Be awake to the details around you, but don't be self-conscious.
I had cancer for fourteen months and wrote a memoir about the experience.
Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath.
Read books. They are good for us.
The aim is to burn through to first thoughts, to the place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor, to the place where you are writing what you mind actually sees and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel.
Know that you will eventually have to leave everything behind; the writing will demand it of you.