WRITE NOW THERAPY!

The main thing to know is that ultimately it doesn’t matter what type of writing you do, it only matters that you write from your heart and be willing to express how you feel. Specifically, how you feel about a situation, issues, or a traumatic event or loss you are dealing with. You aren’t going to get over something if you continue to just replay the event or loss in your head over and over again.

Here are some examples of types of writing you can do to heal your pain or begin your journey of recovery.

“FREE-WRITING”

The first type of writing I usually recommend to clients is “free writing” or writing down whatever is on your mind without a second thought of censoring yourself. It is the easiest way to start your writing to heal journey. You can do it for hours or days on end (LINK What Type of Writing to Heal Your Pain”).

“COMPOSING A LETTER”

Another way to help you to get over something is composing a letter to yourself or the person who hurt you. This isn’t a letter you will mail. It is just the act of you writing the letter as a way of expressing how you feel about the situation. Expressing hurt or anger or frustration or simply you writing in letter format what is going on inside your head can be an easy way of working through your feelings about the pain you are suffering.   

You can address your letter to someone else (the person who hurt you, a parent, a relative who has died) or you can write the letter to yourself. Maybe the child or younger version of yourself. It can be a letter to express how you were hurt or even a forgiveness letter. Whether it is you needing to forgive someone else or yourself.

If you are having trouble getting started with how to write the letter, think of your letter as a response to their asking you how you are doing today or simply start with what is holding you back from moving forward. Typically, what is holding us back is some unfinished business with the person or something that continually gets ignored in conversations because it is too difficult to address in reality.

POETRY OR SONG LYRICS

Another writing approach has been a healing and emotional expressive outlet for centuries. Writing poetry or song writing. This can work on different levels. You may not think you know how to write poetry but think of your favorite song. A song that speaks to you in a deeper way. Think about the lyrics. Even look them up online and you will notice that song lyrics are essentially poems set to music.

Writing poetry or song lyrics can be great if your thoughts are disjointed. It may be hard for you to put in full sentences what it is you are feeling so use the fractmented thoughts as lyrics or poetry.

Write it in poetic form like this:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each tomorrow

Find us farther than today.

This excerp is from “A Psalm to Life” by Henry Wasdworth Longfellow.

Here is another more modern example of a poem in song lyrics with a more radical disjointed style:

Lying in my bed, I hear the clock tick and think of you

Caught up in circles

Confusion is nothing new

Flashback, warm nights

Almost left behiknd

Suitcase of memories

Time after

Sometimes you picture me

I’m walking to far ahead.

You’re calling to me, I can’t hear

What you’ve said

Then you say, “go slow”

And I fall behind

The second hand unwinds

This poetic example is from “Time After Time” written by Cyndi Lauper. The style is very visually poetic but clearly an emotional outpouring.

MORE EXAMPLES OF WRITING HERE. UNFINISHED ☹