Listen to this description of how Mari benefited by Therapeutic Journaling. How it helped her to improve her health and identify solutions to problems enabling her to create the happy and healthy life she wanted to live. Learn how you could do the same.
Here is the transcript of this video:
I hear and I forget, I see, and I remember I write and I understand Chinese proverb, back in 1998, I did not have the strength to cook a meal without dropping my source bands and sometimes my dinner on the kitchen floor and I had very little function in the right side of my body. I had been floored quite literally by an ongoing health crisis as a successful consultant advising fortune 1000 companies. I had previously owned my own business, but I've been forced to sell it due to my disability. I wasn't even able to write my name properly as I'd lost the use of my right hand a few years earlier. I'd regularly walked for miles just for fun and fitness. I'd been quite athletic as a young person, a good sprinter in basketball player. Now I could no longer walk down the street in a straight line in the eyes of people who didn't know me.
I looked exactly like the town drunk things couldn't get much worse for the girl who had one, solved everyone else's problems in a desperate bid to recover my health. I was following conventional medical advice and taking a cocktail of prescription drugs every day as I dutifully went from one specialist to another, but my condition was getting worse instead of better. It took a mammoth effort everyday to coordinate my legs and walk from the bedroom to the bathroom. I felt diminished by my chronic illness. I needed a radical transformation and it came when a friend introduced me to writing therapy, also known as therapeutic journaling or expressive writing. At first, I viewed journaling as a means to an end. I wanted to learn to write with my left hand, but I do noticed how it eased my bodily symptoms, especially when I wrote about them in depth before I started journaling about the lack of function in my right side.
For example, I've been suffering a lot with numbness and tingling in the effected areas. My right arm was cold and read it in appearance than my left arm, but over a period of time the blood flow improved and my effected arm began to look normal. Gradually, the generalized numbness and tingling I felt on my right side diminished too. I also noticed improvements in my digestion after writing about my rushed approach to mealtimes and implementing some changes in my eating habits as I continue to explore my physical and emotional distress. Through journaling, I realized I'd been abusing my body for years and ignoring it's cries for help are driven it recklessly like an automobile, yet it was actually a living organism in need of care and attention. I started to take a holistic approach to my health and introduce some lifestyle changes right from day one.
Journaling revealed my issues and helped me find solutions. I was forced to recognize my negative self image and to discover that I hadn't dealt with the pain of my childhood with my journal as a catalyst. I began a metamorphosis, a dynamic process of physical, emotional, and spiritual change. After a year or two of regular writing therapy, I found I didn't need the message of prescription drugs had been taking, so I stopped buying insurance and saved myself thousands of dollars a year. I'm not saying everyone should do this, but it worked for me. However, the biggest surprise of all, or was this through journaling, I had found a door into my cell. I began to discover who the real Mary Mccarthy was an individual with unfulfilled dreams that had somehow been forgotten and buried, a person with innate talents that had not been recognized or developed. My Journal entries revealed what mattered to the real me and the path I needed to take. As I got in touch with my deepest thoughts, feelings, and desires, I began to change my whole way of life. I learned to think with my heart and not just my head.
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