#Microblog Monday 379: Stop Obsessing
Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.
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As if you needed another reason to do Microblog Monday and write in your own space, I loved this article about the power of writing things down. When we give our thoughts a label — describe them and explain them — we make our thoughts manageable:
It is like when a doctor gives a diagnosis after hearing a list of symptoms; we give a label to describe a thought or a concept. And what happens to feelings that cannot be put into a label because they are too abstract? We use those categorical dimensions of positive or negative, self or others, past, present, or future, and so on, and it forces just anything to be labeled. It is a method for tricking the amorphous.
The diagnosis doesn’t remove any symptoms and it doesn’t solve the problem, but anyone who experiences unexplained infertility knows that a diagnosis (or label or name) makes a difference. It gives you a focus, a way forward.
Write it down. Get it out. Look at it on the screen. Release it.
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5 comments
Sound advice! Get it out of the horrid head spiral. 💜
This is absolutely what I did during my second pregnancy loss. I would like in bed going over and over what had happened, and as soon as I wrote it down, and how I felt at the time, I could let it go. And now blogging so often helps me sort out my thoughts, and as I write a post, it often turns out differently than I had expected at the beginning.
You know I fully approve, lol. Journalling, blogging, venting on message boards (pre-blogging), writing long letters to friends — they have all been so cathartic & therapeutic. I can’t imagine how I’d cope if I wasn’t able to write things out somehow.
…and done. Thanks for the reminder.
You are so right Mel! When I was 18 I injured my ankle- not for the first time- and I KNEW it was different. To make a very long story short, after a year of being told I’d sprained it, or worse yet- there was nothing wrong it was all in my head- I went to UCLA where they diagnosed me with a rare nerve disease. The pain was real! Leaving there with a diagnosis seemed like a first step….then I learned there wasn’t a cure. But still, it helps.