“it’s only an image that you’ve created in your mind, yet it’s capable of stimulating physiological systems in your body that make your saliva and stomach acids”
“equally, of course, even if you’re alone, you can just imagine something sexy and that can affect your body”
“feeling anxious, angry and down. That’s right – our own thoughts can affect parts of our brain that give rise to stressful and unpleasant feelings. They can certainly tone down positive feelings.”
Paul Gilbert – The Compassionate Mind
Fifty days have passed and I have been writing. Every day for at least ten minutes. I didn’t have a specific plan. One day, I just got tired of that heavy, uncontrollable rain of negative thoughts. Negative thoughts about myself, my self-worth, the future and what will happen to me, what others think, and so on. I wish those thoughts were logical. Often, these thoughts do not belong to reality and could be laughable if heard by someone who knows me. For those reading this who don’t know me, I am a pessimistic person. Previously, on more than one occasion, several people who didn’t know me well at work told me I was the most pessimistic person they had ever met. I am also not a cheerful person, and sometimes I am depressed. During certain periods, I was depressed.
What about the positivity in the world? The beautiful weather sometimes, the kind people and the goodness in the world, and everything good that has happened and is happening to me? I didn’t pay attention to that, and it was difficult to confront it in that way. Fifty days ago, I decided to write several sentences in which I described my reality positively. I had intense anxiety that day about the future. Anxiety is like TV channels; I always have some reason for it. Sometimes, there is an analysis studio for my social mistakes, other times there is a horror movie about my future, and sometimes there is a sarcastic presenter who severely criticizes me in my own voice. On that day, I decided to accept the “dark future” awaiting me and write about the positive things that would happen in it. It was a fantasy, no different from its negative counterpart. I felt intensely relieved that day.
The next day, I came back to write and didn’t write much, not even reaching ten minutes, but I felt relieved again. I decided to write about the day. On the third day, I decided to write about the past 24 hours, and I wrote a lot and felt even more comfortable. I described the place I was sitting in and the good memories I have with the objects in the room. We always accumulate things, but how often do we reflect on sitting with them and thinking about our memories with things? In the following days, I automatically started searching for things to write about. As a very pessimistic person, I didn’t find much worthy of being considered positive, so I had to search. The rain of thoughts came constantly from time to time, but it began to decrease. Nightmares are a part of my life—not necessarily a daily occurrence, but they happen almost weekly. Sometimes, they happen daily. After twenty days, I had my last nightmare, and a month has passed without nightmares. Even bad dreams no longer have the same terror.
How to Write?
- Write every day. Once, for at least ten minutes. If you feel you can elaborate, continue writing. Do not write more than once a day unless you feel a strong need to.
- Write about facts. If you hate the rain, do not write that you love the rain. Instead, do not mention the rain, or mention anything positive you see in it, provided it is something you genuinely believe.
- Write with pen and paper or on a computer. However, it is better to write with pen and paper.
- Write about your good memories from the past 24 hours. Someone said something nice about you; you accomplished something that showed a commendable skill; you demonstrated intelligence, wisdom, or kindness, or you simply enjoyed something. You recalled and reflected on a virtue or a good deed you did in the past. Write about all of that. Try to elaborate and even exaggerate if that trait is the complete opposite of what you believe about yourself. You can write less if you already see that positive aspect in yourself.
- Reframe some negative things positively if possible. For example, for someone who dislikes rain, they can write that it will make many people happy or benefit the earth and plants. If you can’t find anything positive, there is no need to write about the event.
- Write about your moments of connection with people, especially the good moments where you feel people’s kindness or they feel yours, or when you laugh with someone or have a heartfelt conversation.
- Write about yourself as a person who deserves and receives appreciation. Gather facts about this from today or older memories to write about the good qualities you possess. Not everyone may be strong, intelligent, productive, or fit other common definitions of success, but every person can find kindness, good morals, and love for others.
- Write about the world in a way that comforts you. I have seen people who cannot watch the news, people who do not want to think about the negative people around them, and others who cannot look at blood. Similarly, there are those who like to see the world as a place of solidarity and love and can bring examples of that, those who like to see laughter and humor, and those who like to see the world as a place where things just continue as they are. Write about the world in the way you like to see it. There is no single truth or single meaning to this world, so you are not lying to yourself when you are optimistic or pessimistic. Different perceptions of the world can be given, and all can be correct.
- Write about yourself, not others, and if you write about others, write within the scope of their interaction with you. For example, those who were good to you, who smiled, or who offered you something.
- Write contrary to your recurring narratives. Write about safety when negative thoughts or fear-driven dreams dominate you. Write about the greatness of your achievements when your negative thoughts belittle your accomplishments. Write about your kindness when your negative thoughts see you as evil.
- Write about crises but focus on their endings, if possible. Haven’t any crises in your life ended? Write about your toughness and resilience if you have endured in the past. Write as if the crisis has ended.
- Try to write creatively.
Why Writing?
When you think, the thought may last in your mind for anywhere from fractions of a second to several minutes. When you speak aloud, the thought transforms to be formulated in language, and not everything in the brain involves language. Infants are startled and scream without possessing language, but once they acquire language, their perception changes. Also, when you speak aloud, you listen to what you are saying, so it is processed by more networks in the brain and comes to your mind as if it were an external conversation. Some philosophers see this as fundamental to consciousness. And consciousness is nothing more than the weaving of many networks. Why do we say we have consciousness while a robot with a heat sensor does not? Because it does not have a complex weave that engages many circuits at the same time as the sensation of heat arrives, as happens with us.
When you write, you cause more brain networks to contribute to the thought than just talking aloud to yourself. You will put words on paper and read them. Something we know about the brain is that more networks within it work to convert texts into images. That is why the world has horror stories, funny stories, adventure stories, and erotic stories. What if there was a good story about you?
Have you noticed the recurring scene in movies and series when something positive is said about a person, and they cry, or when a person hears from others that they are suffering? When others say something, it is as if we see ourselves in a theatrical scene they place us in. When someone disparages us, we might be shocked or surprised, then get angry, and may even cry. This is because we believe others when they introduce linguistic content into our minds. Why don’t we create linguistic content about ourselves then?
Why do we allow ourselves to be victims of a continuous bombardment of shame, guilt, our past mistakes, our faults, and our problems all the time, even in dreams, without an opposing current? What have you done to face all this internal cruelty and threat? All those thoughts are programs you didn’t choose to install yourself; others installed them for you: your parents, teachers at school, bullies, bad managers. Very often, we translate entirely neutral events like cloudy weather, a specific day of the month, or an event involving bad luck as something bigger than its natural size. What if we amplified the positives and made a short daily film out of them? There seems to be no supporting current from our daily habits and actions. Even relationships like marriage or friendship often come with the threat programs that others possess and operate by. They are hard on themselves and threaten themselves to work and move in life, and for them, the same must apply to you.
What can happen afterwards?
When you need to remember certain things that happened to write about them, as if it were homework, you will automatically start looking for them. You might be a stubborn pessimist and refuse to abandon the dark paths to which everything will end, but with a moment where you are forced to see another (real, not illusory) side of your day, you will be compelled to pay attention to that side. When I started, I couldn’t write much, but later, my writings began to expand, and it became possible for me to write for twenty minutes and more. Sometimes, I started contemplating the beauty in a moment that contained nothing special, just so it could be part of the writing material. Sometimes, I started monitoring some moments and reflecting on what was worth writing about, but I would forget to write about them because I had so many. When I have so many of those moments, that is happiness, and that is the brain’s soothing system at work.
Reframing disasters, crises, the views of others, your position in certain situations, or the way the world generally functions are all justified just as much as the negatives are justified. The world is made of atoms, and all life is a complex phenomenon resulting from that, while our consciousness and perception of the world is a complex phenomenon resulting from life. Putting the world in a negative frame is only a choice. Even if you are in prison, there is a choice to see the matter as something that will end and to look at the positives in the prison, or to surrender to its darkness and the injustice within it. The example of optimism in prison is real; I saw one of the Syrian prisoners who spent decades in Sednaya Prison, yet he was intensely optimistic and smiling when he was released.
Some might say that positive writing requires positive events, but in reality, it is a perspective. Someone going through suffering can recall what makes them feel good, and someone enjoying the best life can recall a tragedy daily and cry every time they remember it, or at least suffer from worry. Someone told me about moments when they suffered from extreme poverty, hunger, heat, and cold. He said that the happiest moments of his life so far were when he managed to gather some money, buy a cassette of a genre of music he loved, and listen to it for the first time.
The goal of this practice is not to achieve a specific thing or a specific state, such as happiness, success, increased intelligence, or comfort. The goal is to create a new current in the brain. This current will differ from person to person according to the way they choose to write. You can ignore the instructions above and choose to focus on everything that is green in the scene, or every person with a loud voice, or the clock when it shows an even number. Perhaps you will start noticing these things more. Any person possesses a more comfortable direction for seeing, feeling, and perceiving the world, and the idea is very simple: when you write in that direction, you will make it stronger.
Roots in Scientific Research
As I narrated, I founded this method on principles I learned from Paul Gilbert and based it on writing habits I either created or learned from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). However, this method has roots in other areas of CBT, Positive Psychology, and psychotherapy.
This method overlaps with Gratitude Journals, which involves writing gratefully about what a person possesses. However, it differs by focusing on self-praise and personal traits and elaborating on those to enhance the sense of self-worth, or to preview the world differently.
This method also intersects with all reframing practices in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), but it advocates doing this through writing instead of saying or just thinking the thing. Writing itself is included within CBT. It also intersects with much of what Martin Seligman has presented, except that he did not primarily suggest writing, although some of his practices do involve it.
The concept of Savoring has also been mentioned in psychological literature in many studies. This is the contemplation of a specific moment in a process akin to solidifying it and being fully aware of everything within it. This was also mentioned by Paul Gilbert, who described in his book, The Compassionate Mind, many times the need to be fully alert to the moment, giving examples of savoring and happy moments, in contrast to the Western philosophy of enjoyment, which he describes as being directed towards the reward system.
Gilbert, speaking about sex from the perspective in which one contemplates the moment, says:
“Learning to be mindful means that you learn to pay attention to the pleasures of giving and the pleasures you are receiving. By being in the moment, with the feelings as they unfold, we change our orientation from results to ‘experience in this moment’.”
What happens when we try to write about a specific moment, because we know we have writing time awaiting us, is that we may learn to live the moment in the desired way. Especially when we learn to write creatively, which I make a condition for applying the method. We cannot write creatively about the beauty of the sun’s rays, shadows, greenery in the scene, and the taste of food unless we try to apply what Paul Gilbert describes here.
I’m writing this to share it with friends who may want to try this method, but there is more to be added later.