I suffered a lot of chronic pain over the past year and a half, and this has led me to pick up some practices that have had great mental health benefits beyond pain reduction.
One is expressive writing. I’ve always journaled, but I’m approaching it differently now by trying to go deeper to address primary emotions and fears and give them space to unfurl without judgment or over-intellectualization. This is quite different from traditional journaling, which for me can have a lot of rumination, list-making, jumping around, and superficial treatment of uncomfortable topics.
I was awakened to the power of expressive writing through the Curable app’s podcast, “Like Mind, Like Body”. Curable is an amazing resource for anyone with chronic pain. It has taught me a lot about the mind-body connection and how unnatural and inaccurate it is to try to separate the two. Emotions and their physical manifestations weave in and out of each other. Repressed emotions speak (or scream) to us in many different ways, and are one of the major causes of chronic pain.
In one particular episode, Curable’s head of content hosted an interview with Nicole J. Sachs, LCSW. Sachs is “a speaker, writer, podcaster and psychotherapist who has dedicated her work and her practice to the treatment of chronic pain, symptoms, syndromes and conditions.” She champions a method she calls JournalSpeak™, which consists of making three lists, one each for: past stressors, current stressors, and personality traits; picking a topic from one of the lists; journaling about it for 20 minutes; and finishing with a 10 minute self-compassion meditation. The key is to tell the truth, go deep, and let feelings arise. You can read more about the practice here. This is just one way to approach expressive writing; there are of course others.
In the conversation host Laura Seago summarized the reason why expressive writing is so hard and yet so powerful:
“The fear for…many people…is that if I let out what my deepest emotions are telling me, then it’ll be true, true; it’ll be a permanent kind of true. But, it actually becomes a permanent kind of true when you hold it in, and you let it fester, and the second that you get it out on that page…you have that instant realization…that it’s not the truth. Emotions are temporary if I can learn to release them…The scarier thing is to not do this, and to allow these emotions to dictate what the real truth is, rather than letting them out and allowing them to be temporary.”
Sachs puts it simply:
“Life is a choice between what hurts and what hurts worse. Period. The end…Either do exactly what you’re doing right now, or take a leap of faith…Replace fear with curiosity.”
— Nicole J. Sachs, LCSW
One day recently, I had a journaling session focused on impermanence and the fact that whether I like it or not, everything I love will die. Specifically, I thought about my husband. His life is precious to me, and I think about his mortality all the time (not fun, if you’re wondering). I’m burdened by the fear of his death, the fear of our separation, and the fear of my death and him being left alone all at the same time. It truly causes me terror, and it has the same plaintive quality as my sadness and dread over mass extinction and climate change: why do beautiful things have to die, why is existence so fragile?
In my session, I chose to really go for it and hold nothing back. I cried all my tears, got intimate with my deepest fears, and left nothing unsaid. I named everything I was scared of, emboldened by the new perspective that if I ignore what hurts me, it will only get louder and express itself in harmful physical symptoms. There was no happy resolution in my writing, no peaceful conclusion — only reality and how sad I was about it. I just journaled for 30 minutes and used up a lot of tissues. Then, I went and sat down to meditate and decompress. I had a cup of tea with me and it was pretty warm. I held it in my hands, feeling the intense heat in my hands. It wasn’t scalding hot, but enough to really zap me into sensation. Then something became immediately clear:
You are so alive.
You feel this heat in your hands because right now you are unavoidably, intensely alive.
You feel everything because you are achingly, blazingly, completely alive.
I understood that the price of aliveness is pain. The gift of aliveness is sensation and emotion. You feel all these horrible and wonderful things because you’re alive, and you don’t get to pick only the good. The response to the endless questions — why do I have to feel so much pain, why does living come with this enormous burden of impermanence, why will every single thing I love inevitably die? — becomes: the gift of aliveness is feeling all of that, and loving comes with the pain of losing. You are so fucking alive, you’re so in love, and so in awe of the beautiful biodiversity of the planet, and that’s why you hurt.
I plopped my butt down onto my yoga mat, and sat and meditated with all of that.
If there’s something I can offer here, it’s to express your emotions like your life depends on it. Journal with the voice of a small child, releasing the big, unbridled, illogical emotions of pain, hatred, guilt, shame, ecstasy, etc. And then, meditate to regroup and soothe yourself, because you just did a lot. Believe in the steps and take the time to tend to your emotions and thoughts. It is stunning how much it works.
“Desperation leads to surrender. Surrender leads to truth. Truth leads to healing.”
— Nicole J. Sachs, LCSW
For a long time I evaded giving time to feelings that I didn’t think would have resolution. What was the point of writing about fear of death, or climate change, or extinction? It felt like focusing on the negative, or being a debbie downer, or melodramatic. My attitude has changed since experiencing the power of private, intentional emotional expression. The point is to process your reactions to reality. You can’t change reality, but you can change your relationship to it by giving your emotions airtime, and coaxing them out of your mind and body.
I’ve come to terms with the fact that this isn’t a one and done event. To me, the gentle consistency and care of expressive writing seems a revolutionary act of peace and kindness: you can listen to your body, listen to your heart, and give yourself what you need even if you can’t cure anything. It reminds me of the way a good mother would comfort her child — she’s present and listens, no matter the issue, and is willing to hear about it over and over, even though she can’t always fix the problem. I’ve also come to terms with the discomfort. When I notice myself resisting a session, that’s when I know it’s really important. Either I’m doing the work on my difficult emotions, or they’re doing work on me. Sachs’ work helped me to see that.
Sachs’ recommendations are simple, but they have big impacts. They fit right into the kind of resources and tools for mental and physical well-being I’m trying to incorporate into my life: not overly complicated, mindful of the many layers that make up a human, slow, and kind. Expressive writing feels right. I know that even though it’s not always fun, it’s important to sift through the big and small traumas that happen to us daily and certainly within a lifetime. In fact, I’ve been humbled to learn that the bigger and more complex the problem, the more likely I am to find comfort in something simple. I’m not “too intelligent” or “above” expressive writing, yoga, meditation, or a long walk.
How are you, sensitive soul, tending to your mental health in these painful, bewildering times? What might you be avoiding or dismissing because it seems frivolous or not “serious” enough?
Could it be…
- More time in nature
- Speaking your grief to a friend
- Listening to or creating poetry, art, music
- A climate cafe or support group
- Foam rolling for 15 minutes
- A detox from the news
- A tea ritual
- Planting something in the garden
- Swimming
- Comedy (SNL? Stand-up?)
Expressive writing, or any of the above techniques, doesn’t diminish the seriousness of eco-grief/anxiety or climate depression. Nothing could be more serious or important. I do all of the above, and they are each deeply helpful in different ways.
If you are interested in the astonishing mental health benefits of expressive writing — and I really hope you are! — I suggest these two Curable episodes:
- Can Journaling Help to Release Physical Pain? https://www.curablehealth.com/podcast/journaling-and-physical-pain
- Writing to Heal Your Lifehttps://www.curablehealth.com/podcast/writing-to-heal-your-life-john-evans
Also, check out Nicole Sachs’ website:
https://www.thecureforchronicpain.com/journalspeak
And her YouTube channel:
Ecological Morning 
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