal line. On the left side of the line, write down the mildest form of emotional discomfort you can imagine. On the right side of the line, write down the most severe form you can imagine. Fill in the scale with at least five other forms, from least to worst (left to right). When you’re done, write what you notice about your scale. Repeat this exercise for physical discomfort.

I invite you to share with other readers by leaving a comment. Have you ever thought about your attitudes regarding discomfort before? Yes or no, what was revealed to you about yourself by writing on this topic?

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Image Credit: Ben Seidelman
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“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

DISAPPOINTMENT is the opposite of optimism, hopeful anticipation, and joy. We feel disappointed when something we’ve hoped for or expected doesn’t occur. Perhaps you’ve worked for a reward — a promotion, a raise, an acknowledgement of some kind — that didn’t materialize. Or someone made a promise to you that he didn’t keep. Whatever the reason, even the youngest of us has experienced disappointment.

It’s one of those “negative emotions” that, like frustration, anger, and emotional hurt, just doesn’t feel good. As soon as something happens to create disappointment, we want it to go away. Some of us quickly create a new goal, a new plan — action catapults us out of our feelings and into our heads. Others nurture the disappointment, letting it grow into frustration and anger. And others allow it to represent the story of their lives, sinking into despondency. What each of these responses fails to do is to look truthfully at the source of the disappointment and to find the value in it.

Journal Writing about your disappointment can help you find the value in any so-called negative emotion. Emotion, after all, is just energy. And when you guide emotional energy into positive channels, you can experience positive outcomes and even shift your emotion to something more desirable. So next time you feel disappointed about something, grab your notebook and pen and write about it. Some things to consider while writing through disappointment:

• Go ahead and rant! Hey, it’s okay to feel bad once in a while. Rant on paper to burn up some of that negative energy. Then move forward. (See the rest of the bullets for writing ideas.)
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• What passion or sense of caring is at the source of your disappointment? In what other ways does this passion show itself positively in your life?
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• How can this disappointment become an opportunity for growth? What mistake in your thinking did you make? Were your expectations unrealistic, or did you misplace trust in someone? What can you learn, in a positive sense about this situation? (Deciding not to trust anyone ever again, is not what I mean by “positive.”)
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• In what ways can you change your goals and/or expectations to make them more realistic and achievable?
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• How are you receiving your desired outcomes in other ways? (Maybe you didn’t get that job, but you received positive feedback from a colleague about some other aspect of your work, which could lead you in another direction altogether.)
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• Is this a case of needing patience and perseverance — to keep pursuing your goal — or is it a case of needing to move on? What does either scenario mean to you? And if this door has closed, what other door(s) might open?
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• Might this disappointment represent an unhealthy attachment to something? What would happen if you relaxed and let go?
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• Look up some quotes about disappointment and then write about your reactions to them. Here’s one I found: “Disappointment to a noble soul is what cold water is to burning metal; it strengthens, tempers, intensifies, but never destroys it.” ~ Eliza Tabor

These bullet points are ideas to get you started. Once you begin writing about your feelings of disappointment, you will most likely generate new ways of thinking that help you to see events in a different light.

How do you use journaling and life-writing to help move through disappointment? Do you have some ideas that might help others? Leave a comment and let us know.

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Image Credit: Meredith Farmer
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JOURNAL WRITING can help you move through challenging circumstances in life. For example, I recently endured an uncomfortable situation; in fact, I’m still dealing with it. But, if you are reading this it means that the situation is largely resolved.

It was my own fault. I dropped my guard, like the day my iPhone was deftly removed from my purse. Yes, I was careful. Yes, I clutched my purse in front of me. But in that critical moment when hundreds of people funneled forward into the narrow opening between the train doors, an unseen hand reached in and grabbed my phone. I felt it, but it was too late. There were hundreds of people all around me, faces as impassive as the stone statues in any plaza.

Regarding my recent problem — Yes, I made a backup of my website. Yes, I downloaded it to an off-server location. But I trusted the backup program to do its job. I also trusted the WordPress update process to do its job seamlessly, as it has done so many times before. But in that critical moment when hundreds of automated steps of code funneled through the opening of the update, something unseen reached in and grabbed some file essential to the functioning of my websites. I felt it — saw it — but it was too late. Impossible to identify the culprit. And my backup was no good.

So there I sat, nearly 24 hours later, having exhausted six tech support specialists, and my websites were still down. So what did I do? I pulled out my journal and began writing. I wrote down everything: my frustration, anger, and fears.

Through journal writing I vented, found metaphors, and gained perspective. I came to understand that I had misplaced my trust in technology and, because things had gone so smoothly for so long, let down my guard. I had taken technology for granted.

Then I asked myself the question, “What can I learn from this particular challenge in this particular moment in my life?” The answers came quickly:

1. Don’t rely on software and other technologies. Just like writing, grammar gremlins sneak in and live in the dark places. When you let down your guard, they pop out and do their mischief. In the future, I will copy the damn files, every one of them, unzipped, and download them to my hard drive (which is similarly copied elsewhere).
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2. Breathe and look at the bigger picture. My websites, though important to me, are insignificant in the larger scheme of things. I can live without my mobile phone, and I can live without my websites — for a while, at least.
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3. Challenges remind me that my life is not about what I do, but who I am. When I come to my senses and remember who I am, I recover my natural sense of optimism and light-heartedness.
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4. Continue to journal through my challenges, because there’s always gold to be found, if I just dig deeply enough.

So, my message is this: When you feel unhinged by some unwanted event in your life, write about it. Describe it, rant about it, examine it, and finally ask yourself, “What can I learn from this particular challenge in this particular moment in my life? There’s always possibility for growth.

And if you’re new to this idea of writing through life — or simply want additional writing reinforcement — be sure to sign up for my FREE Journaling 101 e-mail course (use the form on the right)

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Photo by Roger Price

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JOURNAL WRITING has many purposes, but it is probably best known for its ability to help us process emotions — especially emotions that we consider negative or painful. I believe that when we resist our emotions, avoid, suppress, or ignore them because they are negative or painful, they don’t go away but lodge in our bodies. Lodged emotion can cause us to feel irritable and to behave in ways we don’t want, such as “taking things out” on loved ones or overreacting to small things. Unprocessed emotion can cause stress, illness, and disease.

On the other hand, writing through emotions allows us to fully feel them, process them, and move (or express) them through and out of our bodies, resulting in healthier emotional and physical states of being.

One of these negatively-considered emotions is sadness. Sadness can range from general feelings of melancholy to despondency and despair, and can be caused by a variety of experiences. For example, feeling hurt by the actions or words of others, or feeling anguish and worry for a loved one, if not resolved can result in sadness. Other reasons for sadness include disappointment, shame, regret, neglect, loneliness, rejection, and insecurity. Sadness can result from feeling pity or sympathy for others, as well.

When writing about and through sadness — or any emotion — it’s important to identify the source of that emotion, if possible. Often, we have buried hurts and traumas in the past, and it may take some deep work and time to identify and heal the sadness-causing wounds.

Journal writing prompts can help you identify and work through core causes of your sadness. Here are a few:

1. Feel your sadness. Allow it to fill you, wash in and through you. Write about how that feels. Then perform a word association: Write down the word “sadness”; then write down the next word that pops into your mind; then the next one; don’t stop, but keep writing down words until no more words come. Look back over the list of words. What does it tell you?
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2. Close your eyes and take three deep, calming breaths. In your mind, travel back in time to when the sadness began. How old were you? What was happening in your life at the time? Does the sadness seem to be attached to a particular person or event? A loss, hurt or trauma of some kind? Write about as much as you can remember about the sadness and when it first began.
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3. If you can identify a specific event, person, or loss which initiated the feelings of sadness, write with as much detail as possible about that event and how you responded at the time. Did you experience a hurt or loss of some kind? What did you do with that hurt? Did you turn it inward? Hide it from others? Feel that you had to “be strong?”
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4. Whether or not you can identify a specific event — maybe it was a series of events over a long period of time — write about what triggers that feeling of sadness for you now. Does the sadness occur when you think about certain people? When you are alone? When someone says something hurtful? Do you find yourself overreacting in certain situations? Write about every situation you can think of that triggers that sad place in you.
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5. Once you have written about the source of your sadness, re-write your story with a different ending. This is fiction, but write is as a possibility. Imagine things happening differently. Or imagine that you handled your emotion differently. Write about having expressed your hurt to someone instead of burying it inside you, for example. Re-write your story as if it had actually happened the way you imagined.
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6. Another technique is to write a different interpretation of the same event. For example, if someone said something or did something that hurt you deeply as a child, look back at that event from your adult perspective. Can you perhaps see how that person was carrying his own hurts at the time, projecting his pain onto you, and that what he said or did had nothing to do with you? Distance yourself from that hurt and rewrite the scene as though you had that kind of understanding as a child.

As always, I invite you to leave your comments about these prompts and add suggestions for writing prompts that may help others process their feelings of sadness.

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Image by Mokarta Graphic

EMOTIONS are an essential part of our lives. If you don’t think that’s true, just ask yourself the question: who would want to go through life without joy?  In many cultures however, we are taught to value dispassionate logic over matters of the heart. Science and “objective” forms of thinking are touted as the sure path to knowledge. And someone who is openly emotional is said—with some disdain—to wear his heart on his sleeve. Men, in particular, are taught to suppress emotions as the inferior domain of women, and even women are often told that they are over emotional when they express their feelings. Given this cultural environment, it’s only natural that many of us have learned to deny and suppress our emotions, especially those that are considered negative, such as anger and grief.

The word emotion is based on the Latin word emovere, which essentially means to move (movere) out (e), which implies that, by its very nature, emotion must move through the body and out.

Most theories about emotion acknowledge that emotions are either based on physical responses (i.e. a flood of adrenaline produces fear), or are the cause of physical responses (i.e., fear produces a flood of adrenaline). Whichever theory you hold to be true, one thing is clear: emotions and physical responses and behaviors are closely linked. When we experience strong emotion such as anger, fear, excitement, or elation, chemicals flood our body, our pulse quickens, and we may perspire or tremble. We are filled with the energy of that emotion.

It is also clear that when we suppress our emotions because we think they are unacceptable, and when we do not allow them some form of healthy expression, the energy of those emotions literally becomes bottled up in our bodies, which may cause physical, emotional, and/or psychological health problems later on. So it’s important to learn how to process and express our emotions in ways that improve, rather than threaten our overall health.

Writing (journaling) about our emotions is one healthy — and therapeutic — way of moving emotions through our bodies. Through writing, we can explore the depth and strength of our emotions, their reasons, and find ways to work through and heal them. We can, quite literally, write our way to healing. It also allows us to express in words (privately) what may be difficult to say aloud to someone else. Writing can also help you to explore other perspectives of an incident and achieve a more balanced perspective.

In this series of articles about emotion, we will take a look at specific emotions, how they affect us, and how to write our ways through them. But before before beginning to write about individual emotions, it can be helpful to explore our attitudes and beliefs about emotion, in general.

Take out your notebook, journal, or computer writing program, select one or more of the following prompts, and write for at least ten minutes.

1. When I cried as a child, I was told …
2. I believe that emotions should/should not be expressed freely by both men and women, because …
3. My father used to express his emotions by …
4. I believe that it is better to not express certain emotions, such as __________________, because …
5. I express my emotions freely and healthily. I know this to be true because …
6. If there is one thing I could improve or heal, emotionally speaking, it would be ______________. The thing that has been holding me back from addressing this issue is …

When you have finished writing, assess how you feel (relieved? calm? agitated? curious?) and write a paragraph or two about your present feeling and state of mind.

Finally, share in the discussion by leaving comments about this process of exploring your attitudes and beliefs about emotion. Don’t share your personal journal writing, but share with us how writing about your attitudes affected you. What did you discover, if anything? Did you find any new, related topics to write about?

A HEALTHY PHYSICAL PROCESS means that we take in food and water from our environment, process it for nutrients, then expel the wastes. In the same way, a healthy emotional process means that we take in our life experiences, process them for nutrients, find what we need to grow and survive, and then expel the garbage. But many of us simply hold onto our emotions, storing them away in our bodies, and we become emotionally constipated, unable to let go of that which isn’t helping us in any way. Eventually, when our system gets too backed up, we get sick. We can no longer function as we should. We become sluggish, unresponsive, depressed.

Keeping the flow of our experiences processed helps to keep us emotionally healthy. Writing regularly is one way of accomplishing this. For example, I once wrote a three-page angry diatribe to my ex-husband telling him everything I hated about him. I really told him off! I was able to say everything I needed and wanted to say, no matter how ugly, cruel, or unfair, because I knew it would stay in my journal. I didn’t have to censor myself in any way. Afterwards, I felt calm, relieved, and able to think about him with a more balanced perspective.

Writing about past events works the same way. The process of exploring emotions associated with events and people in our past can be like cleansing and disinfecting a wound that refuses to heal. Yes, it can be a little painful, but afterwards the wound is clean; the clogged emotional state that kept the wound active has been bathed and soothed and has a better chance of healing properly.

It’s important, whenever you’re writing for emotional healing, to write as honestly as possible. Writing honestly and vulnerably connects you to yourself, like looking in a mirror helps you to understand your own facial expressions, or listening to a recording of your voice helps you understand how your vocal inflections might be heard by others. Writing about difficult or hurtful experiences — describing the events, recreating the conversations, the pain, the emotion, and acknowledging the emotion that still exists in you while you’re writing — can help you to heal. Writing about these events, whether they occurred years ago or this morning, allows you to move through, process, keep what you need to grow, and release unhelpful thoughts and feelings.

Something to write about: Think about something that happened in the past that still brings a surge of emotion when you remember it—anger, joy, excitement, fear, whatever. Write about your feelings and what you would do, if anything, to change that event. If you want to, rewrite the event as if it actually happened differently. Now, how do you feel?