Why Writing Down Your Thoughts Can Free Your Mind
On thought-hoarding, emotional plumbing, and the holy chaos of self-expression.
Meet My Brains Uninvited Guests – Intrusive Thoughts
They don’t pay rent.
They overstay their welcome.
And they love to rearrange the furniture at 3am like they’re auditioning for a haunted episode of Fixer Upper: Possession Edition.
I’m talking about the loops. The imaginary arguments with people from 2009. The “What if I just…” fantasies that unravel into full cinematic universes where I quit my job, move to a lighthouse, and somehow know how to play the cello.
My brain? A cursed, unlicensed Airbnb run by raccoons in little wigs. These thoughts are long-term squatters who throw underground raves in the attic and redecorate with bad vibes and expired emotional wallpaper. It’s like being cast as the live-in Big Brother host for a reality show I didn’t sign up for — surveillance cams included, commentary always on, and no commercial breaks.
Sometimes the content is deep. Sometimes it’s just me spiraling over how I didn’t clap back at that rude woman in the grocery store who bumped my cart and said “excuse you.” (Like girl… I didn’t make this wobbly Walmart cart. I’m not deliberately trynna play impromptu bump cars with you.)
But here’s the plot twist: I’ve learned how to evict them. Or at least, how to give them somewhere else to live that isn’t my nervous system.
That’s what this piece is about.
The unruly thoughts that won’t shut up. The sacred (and slightly feral) ritual of letting them go through creativity. My weapon of choice? Writing.
This is about emotional hoarding, creative compulsion, and why humans — aka sentient meat puppets with abandonment issues — will always crave self-expression like it’s the last slice of pizza in the void.
Let’s begin.
Rent-Free Thoughts and the Sacred Art of Letting Go
I’ve spent years mentally rehearsing conversations that will never happen.
Past arguments where I should’ve unleashed a soul-snatching clapback so potent it’d echo through the astral plane — but instead I blinked like a malfunctioning robot mid-reboot.
Alternate timelines where I made braver choices. Said no more. Or yes. Or rage quit life and joined a punk band in high school, dyed my hair blue, and never looked back.
You know. The classic combo.
And I don’t just think these thoughts — oh no. I go full director’s cut.
Deleted scenes. Spinoff timelines. Rewritten dialogue. Unnecessary slow motion. Cameos from people who ghosted me in 2013 just to say one cryptic line and vanish in a puff of unhealed energy.
Back in 5th grade, I radiated pure, undiluted Academic Potential™. Teachers said I was “gifted,” which we now know was code for “anxious perfectionist with god-tier burnout potential.”
I had so much in me.
But I spent my afternoons hop-scotching trauma away and perfecting the art of Avoidance through a game of tag with my fellow-average classmates.
I didn’t fail — I just vibed in the lukewarm middle like a girlboss without a cause.
And sometimes I think: what if my 9-year-old self had taken the wheel?
(She was unhinged, had glitter gel pens, and once tried to manifest an energy ball after watching that Dragon Ball episode where Goku did it. She was powerful. She was a self-proclaimed Super Saiyan.)
Maybe I’d be fluent in piano.
Maybe I’d still be stuck in that corporate job that required me to thank hotel guests for their “loyalty” like they’d sacrificed a goat in my honor.
Maybe I’d be a mysterious adult who plays haunting piano ballads at parties while making everyone cry into their Pinot Grigio.
Instead, I refresh Zillow listings for cabins I absolutely cannot afford and call it “visualizing abundance.”
But here’s the thing: I spiral. On everything.
Even the good stuff. Even the sacred wins like getting the last word in a group chat and logging off like a queen.
These thoughts? They move in. They unpack. They hang weird art.
And if I don’t give them somewhere else to live, they clog up my brain like a soul-level hairball.
Honestly? They behave like cysts.
Emotional ones.
The kind that grow overnight, have their own opinions, and won’t shut up until they’re drained.
(And yes, I doomscroll those cyst-draining TikToks. They’re horrifying. I hate them. I love them. I’m spiritually nourished and emotionally damaged every time.)
Writing is How I Drain My Mental Cysts (Ewww)
Yes, plural. Sorry. The thoughts multiply like unsupervised rabbits on Red Bull, and if I don’t write them down, they grow legs, unionize, and start doing improv in my skull.
Here’s what I’ve learned about myself: writing helps.
When I write, the chaos gets a container. The existential gremlins floating in my frontal cortex finally sit down and fill out a rental application. They settle. They soften. They become legible. And most importantly — they stop rebranding as my personality traits.
But growing up, I always thought that if I wasn’t writing something applause-worthy, then it wasn’t worth anything at all. It was only after 12 whole years of writer’s block, looping obsessive thoughts, and almost a decade’s worth of depression and anxiety meds did I realize…
That my writing is less about capturing brilliance and more about building a home.
A safe little apartment for the messy thoughts to exist without screaming from the attic.
Sometimes that home is a dollar-store notebook.
Sometimes it’s a Notes app entry at 2:12am that say:
“Ok but what if my brain is haunted?”
“Do ghosts pay rent or just vibe?”
Or “Therapy is just adult show-and-tell for your trauma collection.”
Sometimes it’s the back of a napkin when I’m stuck in a social situation I can’t wiggle myself out of, and need to write an idea down like pee I can’t hold any longer.
Once the thought has a place to live, it stops hijacking my identity.
It’s witnessed. Contained. And finally, I can move on.
But here’s the twist: writing it down isn’t enough. Just like how creating something isn’t always enough — sometimes we need it to be seen.
There’s this pull — this weird, feral need — to share it.
And that’s the part I couldn’t explain for the longest time.
Why Do We Crave Self-Expression So Much?
At first, I blamed vanity.
Maybe I just liked the attention?
Maybe I had a spotlight kink and a keyboard?
Maybe my inner child is a theater kid with unresolved issues and a deeply inappropriate need to monologue?
But the truth is older.
Like, prehistoric older.
Before we had words. Before pants. Before emotional regulation or iced lattes.
We expressed ourselves because we had to.
We clawed stories into cave walls with bones and vibes.
We slapped red paint onto rock like, “Here’s my hand. I was here. Don’t forget me, Brenda.”
We banged on drums long before we understood math — not because it made sense, but because screaming into a beat made us feel less alone.
We didn’t invent music. We invented ritualized screaming and then accidentally made it catchy.
Because this?
This isn’t about ego.
It’s about metabolizing existence.
It’s about surviving the unbearable lightness of Being™ without emotionally combusting in a Walgreens parking lot.
Ideas are too heavy to carry alone. Feelings are too slippery to hold without a container. So we make things.
We write.
We paint.
We cry into iMovie and make a reel that’s way too raw for a Wednesday.
We send unhinged 1:44am voice notes that sound like we’re mid-exorcism while casually petting our cat and eating cereal straight from the box.
Not for applause.
Not even for validation.
But for proof of life.
That sacred moment when someone reads your chaos and whispers:
“Hey… me too.”
We Don’t Just Bloom — We Need to Be Mirrored
I used to romanticize being a flower. You know — blooming quietly, sipping sunlight, keeping my petals moisturized (heh heh heh) and my traumas repressed. Just vibing. Being photogenic for bees. No drama. Just chlorophyll and vibes.
But babe… I’m not a flower.
I’m a semi-feral emotional gremlin with a cheesecake addiction, a Wi-Fi connection, and a tendency to overshare at inappropriate times.
I don’t bloom.
I spiral.
I journal. I cry. I eat tuna out of the can and then post something semi-profound online that sounds like it was written during a full moon in Gemini.
And suddenly it’s “art.”
No, I’m not a flower.
And odds are, neither are you.
Unless you’ve figured out how to photosynthesize your emotions without screaming into the Notes app.
We don’t bloom in isolation.
We bloom in connection.
Not for validation — but for resonance.
We express because we’re desperately trying to make contact.
To make sure we’re not just ghosts starring in our own unfinished memoirs.
We bloom best when someone holds up a mirror and says,
“I see you. And holy chaos, I get you.”
That’s what expression is.
It’s not self-centered.
It’s not attention-seeking.
It’s human.
It’s soul-echoing.
It’s you, standing in your truth, yelling into the abyss, hoping someone else is out there yelling the same weird shit back like: “OH MY GOD — SAME.”
Fear of Cognitive Abandonment™ — The Spiral Within
I have a theory — a slightly unhinged one, but spiritually sound.
I call it Fear of Cognitive Abandonment™.
It’s that weird, sneaky terror that if we let go of a thought — especially a loud, obsessive, identity-adjacent one — we’ll lose part of ourselves. Like if we stop replaying that one memory, we’ll forget who we were when it happened. Or worse: we’ll become someone else entirely.
Or even worse than that: we’ll become no one at all.
We treat our thoughts like Velcro patches holding our identity together.
Like without our mental chaos, we’re just sentient potatoes on laggy WiFi — blinking into the fridge light at 1:17am, silently screaming:
“Why did I come in here?”
“Who am I without this spiral?”
“Have I always been this crunchy?”
But here’s where it flips:
Self-expression is how we archive ourselves.
It’s how we remember without clinging.
It’s how we keep the thought without letting it squat in our psyche like a sad little gremlin with a grudge.
For me? Writing is the safe house.
A clean little mental Airbnb where the thought can go live without haunting me at night like a ghost with commitment issues.
It’s the difference between carrying a memory and dragging it through TSA every time I try to feel joy.
Self-expression is the drop-off bin.
The safe deposit box.
The spiritual Google Drive folder labeled “Stuff That Happened But No Longer Owns Me.”
Self Expression Through Creativity as a Sacred Storage System
Okay. This is where it gets soft. Like blanket-fort-soft. Like crying-in-the-bathroom-at-a-party-but-it’s-healing soft.
Self-expression isn’t just “venting.”
It’s not just a purge. It’s a ritual.
It’s the difference between screaming into the void… and building a tiny temple inside yourself where the chaos can finally sit down, light a candle, and chill.
It’s about preserving without being possessed.
It’s choosing presence over panic.
It’s whispering to your thoughts: “You mattered. But I don’t need to keep you squatting in my skull forever. You can rest now.”
Your notebook? That’s your reliquary — where the sacred and the ridiculous go to live in peace.
Your art studio is your digital altar, held together with vibes, Wi-Fi, and probably a lot of half-finished projects that still count as magic.
Your super science-y lab? That’s your therapist who accepts walk-ins and doesn’t charge by the hour. (Which, yes, is how you know I have no idea how science works, but the metaphor still slaps.)
Because once a thought has been witnessed — truly seen, held, and honored —
it stops haunting you.
It no longer rattles the pipes at 3am or pops up mid-conversation like a ghost with FOMO.
It becomes part of your archive.
Not your identity.
Just a beautifully weird little relic you made space for,
and finally… let go.
Here’s where the ✨magic✨ happens — when you box your thought and deliver it out into the ether, it will find people who are holding the same thoughts. It will give them permission to let go – just like you did.
And in that moment — when your thought becomes theirs, when your honesty unlocks someone else’s silence — you realize:
You never had to carry it alone.
You just had to be the one brave enough to say it first.
Emotional Hoarding vs. Emotional Archiving
Are you clutching every thought like it’s the final puzzle piece of your identity?
Like if you let go of that memory, that spiral, that offhand comment from 2014, you’ll somehow unravel into a cloud of ambiguity and vibe dust?
Or… are you archiving it?
Are you saying: “Yeah, this mattered. But it doesn’t have to live rent-free in my psyche anymore.”
One mindset screams: “If I drop this, who even am I?”
The other one whispers: “I can keep this with care… and still make space to breathe, grow, and maybe finally delete that draft email to my ex.”
Creativity is the sorting tool.
It helps you decide:
Is this a sacred relic?
Or just emotional clutter in a glittery trench coat?
And guess what?
You get to choose. Every time.
Closing Vibe: Let the Thought Go, Babe
Self-expression doesn’t kill the thought.
It liberates it.
And if that thought is painful?
Throw it into the wild.
Scream it into a poem. Yeet it into a song. Whisper it into a meme with suspiciously high emotional accuracy.
Why suffer in silence when someone out there is desperate for the words you’re brave enough to say?
Your creativity might be the flashlight someone didn’t know they needed.
Not because you’re trying to save them — but because you dared to be real, and in doing so, lit the path.
You’re not sharing because you love the sound of your own voice. (Okay maybe a little, you do have a nice voice.)
You’re sharing because you want to echo.
Because in that echo, someone else might finally hear themselves, too.
So write. Draw. Sing. Build. Share.
Make room.
And a harsh, but loving reminder: You are NOT your thoughts.
You are the brave, soft, spicy soul who dared to translate them into something someone else could hold — and maybe laugh over.
Maybe cry through.
Maybe screenshot and send to their group chat with the caption “why is this me.”
Maybe tattoo on their body in Comic Sans… because healing isn’t linear, babe.
And sometimes it’s just a little cursed.
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