Writing Away Your Stress

Let me introduce you to a system of self discovery that I found. I call it Guided Free Writing, or GFW for short. GFW is a way of getting all of your stresses, joys, and annoyances onto paper so that you can more easily understand what they are, and find constructive ways to work with them. Plus is rather surprising in it's simplicity, and it's effectiveness.

For those of you who don't know, free writing is when you sit in front of a piece of paper, a computer, or anything that will write, and just write for a set time frame. You can write “I don't know what to write” for ten minutes, just so long as you are writing. It is a great tool for writers to overcome writers block. Guided Free Writing is like that, in that you will be writing, and that you don't want to stop, you need to keep going, though we are not using it to get over writers block, we are using it to get over stress block.

Why you would want to use GFW
Our bodies are not built to handle the long term stresses that we often inflict upon them. Emotional stress has similar effects on the body as physical stresses, your body gets tired, your immune system weakens, you can't focus on anything but the stress; stress uses up your body, one piece at a time. I don't think I need to go on about how stress affects us, I'm sure we have all felt it.

The reason for GFW is to help you realize what is truly stressing you. While you can't stop thinking about that one stress (the deadline of the project that just isn't going right), there are other things that stress you as well, things that possibly cause you even more stress that the one thing you are focusing on. GFW helps you find those other stresses, so they don't fester and cause more harm, this way you have a more complete picture of what is going on in your life.

The basics of GFW
First thing you will need is the supplies, you can find many of these lying around your house. The supplies needed are: 1 tablet or stack of paper, 2 pens, time, and someplace to work without distractions. Don't go out and purchase special paper for this, it's only going to get written on anyway, and be sure to use a pen, not a pencil. The hard part for most people are the last two supplies, time and someplace without distractions, regrettably, the more of those you have, often the less you need to do this.

The first thing to do is label your paper, I label mine “Things that stress me”, and “Things I love”, but label the paper however you wish, or don't label them at all. Ideally you want to have three pieces of paper for each label, you never know how much you will write.

The second thing you are going to want to do is find your time and location. As I said before, these are the most difficult supplies to get, but these are truly the most necessary supplies. Whenever I do this I find that a good time to do it is when everyone else is asleep, that way I have all the time I need, and any location in the house can be a good location; heck when I need to do this I can't sleep anyway. Some other good places might be a quiet park, in your car, anyplace really.

How to GFW
Once you have all of your supplies ready to go, it is time to start writing. There are different ways to approach this, but I will describe the method that I use.

• Take some deep breaths – This will help clear your mind, and get your body ready for writing.
• Set your mind on your stresses – This is what you need to be writing about.
• Start writing – This is when you really get into it, it does *not* matter what you write, just make sure that you are writing. Keep in mind that nothing is too big or too small to write about. Use the labels to help you if you want, ignore them if you want.
• Get everything out – Cry, yell, scream, do whatever you need to; this is an emotional thing.
• Keep writing – If you can't think of anymore to write, then you are only half way through. Write the same things again and again if you need to. Do not erase anything, everything is relevant (this is why you use a pen).
• Stop writing – Do this when you can't physically write anymore, or something happens to your quiet place and time. Be sure not to cause injury to yourself.

That is how you do GFW, isn't it great? You now have a list of everything in your life, the stresses, the joys, the big things, the minor things, everything. Put that list someplace safe. Take a day away from the list, try not to think about it, pretend it doesn't exist.

How to use your list
There are many things you can do with your new list. You could burn it, symbolically getting rid of all your stress, you post it on the internet, so that everyone can see it, heck, you could flush it down the toilet if you wish; I don't suggest any of these. I suggest taking your list, and reading over it, you will be surprised by what you find.

What makes this so powerful is that it gives you a list from which you can work on getting rid of those things that stress you, and work on enjoying life.

Take another piece of paper, and prepare to analyze your list. Start at the top of your list and work your way down. Take each word, and consider where the stress is coming from, and place it in a column on the new piece of paper (example: “Project Monkey bread” that you are working on at work would go under the work column), make the columns as specific or general as you wish. If you have the same word twice, then it goes into the column twice. Once you are done coping everything over, take a look at the columns, see if anything needs to go into a more specific column.

The newly formed columns should give you a fairly good idea where your stress is coming from. The longer the column, the more stress is coming from there. The next step is removing those stresses, if it is a job, then it might be a good time to look for another one, if it is a relationship, then if might be a good idea to talk to the other person and try to work it out. Follow the same process to find what makes you happy, and attempt to integrate that into your life more.

Tips for using GFW
The more emotional you are at the time, the more the writing will flow from you; this is why I find it best to write in the middle of the night.

If you just can't find a place and time to do this, then make the list, and carry it with you for two weeks. Be careful when doing this, lists of this sort have an annoying habit of finding their way into the hands of people who should not have them (your boss for example).

Don't bother to be specific with your writing, you will know what you meant when you go over the list later. Also don't worry about proper spelling, punctuation, or any convention of good writing, it will just slow you down and interrupt the flow of your writing.

Chances are you will be tired after you get done doing this. Don't expect to do this, then head to Chuck E. Cheese's with the kids, you won't be up to it.

Copyright © 2007 by Duane Hubbard