Write It and Wait
We have emotions. You can’t unplug from them, divorce them, send them on vacation, or send them to the corner. Of course, there are practices that help you live with them, like journaling or like meditation, and there is help if you struggle with severe emotional burdens and baggage (these are not technical terms — I am not a doctor) through counseling.
I’ve found a good practice that I’d like to share, called “write it and wait.”
Sometimes, putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboards and transcribing how you are feeling, in the form of a letter or email addressed to the person, persons, or organization that has brought such intense or painful feelings up in you, can be helpful. Liberating.
I have a friend who created a folder in her email application for “Unsent” venting emails. To hear her tell it, this was a step forward from the missives she used to send that hurt people’s feelings and damaged relationships.
Just yesterday, I was talking with a friend whose feelings were hurt about a situation in his condo community, and he had written a letter explaining how he had been treated and how that made him feel. Since this was addressed to the association which had some impact and control over his living situation, I advised him to wait for a while before sending it.
What emotions are begging for your attention?
Not sure what to do with them? Write them down and wait. It’s one way.
This post was inspired by a blog post that I wrote one morning in anger at how I was being treated where I worked; my wife said,
“Put that one aside and don’t publish it; it’s not ripe and the time is not right.”
I was looking around for a topic to write on and remembered I had saved that post as a draft. I looked for it and could not find my backup folder of drafts. Gone.
