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The Write Path - Poetry Therapy Creative Writing

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Articles, Essays and Poems by Susan

Writing Unscrambles Your Brain

Call it what you may – confusion, overload, stress – when emotion runs high, the circuitry in my mind jams. My thinking wigs-out. Before committing myself to keeping a journal, I believed there was no way to unscramble my brain in the short term. I was victim to the mess inside.

Today I reach for a pen, a keyboard, or even a stick to write in the sand. I record the scrambled-egg thoughts and mysteriously my thoughts unscramble. It seems as if someone waves a magic wand; soon things make sense.
Recently I received news that a family member was at death’s door. While other family members fretted, I stood at the kitchen counter recording the chaos in my head:
When someone is dying
And you live far away
Knowing your cry won’t
Alter the day
Someone is dying
Your heart waits in hell
The world loses color
To death’s threatening spell.
Somehow eight lines, scribbled on a yellow tablet, lowered my anxiety. A few minutes later, I was calm enough to offer support and encouragement to someone else in the family.
Don’t get me wrong, I did not share my writing with anyone in the room that day. I hardly considered it profound. These lines, which flew from the pen, simply represent the raw thoughts that were flooding my brain. My jounral, like a sponge for chaos, soaked up the feelings and made way for clear (or clearer) thinking. In my book, that matters a lot in a time of crisis. There will be plenty of time for tears later.
So it goes with many of the emotions that clog our minds. Fear, anxiety, anger, and debilitating grief all respond to paper and pen. Long ago my daughter nearly escaped death at the hands of a crazed motorcyclist.  Here are the lines I scrawled on a napkin in a coffee shop after the man disappeared in traffic. I transferred them to my journal that evening.
My anger wears a heavy cloak
Made from fiery fabric
Shrapnel threads, the weave askew
Fiendish cape of hostile hue
Stylish with a dagger.
Would I prefer to scream my rage at the maniac motorcyclist? Maybe, but probably not. Knowing what I know of road rage, my words on a napkin were the safer approach. Would it have been more satisfying to see him ticketed or arrested? I’ll never know. What I do know is that, given the man’s hasty escape, I was left with no recourse. What remained was a nasty pit in my stomach.  Writing helped take the edge off my rage.
The words in your journal do not need to be poetic or profound. When anger strikes, a simple ^#@** will help. It takes no genius to to write words such as, “Arghhh! That stupid SOB nearly killed my kid. People like that should be put in jail, sentenced to hard labor, hung up by the fingernails.”  Write it any way that works – any words to capture the screams inside your head.
That is the secret – to get the gnawing, scrambled emotion out of you and onto the page! The good news is this: the emotional release that comes from writing persists. Unlike spoken words – yelling, screaming, and/or whining – which disappear in the mist, the written word remains.  A scrambled brain will try to hang onto trauma, no matter how large or small. The frightened mind does not want to forget, but once your thoughts and feelings are recorded, your mind can relax and let go.
Writing helps end the nagging and niggling obsessing which seems a fine thing to send packing. Write it down - that is how I spell R-E-L-I-E-F.

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