Working through the fear: diminishing sadness

After my first few expressive writing sessions, I decided to try the classic four-day exercise — write non-stop for 20 minutes four days in a row.

I chose another traumatic childhood event more complicated than my initial topic (see blog #1: "My third encounter with therapeutic writing").

Day one’s focus, the event itself, was tough to write. It took a lot of effort to make sure I was honest about every detail. Halfway through, the 20 minutes felt interminable. I didn’t know what else to write, but followed the instruction to keep writing anything until words about the incident began flowing again.

Yet again, I was surprised at my ability to write about another harrowing topic from beginning to end without stopping, crying, or resorting to emotional eating — and remain functional afterwards. Yet again, I was not toppled by facing this experience head-on.

Therapeutic writing is definitely easier than talking.

Day two’s focus meant exploring things I’ve avoided and suppressed my whole life: feelings about the incident and its past, present, and potential future impact. This was tough, but I did it.

Immediately after both writing sessions, I felt a bit out of it and anxious.

While doing my check-in after session two, I recalled another, more minor incident that might require a bit of writing too. At first this felt daunting, but now I feel anticipation about sweeping it out and leaving it behind.

Best of all, I noticed one very promising difference between sessions one and two: my level of sadness on a scale of 1 to 10 had decreased by one point.

That one little shift made it all worthwhile.

Next week’s blog topic: What sessions three and four were like.