To emotionally cope with a tragedy or an illness, I believe a lot of people fall under bad habits. As the Safe Space podcast had said, even years after a tragedy in their life, people indirectly cope with their emotions by succumbing to alcoholism, overeating, and smoking upon many other bad behaviors. Sometimes, people don’t even notice that they are reacting negatively in response to a past tragedy. They don’t understand that they feel a certain way towards an illness. However, in “I Make Books”, Hall explains how writing about your illness and the feelings that you felt through the whole experience can cause those emotions and feelings to come to the surface. She says at the end of her film “I think it would be safe to say that theres is a lot of despair, and I didn’t realize how bad it was and how deep it was until I made the book.” Writing books allowed her to accept her emotions, and admit that she felt despair during the hard times of her illness. Having these emotions come to life can allow her to cope more efficiently. If the subjects in the podcast utilized the act of writing down their emotions in the form of art, they would understand that they feel a certain way about their illness, and learn to get help, rather then succumbing to drinking, alcoholism and smoking.
The quote from Martha Hall that you chose tells us that there is, in fact, a disconnect between how people feel consciously and what they feel unconsciously. Writing creatively allows patients to tap into the unconscious and heal the parts of them they didn’t realize were broken. Great insights!