Anxious Living

More on Writing to Cope

January 11th, 2007 by Aaron

After writing last week’s post, I decided to keep up with the writing practice and see where it took me.  Each night since then I’ve set aside an hour to write on anxiety.  As before, I wrote quickly, not allowing myself time to reflect on what I was writing.

It’s been an interesting experience.

I’m no stranger to keeping a journal, be it personal or in blog form, but I don’t think I have often written so much and with such intensity about one topic.  I’ve found that a lot of what is drawn out is familiar and expected, dissections of the moments I am most anxious, but no small amount has taken me by surprise.  I’ve devoted a good chunk to going over how I got along with my best friend growing up.

It seems from my experience that anxious people tend to self-censor, always conscious of what might be thought of them.  What is suprising is to find just deeply ingrained this is.  Even while writing angry rants in a computer file that is password protected and never going to be seen by anyone but me, I find myself getting nervous and wanting to hold back if I hit territory that might make me sound bad.  I can’t shake the fear of how embarrassing it would be to be found out as mean, selfish or attention craving.

It builds up like acclimation.  I get better at plowing through, start to flow for awhile, then hit a weird moment and have to redouble the effort.  And it is all strangely obscenity laced.

Every night, after writing, I feel good, relieved and relaxed.  Perhaps anxious thoughts and feelings need somewhere to go.  It’s not as if you can unthink or unfeel them.

I don’t know if this writing is going to be long range helpful, but it is certainly beneficial in the short term.

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