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Four Writing Exercises to Get Over a Breakup
Couple
If Your Heart Has Been Broken, These Four Exercises Can Help You Get Back Together
February 15 can be a date to forget for some lovers, since it is one of the days of the year in which there are more couple breakupsAfter leaving a day that can be as intense (lovingly speaking) as Valentine’s Day. A breakup is never a dish of good taste, and there are times when we find it very difficult to know how to manage it. Writing is positioned as a way through which to channel pain and overcome this difficult moment.
«In the event of a breakup or a bad love affair, writing stands as a therapeutic tool. Not in the sense of solving problems directly, perhaps, but, of course, it is usually a good way to expose what we carry inside, to vent, to clarify our feelings and even to help us make a decision, “says Diana P. Morales , writing teacher in charge of El Portal del Escritor. The professional shares four therapeutic writing exercises to deal with grief.
1. Automatic writing
This technique, invented at the beginning of the XNUMXth century by the avant-garde writer Dorothea Brande, consists of write the first thing that comes to mind. Without erasing, without editing, without stopping to think. The purpose is never to create a literary work, but to let ideas flow freely, without the brake of our judgment, our morals, our shame or our logic… to find the solution to a conflict.
This exercise is carried out for at least half an hour in which one writes non-stop everything that comes to mind. It is a matter of free association of ideas.
2. Writing through letters
Write a letter to a recipient with whom you are in conflict it is a way of telling that person everything you feel. Then it can be saved, broken, burned … The goal is to discover and release our emotions.
An unresolved conflict prevents us from moving forward. Bringing out what we feel to understand why and even forgive is the goal of this exercise.
Morales recommends ordering the letter in the following way: first explain why you are angry. We must let out all our anger. Then we can tell what it is that causes us sadness or what has hurt us. Here now It is not about accusing, but about looking inside ourselves. In the third phase, we must talk about fears. What is it that causes us fear? Then you have to give way to repentance (if any) to finally close the letter from love.
3. The thank you letter
You may be going through a breakup right now, but I’m sure in your life there are other things to be grateful for», Affirms Morales. For this reason, this exercise is designed to make you feel better and to reduce problems.
The author recommends writing a list of at least 30 things for which we are grateful. The idea of this exercise is to focus on the positive in order to enjoy it more. A variant is to write three things that one is grateful for each night in a notebook.
3. Writing of the life we want
Brain scholars claim that the words we use shape our reality. This exercise consists of describe the life we want in the future, in detail. It is about describing our ideal life, both work and love, at the level of health, family, or even the house in which we will live; the successes that we will have achieved. It must be written in the present tense, as if we had already achieved it.
It was a practice followed by the American writer Octavia Butler: she used to write these letters to herself on a regular basis stating, for example, that she would get enough money from her books to buy a new house. And he got it.
As a final recommendation and for these techniques to work, the writer maintains that all these exercises they must be worked with paper and pen. That is, by hand, avoiding electronic devices.