David R. MacIver's Blog
Words and bodies
This post was originally published at https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/words-and-bodies.
This is a post about something I’m still figuring out, so I’ve paywalled most of it.
The core of it is this: Have you noticed that there’s something really interesting going on with the physicality of handwriting?
I’m somewhat erratic about keeping up the practice, but I go through phases where I do a lot of hand written journalling, and it’s been particularly interesting as an experience recently and so it has me thinking about it more.
Before I drop into the paywalled section, here’s a spell for you to try:
Emotional processing journalling
Get a sand timer for writing (I use a 45 minute one)
Get a pad of A4 paper and a pen (I think a fountain pen is ideal for this, but whatever works for you).
Sit somewhere with no devices and a good place to lie down available (I use a sheepskin rug for this, but a bed or yoga mat would be fine). Set up the space to be conducive to writing (e.g. I light a candle for journalling).
Set your timer and write about whatever you like until the timer finishes.
Your writing should consist of simple declarative sentences that fit on one line. I find it helpful to add a blank line between each statement. Don’t try to keep the topic consistent, write whatever comes up.
Whenever you start feeling physically agitated or some strong emotion starts to come up, stop writing and perform ragged breathing.
At any point you want to, step away from the journalling and pace about, or lie down, or in general move however your body wants to move. Return to journalling when you are ready.
You may or may not experience this, but for me this process sometimes produces very strong physical effects. If you’re easily triggered (e.g. have cPTSD), you might want to be careful about doing it and/or have some good recovery strategies.
Trip report: Shaking from journalling
When I say this produces very strong physical effects, what I mean is that this is probably one of the most visually dramatic emotional-physical responses I’ve had since the events I wrote about in notes on shaking. This is probably not automatic and is likely because I’ve done a tonne of work on making that viable and also tried this out initially when I was in a particularly bad emotional state, but even so I was still blown away by how strong the effect was.
When I first adopted the journalling structure I was trying to just use Secondary anchor as a way to keep me focused on the writing. It was at the point where I noticed I was trying to crush a rock with my bare hands and was bent over it making groaning noises that I realised this probably wasn’t going to cut it.
At that point I went and lay down on the sheepskin rug and shook uncontrollably for a good five to ten minutes. I think from the outside it probably looked like I was sobbing - certainly I had a lot of shoulder and chest movements that looked like I was wracked with sobs.
I wasn’t actually crying though, and internally the experience was something along the lines of “boy this sure is an interesting physical reaction. I wonder what’s going on?”. It’s not unlike the experience of doing trauma releasing exercises, which produce seemingly purely physical shakes where you just sortof lie there going “gosh it sure seems like I’m having an emotional reaction. I wonder what it is.”
At some point I curled up into a ball and started moaning. This too was interesting.
What’s particularly interesting is that the content of my journalling when I did this wasn’t that strongly emotional. I think the first sentence triggering something like this was something like “I want to be better at asking for help”. Which is certainly a difficult emotional subject for me, but not one that normally provokes this strong a reaction.
One, I think reasonable, theory is that what I’m experiencing when doing this is a dearmouring event - “armour” is a Reichian therapy concept, which is that you use muscular tension to suppress feeling particular emotions. Dearmouring is when you stop doing that. The ragged breathing exercise I use is loosely Reichian, and is designed to help you dearmour, so this does seem the leading theory.
If so there isn’t necessarily even an underlying emotion at all. Part of the problem with armouring is you maintain it even when you don’t need it and that’s bad for you.
But it sure seems like there’s some underlying emotional event going on that’s worth paying attention to, even if I can’t currently access it consciously.
It’s also interesting that it comes out this way without the emotional content obviously accessible because it’s actually not that uncommon for me to cry while journaling. It’s not the default experience by any means, but I think a substantial fraction of times I’ve properly wept as an adult have been while journalling.
Writing as feedback
Here’s a question for you: Is writing actually a thing?
Obviously, yes, I’m doing it right now.
But why is my writing here on my computer right now for you to read the same sort of thing as me writing privately for myself by hand in a journal? Are these really the same thing or are they different things?
I am, of course, at risk of trying to count clouds here. The answer is that they are both the same thing and different things depending on what you’re trying to do.
But what I’m trying to point at is that they are different in important ways. There’s this idea of “writing” as an interchangeable thing where any type of writing is roughly equivalent to others, and sometimes that’s absolutely the case, and sometimes it’s not and the type of writing you’re doing really matters.
This is partly what I refer to as being a victim of metonymy - confusing distinct things because they have the same label, and thus drawing wrong conclusions. I’ve historically used this to point out that probably you are not bad at reading, you’re reading badly. But right now I want to point to a different thing: It’s easy to be mistaken about what writing does if you are primarily used to experiencing it through a computer.
Because here’s something that I’ve noticed over the course of quite a lot of handwriting: Sometimes, when you’re writing by hand, the physical way in which you are writing changes involuntarily, and you need to pay attention to it because that is some part of you saying that this is important.
I’ve noticed at least two distinct ways my writing changes when writing by hand:
Sometimes it becomes frantic in a way where words just pour out of me in a torrent and my pen is struggling to keep up with them.
Sometimes it becomes deliberate where I very carefully shape each letter and the words slowly descend upon the page with a weight of a mountain.
I can deliberately simulate both types of writing if I try and it’s not useless to do so, but it’s also not the same as when they happen involuntary. There’s something very different about doing something deliberately and doing something because it is what you are demanding to do.
You can see the results in the quality of my writing afterwards. Normally my handwriting is quite messy. When I’ve been writing frantically it’s often straight up illegible even to me. When I’ve been writing deliberately, it’s genuinely good.
In contrast, while both of these approaches can come up while writing on the computer, they relatively rarely do and leave little in the way of physical artefact at the end to record them.
Distinct ways of being in the world
I mentioned my handwriting is normally terrible. There’s a reason for that. As a kid, I was diagnosed with dyspraxia, a development disorder that basically means you’re bad at doing things.
Difficulties may present as clumsiness, slowness and inaccuracy of performance of motor skills (e.g., catching objects, using cutlery, handwriting, riding a bike, use of tools or participating in team sports or swimming).
Yeah, sounds about right.
I have long-standing suspicions about this category, but I can’t deny that there’s something there.
Anyway, as a result it took me a very long time to learn to write well. At some point I just refused to keep trying and only wrote in all caps. I got permission to use a computer for more of my schoolwork than I otherwise would have.
Then, at some point in my mid to late teens, I decided that writing in all caps was stupid and just immediately started writing joined up. I’m not going to claim I was good at it - still have bad handwriting, remember? - but it wasn’t actually something I couldn’t do, and eventually the skill clicked and I was basically OK at it.
Catching a ball, and sports in general, was also something I was bad at as a kid. Then in my late 30s I attended Alexander Technique sessions with Peter Nobes and one of the things we did was a lot of throwing and catching a ball. I’m fine at it now.
In general I’m… reasonably OK at physical skills? I’m not the most talented at it, I’m definitely still a bit clumsy, but I think “OK” is a reasonable characterisation. I’m decent at Pilates, I play Celeste at a level of competence that definitely requires fine motor control, I’m a decent masseur. These are all physical skills that I’ve learned to be good at.
But, here’s the interesting thing I’ve noticed: If you give me a verbal explanation of how to do a physical task I will completely and totally zone out, because I cannot translate it into action. I can maybe follow written directions with some experimentation, and I can usually listen to verbal feedback about the specific things I am currently doing (although following it is tricky and often requires me to experiment a bit), but I simply cannot listen to an instruction and then follow it.
Physical learning for me seems very separated from verbal learning. With experimentation and practice I can usually figure it out, but it’s a bit slower than average and seems largely disconnected from verbal processing.
Wikipedia claims that Dyspraxia is “impaired coordination of physical movements as a result of brain messages not being accurately transmitted to the body” but I’m not entirely convinced this is true, because my internal experience of it isn’t so much about a difficulty communicating between brain and body, but a difficulty in different parts of the brain communicating with each other.
Another area I experience this with is “aphantasia”, a supposed condition of not being able to visualise. I am… unconvinced that aphantasia is a real thing. To the degree it’s a real thing I think it’s real like dyslexia or ADHD is - a continuous spectrum of ability and problems where we’ve decided that some level of it “counts”, but where there’s no real cut off.
But anyway, the reason aphantasia and dyspraxia feel similar to me is that I think there’s clearly some sort of similar phenomenon going on where whatever people are doing when they visualise is still happening “behind the scenes”, but I don’t have easy conscious access to it. I can answer questions that seem like they require visualisation, and something is clearly happening, but I literally don’t get to see it happen, and I just have to let it do its thing.
A related experience: When trying to write this post, I drew a complete blank on the word “dyspraxia”. It took me about 5-10 minutes to figure it out, and in the meantime I kept circling aroudn it. “dys… lexia, dys… calculia… is it even a dys word? dys… PRAXIA, that’s it.”
Where did that word come from? I don’t know. Something behind the scenes was clearly working away at it, and I just had to create the space for it to arrive in.
I think one thing that is going on with this journalling practice, and with the shaking and bodily experiences in general, is that sometimes you’ve just got to create that space. If you’ve got two parts of you that aren’t talking properly to each other, you need to be extra attentive for when one of them wants to take over. If I’m starting to get a strong physical reaction, the verbal part needs to bow out gracefully and say “OK body-brain, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t need to. I trust you. Over to you.” and let it do its thing until it takes back over.
Developing lines of communication
That’s all very wise sounding and mature and responsible and models a healthy relationship with yourself and all but I fucking hate it. I want to know what’s going on!
This is a me problem, for the value of “me” that is the verbal part of my brain. I’ve always been bad at this. I’m not good at interacting with people who I can’t talk to - whether it’s because they don’t speak English well enough, or because they’ve got some sort of learning disability, or whether they’re currently having an autistic meltdown, I am bad at it and I find it very stressful.
This is the point at which the little DRMacIver on my shoulder says “Have you tried being good at it?”
I have, but it’s haaaard.
This sort of journalling practice is part of getting good at it though.
One of the things I pointed out in Labelling Feelings 101 is that you’re allowed to figure out what you’re feeling indirectly:
You’re allowed to figure out what emotions you’re feeling in broadly the same way you would with anyone else, which is by paying attention to what you’re actually doing. If you’re behaving in an angry way, maybe you’re actually angry.
…for example, if your body is behaving as if it were wracked with grief at the idea of getting help, maybe you’re still dealing with some unprocessed issues about the fact that nobody properly taught you the physical skills you needed to as a kid. Dammit.
If different parts of you are not communicating well, I think what you need is to start to get them communicating. You can do this through a process of signal amplification. Creating scenarios where the felt sense is so strong that you can get clear messages, giving space for that message to be expressed, and then waiting until it has passed to try to interpret it.
The result is slow and awkward compared to how it feels like any of this is “supposed” to work, and I’m hopeful that it serves as a first step for developing stronger internal lines of communication, but even if it doesn’t it’s a lot better than nothing.
This is something that regularly happens where in explaining yourself in writing
to others you experience a clarity that you lacked before, and is a good example
of why I'm not trying to claim that hand writing is the superior form of
writing, I'm trying to point out that they *do different things*.