Writing as Catharsis — Freedom of Expression

I started writing — that is, keeping a journal — when I was in my early teens. What I mean to say is I started writing seriously, beyond just the usual notes about what I did at school and soccer and things like that.

As a deeply introverted kid who was also struggling with having a very active inner imagination, along with a tendency to experience virtually all feelings and emotions around me with a great deal of intensity, writing was a sort of private outlet that allowed me to process what I was experiencing in a quiet sort of way without having histrionic freak outs that resulted in my vomiting a huge volume of emotional soup onto other people.

Don't get me wrong: it wasn't exactly that I was repressing my emotions, but I did grow up in a family where people with strong feelings were seen as somewhat deranged and perhaps even in need of being put in an institution to learn to self-regulate "appropriately.".

I think part of the reason why writing helped me keep my sanity was because it allowed me to express myself with a sort of naked honesty that I was otherwise repeatedly reminded that it was not OK to express when it came to engaging with other people.

Of course in those early days I wrote exclusively in a paper book, long hand, but around 25 years ago this thing we call blogging came in to existence, in some way facilitating the process of actually getting feedback from others without necessarily imposing on them.

That's the nice thing about blogging you can be as brutally honest and straightforward as you wish but in putting your words out there you're not requiring anybody to listen so there's no uncomfortable shuffling or furtive glances going in other directions while people look for an exit because clearly they're talking to a deranged individual!

These days, science and the mental health profession talk a lot about "being neurotypical" and "not neurotypical" and I suppose I've always fit into the not neurotypical category, in many respects. Although... if I actually am on the autism spectrum it's at a very high functioning level, and it's combined with being a Highly Sensitive Person (or HSP), and an introvert who likes to keep his own company.

I've always made it clear that I have no dislike of people (except for a choice few!), but the vast majority of people I spend time around end up exhausting me. There is a very small group of people who do not exhaust me when I'm around or engaging with them, and some of them I'm not even "around" — they exist only as friends made over the Internet and live in completely different parts of the world for me like Norway, Iceland, New Zealand, South Africa and Finland.

I suppose one of the ways in which many would consider me a little "off center" is by the fact that I am not very good at compliance. What I mean by that has nothing to do with whether whether I follow the rules and stop at red lights and pay my bills, and everything to do will not willingly being shoehorned into the ever narrower box society imposes on us called "acceptable actions and behaviors."

It is a shame that we live in a world that tends to judge and inflict pain on those who are non-compliant. I have also been around psychology for long enough to understand that the desire to shoehorn others and inflict pain on them has more to do with the person doing the inflicting of pain than it does with the person on the receiving end. The vast majority of people on this planet are neither comfortable with it, and might even be afraid of anything that walks outside the norm.

It is seldom just one thing that puts us out in left field.

Consider the mere fact that I'm sitting here on a crypto social site named Steemit, writing these words rather than on Facebook where everybody else is. In and of itself it is hardly noteworthy although perhaps a little strange, but when you add together literally hundreds of tiny incidents like that you end up with a mix that makes people not entirely comfortable.

Whereas I have great empathy for other people's lack of comfort, at the same time I am not willing to sacrifice myself on the altar of selflessness and reshape myself into a form that wouldn't make them nervous.

The funny thing is I'm not even a "crazy artist!" Ironic, isn't it? If I was toting canvases and paints around and obsessively painting impressionistic pictures of hedgehogs people would gently dismiss me and say "ohh, that's just a crazy artist!" But because I'm a relatively normal person living within a relatively normal framework folks get uncomfortable.

Perhaps the most challenging things about walking to the beat of a slightly different drummer is the fact that you are regularly reminded of your aloneness in the universe.

We're all part of some greater whole, and the frequent reminders that you don't belong here can wear on your sense of desire to even be in the world, from time to time.

Writing makes it better. And having the freedom to express makes it better... even if nobody much agrees...

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend!

How about you? Do you use writing ans a healing tool? Are there things you feel free to say "in writing" that you would not say in a face-to-face situation? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2025.04.26 00:10 PDT
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