Creative Writing as Therapy
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and I personally think it's fitting that we dedicate a month to one of the most prevalent and universally affective issues in our society today. Mental health issues are so roundly misunderstood that it's often tempting to brush off the next person's struggles by saying that everyone deals with depression and anxiety and self-defeat every now and again. But while trauma is a part of life, internal torture and maladaptiveness and physically inhibitive thoughts are really not.
It's a series of hurdles, in truth- first there's the question of what draws the line between mental illness and dramaticism and where you stand. Once that's been resolved there comes a perhaps more daunting mountain to climb and a dilemma to face. What role does medication play in treating mental illness, and where does therapy come into play? It's easy to say that depression is a chemical imbalance (which is dubious in and of itself) and that we can expect full recovery with some serotonin injections, but what amount of the disease is the personality? How can we be sure that treatment, espeically treatment with drugs and chemical injections, won't take away ourselves?
I personally believe in that line being drawn and us being cautious to identify ourselves within that line of mental illness. It's a serious thing, to be sure- we can't all say that our symptoms warrant treatment, and especially treatment of a serious caliber. But I still think that we who are not candidates for actual treatment should take measures to keep our own mental health in check using perhaps unconventional methods. My personal favorite is maintaining a dream journal, and on the side attempting to chronicle your story. There's a sense of catharsis that comes in sharing your thoughts with someone- or something- and that may be too difficult to do face-to-face. It's a good idea to try creating stories to convey these thoughts, just because you get the chance to disassociate yourself from your worst fears. When they take on some tangible incarnation, you get the chance to stare back at those things that eat your thoughts and your person and contemplate where you are in relation to those thoughts. Make your fears fantastical and exaggerate those things you believe most to be true- the mind is a powerful thing, and raconteurs tend to know how to play around with it. There's someone inside, always, in situations when you're feeling depressed and when you experience that panic attack every once in a while, who's trapped behind thoughts bigger than reality. Perhaps immortalizing fears in fairy tales can help us to resize things in perception and make ourselves bigger than reality.
Over the next few weeks, we'll be posting some prime examples of writers who did just that. And as if you haven't heard it enough- to those of you suffering from mental illness, you are most certainly not alone. There is something within you that is stronger than your self-defeat and fear, and you deserve to ask for all the help you need to resize the inner self in the face of despair. By the way, giving help, as many of us have come to find, has a particularly therapeutic effect in and of itself. We can always stand to help.
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