During my separation from my now-ex husband, I attended a weekend retreat for those separated, divorced, or widowed. A huge part of the weekend was made up of writing about feelings and relationships with our significant other. I sort of planned that after I left the weekend (which was great), I would continue journaling.

I didn’t.

I did however continue my usual practice of using my little yearly calendars as mini-journals in which I documented mundane details like laundry and not so mundane details like scuba diving trips.

Now it looks like I did myself a little bit of good or at least kept me from being worse off emotionally and mentally. A new University of Arizona study shows that writing about feelings soon after divorce may lead to more emotional woes.

Psychology professor David Sbarra found that intense journal writing can make some things worse for some folks trying to put new lives together. An article from http://www.uanews.org/story/postdivorce-journaling-may-hinder-healing-some-ua-study-finds says Sbarra’s conclusion is that those who spent more time thinking about marriage over and over in their head were more likely to still be troubled by the whole thing.

Those who mostly started thinking about taking care of their lives and themselves were showing the least distress.

Frankly, I wish I had spent less timeover thinkingmy marriage, separation, and divorce.

I’d be much further along in dealing with it.