HEALTH PLUS:By writing objectively we are able to 'see ourselves as others see us', writes Marie Murray
One way of finding out more about yourself is to write about yourself in the third person.
Those who keep journals are used to committing their thoughts and their actions, their ideas, their experiences and even their emotions to paper. This has archival, psychological and even cathartic potential for those who do so regularly.
But writing about yourself in the third person is different entirely. It provides access to the deeper depths of those ideas about oneself that may not otherwise get articulated even to yourself. This is because it provides a paradoxical simultaneous objectivity and intimacy.
It is easier to describe yourself even to yourself from the perspective of description at a distance. To write "he is" or "she is" about oneself is to think, reflect and to position oneself outside of oneself in a way that brings understanding of who we are.
Third person writing is a curious exercise in self- revelation. Some might be concerned that this distancing exercise is a dangerous dip into that psychological experience of de-personalisation, during which people under extreme stress experience themselves as outside of themselves. They are almost outside of their bodies looking down on themselves as if they were looking at other people.
But third person writing about yourself is not dissociation. It is simply an opportunity to consider, in a different, more objective, more abstract way, what you know about yourself and where that information comes from.
It makes you consider how other people would describe you in your absence. It also allows you to describe yourself, totally, dispassionately, objectively, impartially while at the same time because there is nobody who knows you better than you know yourself, you can bring that knowledge into the writing to balance and challenge those views held about you to which you do not subscribe.
Writing about oneself in the third person involves having to think about how I describe myself, asking where do I begin, what words I would use, what descriptions are dominant, what qualities are present, what prejudices do I harbour, what activities do I enjoy most and what least? What travels have I undertaken? What motivated them? What choices have I made, what shaped them?
What are the hidden aspirations, the secret wishes, the concealed hurts, the interior beliefs, the latent joys, the deep-seated fears, the optimistic strands and the views of myself that I hold about myself?
There is a self-censoring that is activated when we use the first person: when we say "I am", "I believe", "I think", "I feel", "I remember".
This censoring is challenged in a curious psychological way when we write objectively. It is simply easier to say, "she thinks" or "he thinks" than to personalise. And it somehow allows us, at least in part, to "see ourselves as others see us" which poet Robbie Burns regarded as one of the great gifts we could receive.
Adolescents are particularly proficient in third person writing and seem to bring all their creative and reflective powers to the process. Those who work clinically with young people have been struck by the openness, honesty, insight and candour that they display in their reflections.
It is one of the engaging characteristics of young people: the brutality of their honesty, the power of their beliefs and their capacity to present them sincerely, particularly when they know that they will be received respectfully.
Additionally, to write about oneself in the third person requires a level of intellect, a cognitive and conceptual capacity, a reflective ability and a descriptive talent that is considerable in psychoeducational terms.
We are all described at times in ways that we would reject. Sometimes we are surprised at qualities ascribed to us that we did not know we had until told by others.
Sometimes our hearts are warmed by descriptions that we would not necessarily give of ourselves.
Sometimes we are hurt to the core that anyone could construe us in ways that we would never see ourselves. Third person writing seems to resolve this.
As we enter the new year, a new time and phase in our lives it might be interesting to engage in objective consideration of ourselves in this way.
• Clinical psychologist and author Marie Murray is director of the Student Counselling Services in University College Dublin. Her book Living Our Timesproviding essays, psychological insights and reflections on life, is published by Gill MacMillan has been re-released in paperback