Life is complicated, challenging, and sometimes just downright messy. And yes, life can also be beautiful, fun, easy, and an adventure. But during the difficult times, how do you cope? Is it always easy for you to open up to someone? Do you have someone you trust whom you can share with?
Therapeutic writing is the answer for those who don’t trust therapists or psychologists as it gives you a way to share your real feelings, express your thoughts, and heal from trauma with each page.
You don’t need to be a writer to benefit from therapy writing. It is a natural, organic, and cathartic process that has many benefits. When you start, you may feel a little lost, and that is where this guide on how writing can be therapeutic can help you find your pen on paper and experience real benefits.
Stick around and learn more about this natural form of self-directed therapy and how you can benefit from therapeutic writing to unburden your soul, give voice to your experiences and feelings, and change your life for the better.
What Is Therapeutic Writing?
A term coined in the late 1980s by James Pennebaker, a professor of psychology, expressive writing also goes by a few other terms, like therapy writing, therapeutic writing, expressive or emotional disclosure, journal therapy, written disclosure therapy, or poetry therapy.
According to the Center for Journal Therapy, therapeutic writing is the “purposeful and intentional use of reflective writing to further mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health and wellness.”
How does it help?
Therapy writing helps you focus and clarify your feelings about anything you may be confused or conflicted about. Your feelings concerning events and experiences become tangible when you write.
By seeing the words on paper and starting a conversation with yourself in this way, you are better able to sort through your problems and gain a better understanding of your experiences. Purging your feelings onto paper also helps you to accept what happened and let go so you can move on.
How Does Therapeutic Writing Help You Heal?
Therapy writing is healing therapy, but how exactly does it work to help you heal?
For one, when you write, you can distance yourself psychologically from your pain and emotions. And with this, your feelings that are tied to what you experienced are dulled.
Secondly, writing about stressful, traumatizing, and unpleasant events in your life helps you arrange and better understand your emotions, which may be all over the place.
And lastly, by transforming your feelings into words on paper, you take away your emotions’ power over you and you may be able to look at the event or memory more objectively. With this, you can find new experiences and healing can start.
Watch this video on how therapeutic journaling can improve your life:
Famous People Who Used Therapy Writing
Throughout history and even today, there are many people (including celebs) who use therapy writing to help them. They each have something to teach us:
- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens is one such example. Dickens wrote this book as a way to deal with some haunting experiences from his childhood.
- Heartburn by Nora Ephron fictionally details her marriage in which her husband cheated on her while she was pregnant. Writing this novel gave Ephron the power to change the ending. On the power of storytelling and writing, this famous quote by Ephron sums it up well:
Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.
- Singer Jessica Simpson uses a journal and writes songs in it. She has said that therapeutic songwriting is about heartbreak as much as it is about perseverance.
- Pulitzer poetry prize finalist and Vietnam War veteran Bruce Weigl believes that his therapy poetry helps him externalize things by giving them shape. Furthermore, by putting your thoughts and feelings on paper, you control them and you own them.
The Benefits of Therapeutic Writing
Therapy writing has numerous science-backed benefits. How can you benefit from expressive writing? Therapeutic writing:
- Helps boost your immunity
- Reduces your blood pressure
- Improves liver and lung function
- Decreases the intensity of painful memories
- Improves symptoms of several diseases, including those of prostate or breast cancer, asthma, and rheumatoid arthritis
- Reduces the severity of irritable bowel syndrome
- Promotes healing, with test subjects healing as much as three times faster than those who didn’t write while recovering from a skin graft
- Ensures better health outcomes if you write about traumatic experiences for 15 to 20 minutes for three to five consecutive days
- Helps you find insights into yourself and your life
- Improves your mood and helps your overall well-being
- Enables you to see things from a different perspective and discover silver linings
- Spurs personal growth by providing you with empowerment and control over your life
Therapy Writing: The How-to Guide
There are a variety of ways that you can start writing for therapy purposes.
Before we look at those, it is important to remember that the blank pages in your notebook or journal are there for you. The pages don’t impose judgments, opinions, or beliefs on you.
Pouring your thoughts and emotions onto the blank pages of your journal is merely a tool to help you explore this psychological unburdening. This empowers you as only you can decide what you put onto the page and whether those words are for you alone or whether you will share them with a therapist or someone close to you.
If you choose to work with a mental health professional for your expressive writing therapy, they will provide you with directions. If you are undertaking this by yourself, you can follow this how-to guide.
In general therapy writing, you write for a period of time each day (usually for a few days) about traumatic, negative, or stressful events. You should try writing nonstop and purge your feelings and thoughts onto the paper without any inhibition. You shouldn’t worry about someone reading your innermost thoughts as you can choose to keep your writing private and confidential.
Getting Started With Writing Therapy
To get started with your therapeutic writing:
- You need a safe space where you can do your expressive writing. If you are worried about someone finding your writing, then ensure you put it in a safe space where only you can retrieve your pages for your next writing therapy session.
- Decide on the best time of day where you can complete your writing therapy. This may be early in the morning while you have your first cup of tea and the house is quiet, or it may be at night, just before you go to bed.
- You will probably have paper or a journal or notebook and writing instruments (pen or pencil) at home. While you can do your writing therapy exercises digitally on a smart device or computer, there is something about physically writing your thoughts by hand on paper that is quite cathartic.
- When you first start, you can decide whether you want to decorate your book or journal. A personalized journal may make you more interested in writing and sticking to your therapy.
- Choose the writing format that works best for you. If you do not yet know what is best, explore the various options that are laid out for you in the next section.
- Set a goal. Decide for how long you want to write and for how many days. It is generally recommended to write nonstop for at least 20 minutes and repeat this exercise for a few consecutive days.
Follow These Steps to Start Writing
Now that you’ve found a safe space, set your goal and decided on the best time of day, and gotten your journal and pen ready, follow these steps to start writing:
- Name the experience or life event you want to write about.
- Recall, review, and reflect on the experience in your mind.
- Examine your emotions and thoughts about the event. This is the moment when you will start writing.
- Start writing and time yourself. If you set your goal to write for 15 to 20 minutes, then don’t stop writing until the time is up. No matter what, don’t stop.
- Once the time is up, you can decide if you want to reread what you wrote, and if you do, then reflect on this with a few sentences after the entry. You can also decide to burn the pages afterwards as a way to release your anger or sadness and free yourself.
Smart Tips to Keep in Mind
Keep these important tips in mind every time you do your writing therapy:
- Write at your own pace. This is not a race.
- Don’t worry about what you want to write about. Instead, just focus on the event, take a deep breath, and start writing. The words will come.
- Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, or grammar. The writing should come naturally.
- Write like no one will ever read what you wrote. After all, it is your choice whether you share or not.
Types of Therapeutic Writing
There are various forms of writing that you can do for therapy writing. This is by no means a complete list. Rather, these are kinds of therapeutic writing you can try out until you find what works best for you.
- Lists: You can create any type of list based on the traumatic or stressful experience you want to write about.
- Letters: You can write a letter to yourself or someone else. What do you want to say? Do you wish to share a memory with someone? Or do you want to write to yourself and expand on what you learned from a certain life event?
- Poems: As one of the more creative options, poems can be intimidating. To start if you are a poem-writing newbie, collect details about your life event that you want to write about. Write down key words that come to mind. Express your feelings in short sentences. It doesn’t have to rhyme.
- Prayers: If you are religious or spiritually minded, you may want to write a letter to your Higher Power or God. Writing prayers may provide you with solace and comfort as you recall difficult life events.
- Memories: Not all therapy writing has to be about stressful and challenging experiences. While you may write about those memories, you can also focus on good and happy ones, like your favorite childhood game, your favorite teacher, or your first love.
- Reflections: Find quotes and sayings that inspire you. You can use these as motivation for putting thoughts to paper.
- Short stories: Recasting your experiences onto fictional characters and writing from the outside in can be a powerful way to remove yourself from your feelings and the events that took place. This also gives you the power to rewrite the ending.
- Mind maps: With this, you can start by writing your memory, the event, or a problem in the middle of the page and branch out with each section representing different aspects of the event or problem.
- Freeform writing: Within your chosen time frame, you just write what comes to mind without stopping or worrying about sentence structure or spelling or what you write.
Ideas, Prompts, and Exercises for Therapeutic Writing
Here is a list of writing ideas, prompts, and exercises for when you are not sure what to write about or you are feeling blocked, emotionally or writing-wise:
| Idea/Exercise | Examples/Prompts |
| Sentence Stems | I am saddest when …. What I am most anxious about is … I don’t sleep well when … I am most grateful for … |
| List Prompts | 100 reasons to wake up in the morning10 things that make me sad5 lessons I learned from [insert experience]20 things that make me happy |
| Photo Journaling | Pick a personal photograph. How do you feel when you look at the photo? What do you remember about that event/experience? Is there anything you want to say to the people, places, and/or things in the photo? |
| Song Pick | Songs remind us of memories; choose a song that takes you back to something that happened. Use that to write about what happened, how it made you feel, and how the song is connected to that experience. |
| Positivity Diary | Look around you every day and note everything that is positive about your life. What are you grateful for? Note these down in your positivity diary that should only contain notes/writing about the positive things in your life. |
| A Letter to Yourself | Write a letter to yourself that you can read when you have a bad day.Write a letter to your 10-year-old, 15-year-old, or 20-year-old self. What wisdom would you like to share? |
| If … Then | A strategic way to manage your emotions, the “if … then” method helps you to process and repurpose your feelings. Choose a life event and consider several alternatives for that event. You can also think of possible future life experiences and practice “if … then” scenarios. This will help you have contingency plans in place, giving you more control over your life when you are confronted by situations that trigger you. |
| Your Perfect Reality | What does your ideal life look like? Visualize: What do you do? What does your house look like? Your career? Your partner and kids? Do you have pets? Dream as big as you can and write down what you see. The more details you note, the better. This will help you gain clarity on what is important to you and what you really want in life. |
Dr. Gillie Bolton shares more writing prompts for therapy here:
Therapy Writing FAQs
1. Is writing one of the best kinds of therapy?
Writing is an excellent therapy tool as it is cheaper than other forms of therapy. It is both effective and versatile. Expressive writing therapy helps you reduce stress, improve the symptoms of various diseases, and improve your overall well-being.
2. How does writing help your mental health?
Writing can improve your mental health as you express your emotions on paper. This helps you organize your thoughts and understand trauma or negative experiences. This brings about peace of mind while also calming your emotions and thoughts.
Key Takeaways for Starting Writing Therapy
Writing therapy is essential for any healing journey as you can undertake this healing process by yourself with the help of your detailed guide or you can also seek out the help of a psychologist. You can also combine different writing forms to gain the most benefits.
To recap:
- Therapeutic writing is easy-to-access, versatile, cheap, and effective.
- Many famous people use expressive writing to help them on their own journeys of healing as this gives voice to their thoughts and feelings.
- There are many benefits to therapeutic writing, from lowering stress and anxiety and boosting your immune system to spurring personal growth and lessening the effects of painful and traumatic memories and other life events.
- You can easily start writing therapy today! All you need is a safe space, a journal or notebook with a pen, a goal, and some prompts or exercises if you are feeling blocked or unsure of where to start.
- There are many types of expressive writing forms you can practice, and you can decide which ones work best for you. There are no rules. So try them all!
- It is best to write continuously for at least 15 to 20 minutes, and a daily writing habit provides you with the most benefits.
Are you ready to start your writing therapy journey to heal your soul?