Blog Therapy?

I've gotten a couple of email inquiries in the past few days from people who found this blog on Google, and have decided it means I know something they want to know about.  One is from a nontraditional student who wants to finish up his undergraduate education at an Ivy League school and wonders which ones I think are the most prestigious.  ?!  A second is from someone doing a research project about "blog therapy."  She wrote, "I noticed that you don't believe in blog therapy, and I wanted to ask you about your beliefs."  I wrote back, "I'm happy to answer your questions, but I don't even know what blog therapy is, so I'm not sure why you'd want to ask me anything.  What's blog therapy?"  In her response email she included a snippet from this post, way back when, where I made my beliefs on blog therapy known. 

Hmmm.

It was interesting to go back and read that post, written while I was still reeling from being unexpectedly dumped.  I was sad and hurt and confused and mad at myself for having believed that my love was reciprocated in the first place.  I needed to write to sort all that out but I was ashamed of my own vulnerability, and I sure as heck didn't want to put my sadness out on the Internet for the whole world to see.  And yet I couldn't really omit it.  It's interesting to look back at way I thought about my identity and this blog, and to compare it to how I now view that relationship.  I'm not sure what to tell this researcher about my views on "blog therapy," whatever that may be, but I think there's a complex, and in some ways perhaps therapeutic, relationship between my own sense of self and this blog. 

Writing has always been a habit of mine -- I have an overflowing shelf full of journals -- and I've shifted a lot of my writing to this blog.  Which has changed what I write about, consciously and unconsciously.  I have trouble opening up about hard things.  I am generally happy and optimistic, resilient, confident, hopeful.  I think sometimes I start to believe that I HAVE to be that way, all the time.  That if I were to show people my moments of doubt, my neediness, or my longing, I would be pitied or despised.  I don't know where this instinct comes from, but I'm fighting it consciously, and it's very very hard.  I isolate myself when I'm sad; I'm ashamed of the parts of me that aren't unfailingly positive, capable, delighted, self-assured.  I want to hide them away. 

This is true of my life, but it's also true of the blog.  Jeremy was recently asked how his blog would be different if it were anonymous.  I knew my answer right away.  It would look more like my journals -- I would work things out, problems or fears or sticky troubling situations where I don't know the conclusion.  I would write about them in detail, thinking them through.  I would ask for help.  I would admit to wanting things I might not be able to get.  I don't do that here, because my social identity and my professional identity are here for anyone to Google and find, and an admission of wanting something that you're unable to get looks a lot like a public failure.  A temporary mood becomes permanent thanks to Google.  An angry response to someone involves not just me but them, too, and it wouldn't be fair to air that out on the Internet.  Job interviewers have looked across the desk at me and said, "I like your weblog.  You're a good writer."  (And others, "This weblog thing....um....it makes us uncomfortable.")  I don't self-censor much.  It's not worth writing to me if I don't write honestly.  But there are whole topics I don't write about at all, because I don't want my honesty here for the world to see, infinitely indexable by Google, and linked to my real-world identity.  I change my mind and my mood, but what I write is here forever. 

At the same time, I think I'm learning a lot by writing here.  I do take risks and when I do I tend to be surprised by the kindness of the response of my readers.  Just as when I take risks with my friends and confess to being afraid, or doubtful, or sad, or lonely, I'm always amazed by the kindness with which I'm received.

Blog therapy?  I guess in some ways I've changed my tune since last January.  By committing to writing this thing every day, I am involved in a practice of observation that is perhaps a little bit like meditation.  I notice what I'm seeing, doing, thinking.  I capture my thoughts, feelings, and sensations.  And when I sit down to write, the self-censorship voice fights the instinct for honest disclosure, and the dialogue is instructive.  "You can't write about that."  Why not?  "Because then people would know that you're ______."  But I am _____, at least right now.  It's lying if I pretend I'm not. "But if you write about it, people will think you're ALWAYS like that, and then nobody will like you. (or nobody will want to work with you)."  Really? "Well, maybe not.  But you better not risk it."  Are you sure?

Anyway, it's a practice that's rewarding.  The blogs I like the best are those where people are brave, and honest.  I aspire to be both, but I think there are lots of ways in which I fall short.  Just like I do in life.  A blog, like a real-world identity, is a set of conscious choices about what you project about yourself to the public.  I've said before that I think a blog is like a mosaic, an aggregation of hundreds of small observations, dark and light, many shades and shadows and textures.   The truth is in the aggregation, not in any one of the fragments.   I guess life is like that too.  My project is to trust my audience -- in life and on this blog -- enough to include the dark pieces as well as the light, without fearing that you will mistake those bits for the whole picture. 

Comments

Have you ever had anyone get mad at being mentioned in your blog, even anonymously?

[B]

Did you breath during that post?

The movie "what the bleep do we know" Speakes to this posting.

You are making your own reality

[Cogno]

Following the ethos of Cognitive Therapy, ie., when you've figured out what you're thinking, you need to apply something sensible to the material, I have opened a therapy blog myself.
(Click on my name, "Cogno"). It is part self-analysis, part me figuring out what cognitive therapy is... Check it out...

[BronzeTrinity]

What a great post! I also find blogging to be really therapeutic. It helps me to focus and understand myself, and since its written down, I can look back on how I have changed. I love it so much and I get so much acceptance from fellow bloggers. Its too bad that having people know your true identity makes you censor your writing (thats why I kept my identity secret). Have a good day :)
P.S. I found this post by googling blog therapy

[Finally Slag Free]

I have found that writing a blog for someone else to read allows me to see more humor in situations that may normally frustrate and depress me...
I have been blogging since I filed for divorce.. and like you mentioned.. my blog reflects my attitude change about many things...
Have a great day

[Maksimus]

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