I think this is super important and an idea we see often. People always tell us to "work through" our feelings and not to push them down. I think the most important part about this contribution though is that the article is presenting us a way to actually work through our feelings. This is something new to me because a lot of times when people have told me to work through something i had no way of actually doing that, or no idea how to. Thats why this article is so important; it tells you what you need to do and in a specific sense.

I feel like i had a similar epiphany. I used to be afraid of writing about my traumas or my hardships because when i did they sometimes did make me feel worse. But i think it was because of the way i was writing. I was writing in the venting kind of way that i describe, which i think kept writing from being beneficial for me. At some point i started writing about what happened AND how it made me feel (like the article talks about) and that is when i started to notice a change.

Do’s 1. Write twenty minutes a day over a period of four days. Do this periodically. This way you wont feel overwhelmed. 2. Write in a private, safe, comfortable environment. 3. Write about issues you're currently living with, something youre thinking or dreaming about constantly, a trauma you've never disclosed or discussed or resolved. 4. Write about joys and pleasures, too. 5. Write about what happened. Write, too, about feelings about what happened. What do you feel? Why do you feel this way? Link events with feelings. 6. ‘Try to write an extremely detailed, organized, coherent, vivid, emotionally compelling narrative. Don’t worry about correctness, about grammar or punctuation. 7. Beneficial effects will occur even if no one reads your writing. If you choose to keep your writing and not discard it, you must safeguard it. 8. Expect, initially, that in writing in this way you will have complex and appropriately difficult feelings. Make sure you get support if you need it.

On the other side of my notecard, I wrote a set of warnings I'd gleaned from Pennebaker: Don’ts 1. Don’t use writing as a substitute for taking action. 2. Don't become overly intellectual. 3. Don’t use writing as a way of complaining. Use it, instead, to discover how and why you feel as you do. Simply complaining or venting will probably make you feel worse. 4. Don’t use your writing to become overly self-absorbed. Over- analyzing everything is counterproductive. 5. Don't use writing as a substitute for therapy or medical care.

"Through writing about events and feelings, students integrated the two; they understood what had occurred and what they felt about it, and they assimilated the meaning of this event into their lives, thereby diffusing its power over them."

I could see how that could be true. When you continue to think about something it becomes something. For example, if you continue to think about how rude someone was to you earlier, and you keep telling your friends about it, and then your friends get frustrated and you get riled back up, you never really let go. If instead you go wow that guy was rude, take a deep breath, and check in with yourself you'll get over the situation faster. So again it makes sense that if you continued to write only your feelings about a certain situation it would make you continue to hold onto them.

"Through writing about events and feelings, students integrated the two; they understood what had occurred and what they felt about it, and they assimilated the meaning of this event into their lives, thereby diffusing its power over them."

I think this is super important and an idea we see often. People always tell us to "work through" our feelings and not to push them down. I think the most important part about this contribution though is that the article is presenting us a way to actually work through our feelings. This is something new to me because a lot of times when people have told me to work through something i had no way of actually doing that, or no idea how to. Thats why this article is so important; it tells you what you need to do and in a specific sense.

I think writing or anything expressive can be a great tool in not only healing, but like the quote said saving you. Writing, painting, drawing, anything that allows you to express how you feel in a comfortable and safe setting is incredibly healthy for you. Especially since a lot of people keep everything bottled up inside which can lead to an explosion of emotions.

I think this is an interesting way of looking at it. I always thought writing was healing because it allowed you to potentially work through complex emotions and difficult events. They way i read this quote though suggests to me that we can write our past as the present, and if we are in the present there is an ability to change what is happening. Does that mean we can write our past as the present with a different ending and have that be beneficial for us?

I love that Whitman continued to edit it and this idea that poems might never be finished because sometimes writing is scary because of this idea that if you publish it or show it to people it's complete. Sometimes you write about an experience and your feelings change or your perspective changes and so you want your poems to change to reflect that, but feeling like you cant can feel scary and confining.

This is something that i have noticed too. For me personally, to counteract that I like to word vomit when I am feeling like writing but am feeling self critical. This way i can get everything i'm feeling out onto a paper, even if it doesn't make sense, and then i like to come back to it and edit it when im feeling less self critical

I 110% agree. I have gone long periods without writing before because everything i wrote just didn't feel good enough. Or it didn't perfectly capture what i was trying to say, or it didn't rhyme perfectly. There is always something that is slightly wrong with your writing and sometimes it really just doesn't seem good enough which is something writers constantly have to work through.

Ive never thought about looking at it that way though it makes a lot of sense.

I like this question. When we are young we have so little cares and we do what makes us happy; not what is always expected of us. When we grow up we start to feel pressure to fit in, to appease our families and society, and we start doing things for other people, not ourselves. I wish more people would do the things that made them happy