Overcoming Brain Anarchy: Achieving Inner Peace Through Writing

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Once our brains are ruled by anarchy, a chain of events kicks in that prevents us from achieving inner peace and from being our best emotional, spiritual, and physical selves. Virtually all religions, forms of meditation, and the myriad self-help programs available have at their core, and as their ultimate objective, some form of inner peace that is free from distractions, distortions, misplaced obsessions, and unrealistic goals. The universal desires for money, love, and power obscure the quest for what really matters. Focusing on unrequited love, guilt, fears, and loss yields a state of unhappiness that is not proportional to its source. Writing is a powerful tool for achieving inner peace through introspection, self-examination, and clearing the clutter that makes our brains control us instead of the more desirable opposite. Writing helps us see who we are

Writing guru Natalie Goldberg tells us in her revered text Writing Down the Bones that, “We are run by our compulsions…it seems that obsessions have power.  Harness that power.”  That seems a point well taken.  By doing so, we regain the power from a brain run amok. Instead of a state of anarchy in our minds we can seek the order and logic that allows us to function at peak efficiency. Writing has the power to set us free and moves us closer to the elusive peace that we as humans crave.

Writing, for those who are intimate with the process, is a spiritual activity and something everyone can become comfortable with. In shamanism, a guiding belief is that the shaman, or healer, enters a higher realm of existence to find solutions to human problems in the spiritual world.  When a writer gets into a “flow” or what athletes might call a “zone” there is an otherworldliness to it.  It becomes hard to separate the brain and the hand as the words seem to fill blank pages on their own.  The writer has become his or her own shaman, reaching into the recesses of his own past and unearthing events and thoughts from a previously inaccessible world within. And like a shaman, we can be nonjudgmental and have no limitations.

It is important to be objective about ourselves to find happiness but our brains have so many ways they try to prevent it. We start obsessing on things we desire, ways we want to be, jealousies, and other human frailties. This leads to our priorities getting out of order, causing mounting confusion and unhappiness. We become submissive, anxiety ridden, depressed, and filled with inner turmoil. Our objective should be to control our thoughts rather than letting them control us. Writing helps us take unhealthy obsessions that are running rampant and turn them into healthy ones.

When you feel a pang of jealousy or anger, a period of obsession over a desire you cannot or should not fulfill, start writing down all of the thoughts and feelings, no matter how illogical, painful, or embarrassing they might be. Look at the piece of writing without judging it and think of it as if someone else had written it. Your state becomes meditative at this point rather than obsessive. By seeing our out-of-control thoughts in a concrete form, we can get closer to a tranquil state of mind.

Make a “to do” list of the things floating around in your mind that are stressing you out.  Did someone misinterpret your joke the other day? Have you done something to lead to the lack of attention you are feeling from a good friend? What things are bogging down your mind and pushing the good, productive thoughts aside? Analyze each thing you put on your list. Are they logical? Are they within your control or not? Are they even your issues or are you trying to do the impossible and get into other people’s minds and determine the reasons for their actions?

As an exercise write everything you can remember from your entire life, making sort of a “brain dossier” or catalogue of who you are and where you have been. We are the sum total of our experiences. A lifetime is a series of random events that somehow become a unified tapestry of people, places, and events which we refer to as self.  By unearthing layers of self through writing we get closer to the distant selves that have given rise to our present selves giving us a heightened sense of self as we understand more about how and why we became who we are. Make a list of the segments of your life to get started. Begin perhaps with all you can remember from before you started school. Go year-by-year through your school career. Try other sections like holidays, friendships, illnesses, times of loss, job situations, activities you have been involved with, summers, vacations, and so forth.

For each of your sections, do a stream of consciousness writing session in which you write down everything you can remember about the topic. Do not worry about how accurate the sequences of events or dates are, just let the information keep flowing. As you write, ask yourself questions about how your life might have been different had your decisions been different from those you made. Then try to answer those questions.

The health benefits of writing have been studied and supported by numerous individuals and organizations. In April of 2025 on its blog, The University of Rochester Medical Center, a leading academic medical center, published a piece by Melissa Nunes-Harwett, LCSW titled “No Rules Just Write: A New Approach to Journaling.” Here, Nunes-Harwett offers, “Anxiety, depression, and trauma can all contribute to repetitive thoughts and negative self-talk. You may experience the same worry over and over, stress about anything that doesn’t go as planned, or continuously come up with new “evidence” that suggests no one likes you. Persistently replaying the same concerns in your mind – also called ruminating – can lead to an emotional downward spiral and a sense of feeling stuck.” She says that the act of journaling can be effective in breaking the cycle, adding that any form of journaling is acceptable. “Journaling is the act of getting thoughts out of your head and giving them a new home on paper. The benefits are about the process, not the product.”

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA.gov), in an article titled “Therapeutic Journaling” by Shilagh A. Mirgain, PhD and by Janice Singles, PsyD (2016, updated 2025), offered support for the benefits of therapeutic writing. “Therapeutic journaling is the process of writing down our thoughts and feelings about our personal experiences. This kind of private reflection allows us to sort through events that have occurred and problems that we may be struggling with. It allows us to come to a deeper understanding about ourselves, with a different perspective on these difficulties…therapeutic journaling is an internal process of using the written word to express the full range of emotions, reactions, and perceptions we have related to difficult, upsetting, or traumatic life events. Along the way, this can mean writing ourselves to better emotional and physical health and a greater sense of well-being.”

Finding your writer’s voice as you put your thoughts on paper and read them back gives you a new perspective on yourself. Writing allows you to release that which clutters your mind be it anger, jealousy, fear, or pain. Being introspective and having the ability to detach from the burdens of our minds promotes healing. This should be an ongoing process. Don’t hold back when you write. Writing takes discipline and reckless abandon at the same time. What we learn about ourselves through our writing enlightens us and clarifies what we need to do to improve our lives and develop a stronger sense of self.

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