daily writing for recovery
One of the habits that I’m trying to get into to help my recovery along is daily writing. I used to write constantly as a kid- mostly fiction and about selves that I wished I was- but as I got older I started exclusively doing academic writing, because I told myself that was the only kind of writing I was good at. Because I’m a strong academic writer, I ended up majoring in English, and the sheer amount of essays I was always writing left me not wanting to write on my own time. I am super obsessive about my lists, though, and have them EVERYWHERE. When I started therapy, I liked to write short lists of keywords to help jog my memory about issues I wanted to discuss with my therapist. I transitioned from keeping my lists in my computer or phone to keeping them in little notebooks, because it felt more private. Having lists is a necessity for me, because my brain is a little jumbled most of the time and I need lists to keep me from going off on tangents. I now carry a notebook with me literally everywhere I go.
When I got sick again, I used my obsessive list-making for unhealthy means. I used to have notebooks and word documents filled with lists of exercise plans, diet plans, sick incentives, and hateful notes to myself. I would calculate calories in the back of school notebooks during class and make daily schedules for myself that had me busy until the last moment, so that I didn’t have time to eat or breathe. I’ve since gotten rid of most of these lists because they triggered me and I have to be extra vigilant to keep myself from making too strict of meal plans or exercise plans, in the event that I fall back into bad habits.
In the past months, at the encouragement of my therapist, I’ve started to do actual writing. I still have lists everywhere, but when it comes to my feelings and things I want to touch on in therapy I will actually write a few pages to expound on them. I write some of my thoughts out on this blog but recently I’ve been transitioning more of them over to paper because I’m more open with my thoughts in private than I am on here. Something that I really want to try, but haven’t gotten the motivation to do so yet, is writing for 20 minutes every day for a month or so. I think that checking in with your emotions for at least a few minutes every day and parsing through any unhealthy thoughts is a good habit for anyone to have, but is particularly necessary in recovery. Writing is one of the ways that I check in with myself and an easy way for me to look back and see progress.
My favorite musician, Maggie Rogers, collaborated with a group of writers/musicians/artists to create “The Isolation Journals”- 30 days of writing prompts to help people express their creativity and occupy themselves during quarantine. I haven’t done any yet but some of the prompts (particularly one of the most recent ones about writing a letter to your younger self and future self) have really sparked an interest in me. If you’re interested, you can sign up to have the prompts delivered to your inbox (and maybe be like me and just store them for when you have more motivation) at : http://suleikajaouad.com/the-isolation-journals
