{"id":1959,"date":"2008-06-09T20:01:20","date_gmt":"2008-06-09T20:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1959"},"modified":"2008-06-09T20:01:20","modified_gmt":"2008-06-09T20:01:20","slug":"selfmedicating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1959","title":{"rendered":"Self-Medicating"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t been a fan of the writing-as-therapy model. Writing about one’s feelings and experiences as a way to work stuff out has long struck me as self-indulgent and narcissistic. But perhaps I’m too harsh a critic of people’s motivations for writing, especially in light of studies that show that expressive writing–including blogging–leads to better health<\/a>. <\/p>\n

I still have a tendency to roll my eyes when I come across writing that seems overly confessional or breathless. I like my blogging to show some restraint, thank you very much. That said, I can’t deny that I receive some therapeutic benefits from writing and keeping this blog. Not long ago, a friend rightly pointed out that underneath my charming exterior lies a pretty melancholy person. Actually, she might not have used the word “charming”, but that’s beside the point. I’m not melancholy to the point where I dress in black every day and sprinkle my speech with quotes from nineteenth-century poets, but I do live inside my head and there’s lots of shadowy nooks and crannies in here. Writing for an audience (however small) is how I get perspective. It’s my way of letting in the sun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t been a fan of the writing-as-therapy model. Writing about one’s feelings and experiences as a way to work stuff out has long struck me as self-indulgent and narcissistic. But perhaps I’m too harsh a critic of people’s motivations for writing, especially in light of studies that show that expressive writing–including blogging–leads to better […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-vB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}