The Art of Therapeutic Writing
I lead workshops at The Tree of Life Centre on Portland Road in Hove. The workshops include a supportive combination of writing exercises, prompts and guided discussion which build a compassionate and resilient relationship with yourself, your mental health and your creativity. You’ll be gently encouraged to liberate truths and experiences that have the potential to transform your life and the lives of those they touch. While sharing your work with the group can be an aspect to this process, there will never be pressure to do so. Ultimately you will be writing for yourself, be encouraged to step out of your own way and open up your ‘child eyes’ to whatever wants to be expressed on the page. This could be in the form of autobiographical material (whether from your own point of view or the point of view of another), but could also be fictionalised work or poetry. Whatever you write is “right”. There is no “wrong” writing! The therapeutic benefits of journaling or writing “Morning Pages” are well known, and, in my experience both personally and as a writing teacher, I’ve discovered a particular benefit to writing stories using a simple set of writing precepts, which steer the writer towards a creative practice. Words not only flow from an embodied place, but also embrace the ‘Art’ of writing. In this way what you write will not only be of personal benefit, alchemizing the pain of trauma into emotional power, but also have the vividness and depth to communicate with others. Some fear writing about certain events will bring up difficult emotions. Following simple guidelines creates an important distinction between you as “writer” and you as the person who experienced or know of those events. This gives you perspective, and perspective helps us gain distance from the emotional pain of challenging events or circumstances. And, whatever you write, you affirm your agency in the world. As Joyce Carol Oates said: “I have written, therefore I must have existed.” No formal w
