Therapeutic Blogging
Our culture revolves around the idea of self-sufficiency and independence. We don't want our survival to be dependent on anyone besides ourselves. But I'm pretty sure our culture has it wrong. Community is important. It always has ben and it always will be. We're born into families, we play on teams, and we're assigned to work in groups. We're designed and engineered to function not in isolation, but in relationship with other humans. Even us introverts.
After writing my most recent post on physical, emotional, and spiritual therapy, I realized that something was missing. I threw out a whole lot of information about the various forms of therapy and I neglected to talk about one of the best forms of therapy I have ever found: BLOGGING! I realize that some of you might not believe this fact, so I decided to make a list of the...
5 Reasons Blogging Counts As Therapy
Blogging is a team sport. It is impossible to blog in a bubble. Blogging forces you to engage with the world and make new friends. It's exciting!
Blogging is synonymous with being vulnerable. When people think about therapy, they usually think of a hopeless case sitting on a sofa confessing their deepest darkest secrets. Well, while you might not share the depths of your soul with the world, you will be sharing a small piece of yourself with cyberspace while engaged with the blogging community. Even if you refuse to share a single personal detail, you are being vulnerable simply by putting your words out into the world. It's brave.
Blogging makes you process your thoughts. In order to compose a blog post, you have to organize your thoughts. Whether you do it before or during your writing process, you must slow your mind down long enough to process some piece of the world around you. It's important.
Blogging requires commitment & maintenance. If you want loyal readers, you have to post to your blog consistency. This requires a certain degree of commitment to yourself, your blog, and your fans. It forces you outside of yourself and outside of your "issues." It also requires investment and passion. It's hard work.
Blogging is a form of self-expression. You get to design every aspect of your blog. The theme, name, color scheme, logo, topics, layout, and writing style are all little extensions of your personality. Your sense of humor permeates your writing. Creating a blog guides you in a journey of discovering who you are. The bonus is that other people get to become part of that journey and become awestruck by your creation. It's beautiful.
Blogging is exciting, brave, important, hard, and beautiful. You get to discover new parts of yourself and share your gifts with the world. A blog is a collaborative effort that requires diligence and love. In my previous post I claimed that the goal of therapy is restoration. So how does blogging therapy contribute to this pursuit of restoration?
Blogging forces us back into community. To value relationships. To engage with other humans. My generation is easily condemned for its reliance on technology. I've had people say to me, "You guys don't even know how to hold a real conversation." My blog is my ammunition against such statements. I use technology to pursue engagement, not flee from it. To create relationships, not destroy them. Blogging is therapy because it restores relationships in what could easily become a disconnected world.