I felt connected to the first strategy to strengthen resilience as a skill. The idea is that one can avoid rumination through something called expressive writing. If you free-hand for 20 minutes, and you talk deeply about everything that is on your mind after a negative experience, it can help you run through it in your head in a positive manner. Not positive as in happy, but positive as in creating change; being effective. You can take it in from different perspectives, get things off your chest, and even find silver linings at the end of the day.
People don’t usually realize how effective this can really be. Rumination affects some people more than others, and - unfortunately - I am not good at dealing with it. My therapist absolutely roasts me about it. I’m only joking, that would not be a productive form of therapy. But anyways, I took a lot away from this section of the reading because my girlfriend writes in this manner most days before she goes to bed and she says it has been helping her a lot. She’s been doing it for about two years now, and she’s still going strong. I think it’s something that I would like to start doing because, even after a couple years of therapy, I don’t know the right way to go about dealing with sadness, anger, or trauma. I think this form of grounding can be a fantastic way to practice mindfulness, and a good way to get to know yourself as well.
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
Blog Post 9 - Walkup
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Hello! I can relate to your post about using specific strategies to strengthen resilience from Newman's article. Although I am in the same position as you with expressive writing. For me personally I can't get into it like others because when I write with strong emotions it only gives me short term results rather than long term. Instead I like focusing on practicing self compassion and giving myself validation to heal, such doing the practice Newman suggested, self compassion break. As much as it helps with in the moment struggles it also helps with past struggles. Learning how to deal with strong emotions and trauma can take time, I hope it works out for you.
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