Journaling and Mental Health

For example:

“You have been through a difficult and traumatizing divorce. When all was over, you felt a sense of relief besides exhaustion and some depression. Several months have passed and you continue to feel the lingering effects of having been through something very stressful. A friend of yours suggests you write about the experience of the divorce as a way of feeling better and putting the episode behind you. You do some investigating and discover that there is solid evidence to support friends’ suggestions.”

Were you among the many young people who kept a diary when you grew up? It’s probably something that more females did as compared to males. Research shows it’s something all of us can benefit from in our adulthood. Rather than a diary, it’s called a journal. Writing a journal can have therapeutic benefits and, perhaps, be a way to change one’s life story or narrative. Clinical Psychologist James Pennebaker, University of Texas, is the leading researcher using physical and mental health journaling. He has completed many controlled research studies documenting the benefits of writing daily. Many other researchers, such as Joshua Smith, Ph.D., and Lauren Smith, Ph.D., have further documented the benefits of writing.

Pam Trachta, owner of Through a Different Lens, a consulting business, reports that “When I journal, or when I teach others to, I strive not to be intellectual and logical and articulate, but to feel the wave, the energy behind an event and to summon images of what that wave feels like, acts like, what it’s saying to me and what I would say to it.” Do not worry about grammar, spelling, or sounding literate. Just write.

According to Pennebaker, developing a deeper understanding of an event and the emotions it generates helps the brain digest the information. Pennebaker thinks that your brain turns it into a more easily stored story when you analyze a traumatic event. “Storytelling simplifies a complex experience,” he says. Turning the memory into a story can be painful at first. It can take weeks or months to notice an improvement. Smyth and Pennebaker report that patients often feel worse when they journal. 

Here are some suggestions for how to journal:

1. Write for yourself

2. Write about all the emotions associated with the event.

3. Set aside 30 minutes at a regular time for three or four days in a row when you won’t be disturbed.

4. Explore how the topic relates to other aspects of your life, such as your childhood and relationships.

5. Write continuously and don’t think about spelling or grammar.

Journal writing about traumatic events can be difficult, time-consuming, and careful. Writing about the worst events of your life can dredge up solid emotions, and healing doesn’t follow. For example, journaling therapy doesn’t seem to work by itself with people who are severely depressed or who have post-traumatic stress disorder. Smyth suggests notifying either your health care professional or someone close to you before attempting this exercise. Let them judge if it’s helping or hurting you.

Also, keep your healing journal private. It’s okay to tear up the pages or burn them once you’ve written about the event. Showing them to anyone who isn’t a therapist or healthcare professional could make matters worse–it could be hazardous for a battered woman to show the pages to her spouse.

Some therapists integrate journaling into their therapeutic practice. Journaling is something you can look for in a therapist if interested. You can certainly do something while in therapy to discuss with your therapist if you are experiencing difficult emotions. Remember, one does not have to be in therapy to write a journal.

Psychotherapy help is available. Email Dr. Schwartz at dransphd@aol.com

Einstein and a Hidden Universal Force: Love

In the late 1980s, Lieserl, the daughter of the famous genius, donated 1,400 letters, written by Einstein, to the Hebrew University, with orders not to publish their contents until two decades after his death. This is one of them, for Lieserl Einstein.…”

When I proposed the theory of relativity, very few understood me, and what I will reveal now to transmit to mankind will also collide with the misunderstanding and prejudice in the world.I ask you to guard the letters as long as necessary, years, decades, until society is advanced enough to accept what I will explain below.

There is an extremely powerful force that, so far, science has not found a formal explanation to. It is a force that includes and governs all others, and is even behind any phenomenon operating in the universe and has not yet been identified by us.This universal force is LOVE.

When scientists looked for a unified theory of the universe they forgot the most powerful unseen force.Love is Light, that enlightens those who give and receive it.

Love is gravity, because it makes some people feel attracted to others.Love is power, because it multiplies the best we have, and allows humanity not to be extinguished in their blind selfishness.

Love unfolds and reveals.

For love we live and die.

Love is God and God is Love.

This force explains everything and gives meaning to life. This is the variable that we have ignored for too long, maybe because we are afraid of love because it is the only energy in the universe that man has not learned to drive at will.

To give visibility to love, I made a simple substitution in my most famous equation.If instead of E = mc2, we accept that the energy to heal the world can be obtained through love multiplied by the speed of light squared, we arrive at the conclusion that love is the most powerful force there is, because it has no limits.

After the failure of humanity in the use and control of the other forces of the universe that have turned against us, it is urgent that we nourish ourselves with another kind of energy…If we want our species to survive, if we are to find meaning in life, if we want to save the world and every sentient being that inhabits it, love is the one and only answer.

Perhaps we are not yet ready to make a bomb of love, a device powerful enough to entirely destroy the hate, selfishness and greed that devastate the planet.However, each individual carries within them a small but powerful generator of love whose energy is waiting to be released.

When we learn to give and receive this universal energy, dear Lieserl, we will have affirmed that love conquers all, is able to transcend everything and anything, because love is the quintessence of life.I deeply regret not having been able to express what is in my heart, which has quietly beaten for you all my life. Maybe it’s too late to apologize, but as time is relative, I need to tell you that I love you and thanks to you I have reached the ultimate answer! “.

Your father Albert Einstein

What is Love

What Is Love?

“Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing, and forgiving. Through good and bad times, it is loyalty. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.” Ann Landers.

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” Emily Bronte.

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” Aristotle.

Webster Dictionary Definition of Love:

1. strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties. Maternal love for a child.

2. attraction based on sexual desireaffection and tenderness felt by lovers after all these years are still very much in love.

3. affection based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests love for his old schoolmates

4 .warm attachment, enthusiasm, or love of the sea.

Love:  

After several years of marriage, we take our spouses for granted.

I recently had a case of a married couple who had been together for 18 years. The husband, an amiable and sensitive man, forgot to send his wife some kind of gift for Valentine’s day. She felt hurt and disappointed. We discussed it in couples’ therapy. Clearly, he had no intention of hurting his beloved wife. While he intended to send her a gift, he forgot as he played video games with friends on the Internet. She was very hurt. As his therapist, I joked with him he had better have a good life insurance policy because she retaliated in a deadly way. 

He understood the joke and felt terrible about overlooking the import of expressing his affection, especially on Valentine’s day. 

We take a lot of things for granted, both husbands and wives. Yet, it is essential to express affection and love for our romantic partner. It’s just a reminder that we care. And it means a lot to our spouses. 

There are many ways for couples to express their love for one another. For example, ordering flowers, sending a loving card, cooking dinner for that evening, possibly ending in a sexual episode of lovemaking. These things mean a lot to people. There is more to love and romance and simply sex. People want to know that their partner is highly valued and appreciated. 

Love is a set of emotions and behaviors characterized by intimacy, passion, and commitment. It involves care, closeness, protectiveness, attraction, affection, and trust. Love can vary in intensity and can change. It is associated with a range of positive emotions, including happiness, excitement, life satisfaction, and euphoria. Still, it can also result in negative emotions such as jealousy and stress.1

It is said by many that love is one of the most important human emotions. Yet, despite being one of the most studied behaviors, it is still the least understood. 

Types of Love

Not all forms of love are the same, and psychologists have identified several types of love that people may experience.

These types of love include:

Friendship: This type of love involves liking someone and sharing a certain intimacy.

Infatuation: This is a love that involves feelings of attraction without a sense of commitment; it usually takes place early in a relationship and may deepen into more lasting love.

Passionate love: This type of love is marked by feelings of longing and attraction; it often involves an idealization of the other person and a need to maintain constant physical closeness.

Compassionate love: This form of love is marked by trust, affection, intimacy, and commitment.

Unrequited love: This form of love happens when one loves another who does not return those feelings.