Writing Anxiety Groups: A Creative Approach for Graduate Students

This article discusses a creative project designed by the first author to help graduate students in the dissertation-writing process cope with writing anxiety. Writing anxiety is a condition that affects writers and causes heightened stress and anxiety during the writing process. Graduate students often take on multiple responsibilities in their lives and academic studies. These tasks increase students’ perceived stress and prevent them from completing their writing projects on time. Although writing a dissertation is a stressful process that generates high anxiety, writing itself can be used to release internalized stress and reduce writing anxiety. This article presents a writing anxiety group that is designed to utilize the therapeutic power of writing and the group dynamics of a support group to assist graduate students in coping with writing anxiety.