January 19, 2009
Have you ever read a chapter from a book and it made you cry? I haven’t had that experience and that seems odd to me because my eyes will fill up during a movie if the acting tugs at my heart but a sad chapter read from a novel won’t affect me at all. I wonder why that is?
Is it because we all process information differently and somehow it is directly related to how we receive information using our senses? Is an emotional response based on our sensory style? I don’t know the answer, but in my opinion, it might be.
Think of the brain as a computer. The visual and hearing areas meet in another location of the brain. It is in this area that the brain does the reading. We take in the visual images and process them. If something is wired differently in this area of the brain, then there will be problems understanding what the written words mean. Now think about the frontal lobe, another part of this special computer. This is the place where we organize and sequence information. If we are wired differently here, as in my case by having ADHD, then you might also encounter difficulty with reading. Maybe that is why I am unable to “think in pictures” easily , and in turn, I don’t seem to have an emotional response to what it is that I’m reading.
I can’t figure that one out, but I do know my other senses work just fine. For example, when I hear a sad story or watch a sad movie, I can react with emotion…but it’s those symbols, the blending of visual and auditory stimuli, and the difficulty of sequencing and organizing the information , that makes reading complex. Will I ever experience emotional reading? Maybe not. But I have experienced emotional writing.
Emotional Writing
So there you have it. I never get emotional by reading a sad chapter in a book. Knowing that about me will help you understand why I’m still surprised when a reader contacts me to say something I’ve written moved them or they thought it was powerful. Take this as an example; recently, I received an email from a reader ( now a twitter friend) that my story FA-LA-LA moved him to tears. I couldn’t believe it. How could that be? Reading is not emotional for me, but it definitely is for alot of people.
For me, writing is emotional. Not all the time, but anything that ends up packing a punch is usually because I’ve chosen a topic that is personal. I felt it too when I was writing it. I was purging my soul again. One of my favorite quotes is by Hemingway.
“Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it-don’t cheat with it.” Ernest Hemingway
I think Ernest Hemingway was talking about emotional writing. I guess that is what I am doing when I end up writing something like Fa-La-La, but at the time, I didn’t know it had a name. I just knew I felt better when I turned off my lap top.
Emotional Writing isn’t a new concept. College courses have tried to teach students to create stories to trigger powerful responses for years. I remember one of my writing professors at Boston College telling the class of undergrads: “If you write it well, it is because it is a part of you. Dig deep, feel it, pull from your gut, then it will be a great story.”
Emotional writting, also called expressive writing, is now being used as a tool in therapy to help people overcome trauma, fear and grief. There have been studies that have recorded its effects on our health and the benefits. Some studies have shown an improvement with our immune system, and even in one study it was recorded the breast cancer patients in the group that participated in this form of writing, had fewer office visits.
What is emotional writing?
In the 80′s this form of writing was beginning to create interest and studies began. Presently,the health benefits of expressive writing is being studied around the world.There are studies showing the physical outcomes include changes in the immune system, the results in breast cancer treatment, and even improving sleep quality. There is a lot of ongoing research, but so far the articles written seem to support the health benefits gained from emotional writing. If you are interested in learning more, here are some links that I’ve discovered on the topic. It is pretty fascinating.
The Physical Benefits of Expressive Writing
Blogging; It’s good for you in the Scientific American
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