Adventures at Midlife

Some genius has come up with a novel thesis: blogging may make you feel better. No kidding. According to Jessica Wapner, writing in Scientific American Online:

Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery.

I haven’t had any surgery lately, but I do know I like putting my thoughts down on paper. I had a shrink once who called it “yellow pad therapy” in honor of the legal pads her patients used to try to pull their lives and thoughts together. I filled up a few yellow pads myself.*

Wapner, a New York-based medical writer and editor, also mentions a theory that blogging may have a placebo effect:

According to Alice Flaherty, a neuroscientist at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, the placebo theory of suffering is one window through which to view blogging. As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a “placebo for getting satisfied,” Flaherty says. Blogging about stressful experiences might work similarly.

Flaherty also believes “blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art.” Don’t you get a giggle looking at your own blog, tweaking and experimenting with it?

Whatever the blogging biochemistry may be, Wapner says, “people coping with cancer diagnoses and other serious conditions are increasingly seeking—and finding—solace in the blogosphere.” I’ve read a number of cancer blogs and have found them to be really inspiring and all over the map in terms of their approaches to their disease: tender, raging, funny, philosophical, pragmatic — whatever voice helps them cope with their severely altered life landscape.

I came to blogging when I was at a crossroads. Some really significant experiences, like being a mother, were either ending or significantly evolving. I found myself firmly entrenched in my fifties. I’d had a few medical problems, one fairly serious. My mother died, but not before unburdening herself of some things I’d rather not have to deal with. I was restless and edgy and sad and yet strangely excited at what the rest of my life might hold.

I was looking for someone to talk to, and I was more than willing to listen to what others in my situation might have to say. And I have been greatly rewarded by what I’ve said and what I’ve read in the Blogosphere. The comments have been generous and kind. We are a lively, vital community and can offer each other a great deal of support and food-for-thought. The future doesn’t look as scary or as empty as it did just a few months ago.

*I had an anxiety disorder for a LONG time. Perhaps I’ll blog about it in the future.