How to manage the emotions that writing can bring up

Sitting up in the top of my cupboard is a blue box tied with a piece of white fabric tape. It’s been there for two years now and I haven’t touched it.

I’m scared.

Inside it is every letter I ever wrote home from boarding school – five years’ worth. And honestly, I don’t want to go back. I know, though, that I need to do it. The after-effects of those five years have been large in my life and I still have dreams where I’m back in boarding, usually with one or more kids in tow, attending maths class in our freezing cold Himalayan mountain classrooms and getting into trouble for not doing my homework. (At some point in those dreams, I say to myself, “Hang on. I’ve done a whole university degree. I don’t have to be here, doing maths with cold fingers.” At that point I wake up and lie in the dark for a bit.)  

I know I’m going to have to go there and open that box, though, so I have a plan. Next year is the year of the memoir: The Year I Read My Boarding School Letters.

But I’m still scared. I’m scared of the emotions that will rear their heads, of the things that I’ve ‘sorted out’ becoming ‘unsorted’. Basically, I’m scared of feeling, again, like I felt at boarding.

This year I’ve been teaching a ‘Write Your Memoir’ course with another writer. Last week in our session I handed out a sheet with a list of tips on Managing Your Emotions While You Write Your Memoir. Anytime we write about things that have happened to us, we are going to be dealing with emotions. Some, like my boarding school letters, we know will stir up old angers and fears. Others may pop up unexpectedly, right out of the blue. Either way, we need to know how to deal with it when it happens, so here are the tips I gave my class – tips that I’ll be dedicated to sticking to myself next year.

·         Keep a journal/blurt book.  Use it to write down whatever you want – even if you’d never tell another soul. Crying and punching pillows is also allowed.

·         Find a support person - someone to talk to. The right person is a gift. The wrong person may be a curse. If you really can’t find anyone, consider booking in to see a professional counsellor.

·         Limit your writing time to a manageable amount. Putting boundaries around the time you’ll spend thinking about hard things each day or each week can help.

·         Stay healthy. Eat your vegies, drink enough water and make sure you exercise. It dissipates stress and creates that lovely serotonin and dopamine in our brains.

·         Find a mindfulness/meditation practice. Pick one that works for you and do it every day. It may be prayer, relaxation, playing music or colouring in.

·         Breathe deeply for two minutes every day. It increases oxygen and gets rid of stress.

·         Stock up on funny DVDs and books to give you a hit of humour. If you’re laughing, it’s hard to be sad.

·         Realise when you’re ‘kicking the cat’. If the people around you are suffering because you’re passing on your stress without realizing it, stop and take care of your own feelings.

·         Take time off if you need to. I can’t believe I would ever tell anyone to stop writing. But if you need to, you need to. (On the other hand, you could move on to the next tip instead…)

·         Balance out the hard memories with the good memories. Follow up writing about the hard stuff with something that’s more positive.

·         Make a list of ‘rewards’. Write down ten things you’d like to do but haven’t gotten around to yet. Reward yourself with one of them every time you do a piece of difficult emotional writing.

·         Anything else that works for you. You probably know what it is, because you’ve been doing it for years already.
Cecily Paterson is a novelist for young teen girls, based in New South Wales. She blogs at www.cecilypaterson.com