The therapeutic potential of creative writing: writing myself.

Occasionally I have suggested to patients that they write down some of their thoughts and feelings in the form of a journal or a letter. Nearly always the act of writing seems to have a mysterious therapeutic effect. Thanks to Gillie Bolton's book, I shall be doing this more often. Gillie believes that while it is good to talk, it is even better to write. She teaches therapeutic writing to doctors, nurses, patients, clients, prisoners: just about anybody who is interested. You do not have to be an accomplished writer or even be good at spelling in order to benefit. First of all, find a pen or pencil that is nice to hold, some attractive paper and a nice quiet corner. Then just let the words flow out of your inner self on to the paper. Don't worry if the grammar is wrong or it sounds silly. “You can't write the wrong thing.” Inside you there is “a trustworthy, strong, wise healing self” with whom writing will help you make contact. You should continue your free-intuitive writing for about 6 minutes (that rings a bell for us GPs). The next stage (if you want to) is to go back and rework it a little. This helps you to sort out and order some of the memories and ideas the writing has produced. Once you have written something down, it has its own independent existence. You may show it to a doctor, a therapist or a friend. You might imagine sending it to a loved one who has died. Or you can just keep it for yourself. These ideas are all in the first two chapters of the book and I found them very exciting. Gillie goes on to tell us about keeping a diary and how to find images from objects such as buttons or boxes which will generate memories to write about. Images are very important in therapeutic writing and especially in poetry, because of their freshness and the way in which they appeal to the senses. All this is very helpful and I found myself reading the first five chapters again. My attention wandered a little in the chapters that follow. The latter part of the book deals with the various ways in which writing can be used as an instrument of psychotherapy. These chapters are written in the language of therapy and, after hearing about lots of people getting in touch with their inner selves, expressing feelings for the first time, writing, reading, laughing and crying, and so on, I began to suffer from compassion fatigue. I began puzzling over whether therapeutic writing can ever be creative and whether creative writing is therapeutic. Never mind. I am certainly going to do some therapeutic writing myself and then, when I am ready, I shall suggest it to some of my troubled patients. If you read this book (and I think you should), you will want to be doing it too.