My Struggle with Writing as a form of Therapy

It's been a solid month since I've last approached any of my social anxiety thoughts & feelings. In more ways than one—involving ability to cope, deal, and manage my anxieties—my gradual inactivity has affected different aspects of my life, whether it's direct or indirect. I keep allowing distractions to occupy my head and I'm avoiding my problems. I need better ways of managing these type of situations, better ways of finding useful and healthy distractions. I need to workout my thoughts and figure out what problem I'm avoiding. I live day by day feeling okay, which is fine. However, there is no substantial progress towards overcoming my problem (anxieties, stress, and fear). This course of action or reaction is what annoys, frustrates, and consumes me during my time of struggle.

From previous experiences, I've been able to develop plans and take actions that help me deal with my anxieties. During the process, subconsciously, I'm able to tell myself that I'm doing okay and I end up easing off my cognitive behavioral therapy. I tend to follow this yo-yo cycle. I'll start strong by being able to review lessons I've learned. Instead of continuing and pushing myself when I feel the progress, I stop to only restart the process whenever I feel I'm back in the dumps.

Am I sick of this cycle?
Somehow I feel the word "sick" is too strong of a word. If I was sick of something, I would have a sense of urgency. Urgency is something I seem to lack and I'm frustrated with myself more than anything. I've noticed that when I stop writing, when I stop venting out my thoughts, when I realize I've consciously decided to do nothing that the outcome comes back to haunt me.

Why do I stop?
This is another habit I need to break. There comes a point in the process where it becomes hard for me. The task itself is not hard, but the process fails to engage me. Instead of pushing myself, I tend to go on auto-pilot. In previous months, I've done well with keeping a journal of some sort. At one point, for 2 or 3 month's straight, I wrote daily about my sleep habits, quality of sleep, observations, exposure, and progress. Surely enough, it somehow feels like chore and I talk myself out of participating. My focus gets shifted elsewhere and I'm now seeing that the unresolved thoughts linger around.  These thoughts or feelings could be rationalized through writing.

My Experience with Writing in a Journal
I kept a journal—a physical leather bound journal—when I attended college. It recorded many of my experiences, emotions, thoughts, and goals I wanted to accomplish. I wrote about my fitness. I wrote about my weight loss. I wrote about my goals and, oddly enough, it kept me motivated and determined to follow through with my plans.  However, I had my moments of falling for the same traps. I would go on a cycle of having great workouts and good eating habits. On days where I would get on a scale and have unsatisfactory results—even when body measurements show significant progress—I would get disappointed, disparaged and frustrated. This would result in my own self-destructive behaviors of beating myself up, over-indulging in junk food, and putting stops towards my workouts.

In very recent events, I succumb to the same cycle mentioned above during my half marathon training. I did a bad job of balancing focus, time, and effort. Either I tried to do too many things with little time or I did nothing with too much time.  Finding a reasonable balance is another aspect in my life I struggle with.

5 Minute Freewriting #1

My eyes are closed and my fingers close to the keyboard. I'm typing out my thoughts in this five minute exercise. I don't have a general direction of where to go or what I'm doing. I'm just winging it.

Today was gloomy after being sunny the whole week. I was up late last night, really late. I woke up in a "tired" mood and I had bouts of feeling unmotivated. I decided to weigh myself and I saw that my weight was up a pound from Wednesday, but down a pound overall from last week. That probably played a part in how I felt and how I  looked to food (for comfort). I did indulge or overate a bit. I'm an emotional eater.

I skipped working out. I felt crummy, but I feel better. I caught my friend online and we did a quick video chat and talked about random stuff. I felt better after that, and I realized how isolated I am. After quitting the "corporate" scene and working as a freelancer... I'm very limited to outside contact. It is a blessing and a curse. I don't have to deal with office stress, but I deal with other stress none the less. I use to be afraid of my anxieties when going out, but now I know I lack every day contact. I don't know how to feel about that. I also relapsed into drinking caffeine. I drank a cup or two of coffee. Not my finest moment, but I needed a mood change.

My mind is running blank in this exercise but I'll keep going. I know I don't sound coherent or anywhere near intelligent, but I talk and think in short sentences. I think about relationships a lot. Relationships I use to be in, relationships I could...

Change of Pace

I decided to take a small hiatus from my YouTube Video venting-therapy-sessions that I try to do on a weekly bases. I just need to restart my engines and I think I need to write more. I feel as if I have a cluttered mind at the moment. As a reflection, my room, my work, my life is just cluttered with distractions. I'm allowing these distractions to take over and I realize I need to change things in order to get them in control and back into place.

Have I been writing more?
Nope, I haven't... but I'm on the right track to realizing and recognizing my current downfalls. It's hard for me to write at first, but I'm more open to doing "free-writing" rather then always having to control, edit, rephrase, and format my writing in a certain way. Sometimes you just need to let loose and let your words run wild as if you were talking out loud in an empty room. I forget to do this or I have a hard time doing this, because I'm always trying to find the right word or form the right sentences in a proper way for me to get my thoughts out. When I actively do that, it tends to lose the original feeling and I end up getting frustrated and will stop writing all together. As well as allowing distractions to take over.

My previous entry got the ball rolling and I have an even longer entry that I'm thinking of posting up.

Sometimes it's easy as breathing: Inhale, exhale, realize, and recognize.