Therapeutic Writing

When you ask someone why they write, whether it be as a profession or as a hobby, there are a lot of different answers they might give you, but one answer that is quite common is that they use writing as a form of therapy. This concept of Therapeutic Writing is a lot like the term 'people watching' in that most people have idea of what it means but in reality most people that claim to do it simply don't. To actually observe people you have to pay attention and note what they are doing and think about it in the moment and afterwards, whereas most people that claim to enjoy the practice do nothing more than sit in a crowded place watching people pass by without a second thought.

If you write to relieve tension, stress, anxiety, or simply to express pent up emotions, that can be cathartic but it is not therapeutic for the simple reason that therapy is structured and requires a certain level of objectivity which is not naturally present in our writing unless we make an active effort to put it there. I have mentioned before that characters we create are essentially an extension of our self, the ego plays every role in that regard. This means that any character will be naturally biased towards the writer's neuroses and general thought pattern unless the writer makes a concerted effort to diverge and develop the character.

In order to actively incorporate therapeutic approaches within your writing the first thing you need to accept is that your writing should not set out to be a place of safety and comfort but rather it should serve as a place of containment. This approach needs to be underpinned by a conscious choice to separate your personal life from the universe that you create within the narrative. When you think of real world therapy sessions, you always begin with a therapist that knows little about you, like a blank page when writing. What you talk about in those sessions and what you choose to bring is up to you, a therapist worth their weight will only know what you tell them and won't make assumptions about the rest. A bad therapist makes assumptions about your life and draws conclusions they then project onto you which misinforms the diagnostic process. The purpose of therapy is not to understand every single issue and trauma you are dealing with, it is to highlight what you are having problems with or where you are struggling and develop a means to cope with those struggles. The worst perception you can have of therapy is that it is meant to "fix" you - this couldn't be further from the truth, therapy isn't about fixing things it's about accepting things and finding a way to overcome their impact. This is the reason why every trauma is not relevant, if they aren't impacting your behaviour and your ability to cope with the thing you are struggling with then they don't need to be brought up.

Applying this to your writing, the question of relevance plays a greater role. At each moment where you decide to incorporate parts of your own lived experience you should ask if those experiences are relevant to the character you are creating. You should not be aiming to create a character that is a reflection of you, but rather one that you have an affinity with. The distinction here is about shared experience but not a shared life. Ultimately the goal should be to try and discern the lessons and vicariously experience the growth that the character would have gained going through the trials and tribulations that you choose to subject them to as the author.

Returning to real world therapy, one other key purpose a therapist serves is to offer different perspectives. In the days of tumblr past, there was a particular post I always think of when explaining this concept, it detailed a hypothetical patient speaking to a therapist about depression and how the simple act of making a sandwich would often times seem overwhelming, only for the therapist to suggest they simply eat the individual components of the sandwich still gaining all the benefit without actually having to construct the sandwich which left the patient dumbfounded as they had not thought of that approach. Joking and triviality aside, we construct mental boxes that we contain our thoughts within and as the metaphor goes, you need to think outside the box. This is very much what therapy entails, you sit in your box, and the therapist sits outside, you offer your thoughts and your perspective and they occasionally offer theirs. If you want to use a therapeutic approach when writing then you need to create characters that will entertain all of the ideas and approaches that you yourself would never do. Even if you think they might be stupid or silly you should follow those characters and their suggestions and see where it goes.

When you write as a form of therapy it is also important to realise that what you write will often be incoherent and incongruous. You will chase many paths and they will often lead to a dead end and require you to go back and revise what you have written. This is why therapeutic writing doesn't usually produce works that you would want to publish. Most novels and ideas that I have explored through therapeutic writing sit on my hard drive, some pursued as far as those ideas needed to be pursued, whilst others sit unfinished as I got what I needed out of the process. The only novel I chose to actually publish as a result of this process was 'The Fifth Wall' which required some effort after writing to try and impose structure and progression and create a narrative that a reader could actually follow.

I do recommend using therapeutic writing, it is something I have gained a lot from in my personal life over the years. I simply advise that if you want to pursue it as a realistic means to explore things that you are having issues with, struggling with, or just need a means to confront things that you do not have another way of doing, then explore therapeutic writing techniques, this article from Positive Psychology is a good place to start.