Writing Away The Sadness with Elizabeth Schaefer, Ph.D.

MP3 Download Elizabeth Schaefer built her career thinking and writing as a scientist - detached, analytical, unemotional. When depression and bipolar disorder derailed her life, and years of hospitalization, medication, and electric shock therapy left her exhausted but still depressed, she began to write about it. For the first time she became acquainted with the language of her own emotion. As she continued to put those emotions down on paper, she discovered a new power over her illness. She explains, “Recognizing those emotions as they come up on the page - which may be different from the recognition that we do without writing - allows us to organize and manage our thoughts better. That managing can then lead to some sense of catharsis, or freeing of some of those emotions, which allows us to then start to resolve them.” If you have a lifelong habit of writing in your journal every day, or if you’ve never explored an intimate moment with your thoughts and the written word, Dr. Schaef