Writing Important in the Healing Process

Since I often in my counseling practice recommend journaling to clients I decided to reread Writing As a Way of Healing by Louise De Salvo Ph.D. Hers is a book I often recommend to clients. She was not a therapist rather she was a professor of Fine Arts with a specialty in memoir writing. Yet this book shows she understood the power of writing as a way to heal. Early in the book she discussed Dr. Pennebaker’s research on the effectiveness of journaling with trauma. Let me list some guidelines on writing for healing that she distilled from Pennebaker: 1. Write 20 minutes a day over a period of four days. Do this periodically. This way you won’t feel overwhelmed. 2. Write in a private, safe, comfortable environment. 3. Write about issues you are currently living with, something you are thinking or dreaming about constantly, a trauma you’ve never disclosed or resolved. 4. Write about joys and pleasures too. 5. Write about what happened. Write, too, about feelings about what happened. What do you feel? Why do you feel this way? Link events with feelings. 6. Try to write an extremely detailed, organized, coherent, vivid, emotionally compelling narrative. Don’t worry about correctness, about grammar or punctuation. 7. Beneficial effects will occur even if no one reads your writing. 8. Expect, initially that in writing in this way you will have complex and appropriately difficult feelings. Make sure you get support if you need it. (pages26-27) Other than helpful tips on doing your own personal writing she provides stories how writing has helped people even famous writers such as Henry Miller, Virginia Woolf and others. De Salvo is also transparent in how writing helped her in her life with various situations. The examples she gives at times reveals how writers gain insight even from reading other writers. On page 54 she shares how May Sarton gained insight into writing laments by reading Henri J.M. Nouwen’s book, Out of Solitude. Reading through this book again gave me more insights and a deeper appreciation on the importance writing is in healing the many areas of our lives. Through writing we can bring closure to areas that need healing. It is also a process to flesh out new realities by visioning what we want for our life story. Reflection: Let’s do a creative activity to write about growth in our inner self. Look over this list of principles from my book, Living More Than OK: Critical Thinking, Creativity, Savoring Life, Goal Setting, Self-Esteem, Resilience, Purpose, Thankfulness, Taking Risks, and Spirituality. Take a clean sheet of paper and first at the top of the paper draw a symbol or paste a picture from a magazine of a symbol that you want to depict the inner life you desire, (maybe a tall tree, a flower, a lake, or ect.). Secondly below your symbol write 3 principles from the list that you would like to improve in your life. Then lastly write a paragraph about how growing in your 3 chosen areas will help improve your inner and outer personal life.