"The growth of understanding follows an ascending spiral rather than a straight line." ~Joanna Field

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Focus on the Positive~!

Something I've never quite understood about myself is my lack of desire to journal (or blog) during what may be called "up" times.
You see, I like to keep a diary.
At least, I think I do.
But I find that when things are going really well, when I am feeling really good, good things are happening, the depression is at bay... I don't feel that urge to write about what is going on.
If I'm lucky I will feel the urge to write fiction.
But not about reality.

And I can't quite put my finger on why this is.

Now, don't take that to mean that things are bad right now.
Quite the opposite, in fact.

I just noticed it (again) recently.

See, I had that depressive episode at the end of April.
Which kind of soured my May as well (and a bit of June).
And I was writing in my diary, and on here.
Then I met a (wondrous) girl, started hearing back from possible job people, seeing friends, going to Ottawa...
And suddenly I have no desire to write.
Then had a close encounter of the bitchy kind with my old... friend...y...person...thing, R, and suddenly wanted to journal again.

The reason this disturbs me is such:
By writing down my negative thoughts and feelings am I not giving them permanence that I do not then lend to the positive ones?

I can easily look back and say "Oh, yeah, I really felt shit that day."
But I can't easily point somewhere and say "Look how many good things happened then!"

And even when I do journal about good things, or things I think are good, I tend to end up pulling out the negatives-- my fears, worries, where I think I screwed up or will.

And perhaps the reason I do this is tied to the idea of secrecy that our society places on "negative" feelings.
People are "supposed" to be happy. So we are taught from a young age not to show when we are upset (if we don't have to).
It is socially acceptable to be joyous-- but looked far down upon to be in a rage.

So perhaps what happened is I started writing the negative feelings because there was nowhere else to safely  (in my head) release them. But there is no ingrained feeling of needing to write down positive thoughts, because I can let them show.

It could also lead back to my habit of (over)analysing things. I don't want to look too closely at the good feelings for fear I will turn them into bad feelings.


I guess what I am getting at is I am going to try journaling something good every day for the next month.
Try and describe only the good aspects of it, why it makes me feel good, etc.
And see if at the end of that, it becomes as habitual as my other journaling.

I think focusing on the positive is a great piece of advice, and one too hastily rejected. So I'll stop being a hypocrite and try it out.

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