Solitude Won’t Heal Your Life — Talking and Writing Will

How to practically exorcise the demons of your emotions.

Don’t get me wrong. Being alone is wonderful. I’m able to recharge my batteries only when there’s nobody around, and as a mom of two preschoolers, I hunt for moments of solitude just like a hungry cat tracks down its prey.

Besides, meditation and mindfulness-two powerful antidotes against emotional distress-are best served when one is left in peace. And yet, it’s the (not so ‘sexy’, perhaps) communication between two humans that often yields the mightiest results.

You’ve heard it before. Words are magic. Words heal. But how can that be, when words of other people are typically the very thing that drags us into the stinky waters of pain, self-pity, anger, and shame?

Let’s simplify the whole thing. We use words to describe something to another person. In order to describe something, we need to first understand it. And here is your key.

Let me elaborate.

A chair is a chair. But for me to label a piece of woodwork with this word, I need to identify it as such in my head. Now, we don’t describe only pieces of furniture and other worldly objects. We also describe our feelings. And if I’m able to put my feelings into words, I’m able to initiate the process of self-healing.

Each emotion has two components:

ENERGY — which can be used to solve the problem, but which we often turn against ourselves.

INFORMATION — about the nature of the problem and the possible paths to its solution.

An objectively neutral event is followed by our mental evaluation — negative, neutral, or positive — of such event, a thought.

A thought is a product of our reason — an analytical interpretation of the surrounding reality. And each such thought triggers a physical reaction,

Most of our thoughts instantly branch and form webs of thoughts that permeate all three levels of our mind: conscious (what we’re aware of right now), subconscious (automated processes and information to be retrieved when needed), unconscious (storage of thoughts, feelings, and memories that aren’t under our direct…