Healing Stories
Tell me a story! Part 3 - Healing stories
29/07/08 13:01 Filed in: Psychology | Healing stories
For a while now, I’ve been talking to people about whether writing about past and present emotional difficulties helps in transcending those difficulties…whether writing is a means of coming to terms with emotional upheavals and healing from them.
This post is going to be low on personal opinions; I would rather simply share some of my findings with you.
My first major finding would be that writing facilitates emotional understanding, that by writing about past difficulties, we frame those difficulties in a way that is graspable and comprehensible. Some people mentioned that they felt their physical health had improved as a result of writing.
Overall, those who seemed to get the most benefit from writing, and I’m still open on this particular observation, were those who imposed a fictional narrative of some sort. I’m not quite sure how this works but it probably reflects my own experience of writing too. Maybe it’s about the act of taking a messy, complicated or disturbing experience and turning the experience into a story that makes it more manageable. Perhaps, the dimension of adding fictional narrative somehow placed their personal story at a distance where they could see it more clearly. I’m not entirely sure.
People who wrote about personal difficulties over long periods of time derived less benefit from writing their stories, than those who set themselves short-term limits to write and wrote their feelings in a “splurge” without regard to style, content or grammar.
For people who wrote about their emotional pain over long periods of time, there was a tendency to get locked into a cycle of self-pity and endless introspection. This was most pronounced in those who published extended stories of personal anguish in a web log (blog) My overall impression was that what happened, more often than not, was that it attracted a club that held itself together through the sharing and mutual identification with the emotional difficulty. The odd one or two people reported that they found the identification of others with their personal problems normalised their experiences.
“It made me realise that this problem was not only about me and that it happens to others too.”
People found it generally useful to share and talk about those stories with those close to them or others involved in the life episode, but less beneficial to discuss the issues with the public via a blog.
For bloggers, I noticed a tendency to do transference and identification with others participating on their blog. This was not always helpful to the writer, to the person trying to come to terms with his or her own emotional past. There’s a piece here about five posts down the page on transference and identification if you are interested to know more.
For people who had written about past emotional experiences over an extended period, I asked, “How easy would it be to write a new story going forward in your life, to write the next chapter of your own life?”
This question was frequently expressed along these lines:
“Do you feel able to write stories about how it might feel to be empowered to lead the life you wish to lead? Are you able to pick up your “pen” (metaphorically speaking!) and say “Okay, that was all my story then, but I have my own life and I’m going to move on with the script?” What’s the next chapter?” By the way, if you did that would you feel you were letting yourself or others down, including the readers of your blog? What and how would you like to exist beyond the present?”
This question interests me greatly, but I’m unsure if I have a sufficiently large response to give feedback as yet. I have a notion that those whom I asked the question found it to be interesting “food for thought”.
So in summary, most people who used story-writing to come to terms with emotional difficulties, pain and upheavals, said that story writing improved their emotional wellbeing, and sometimes their physical health.
The greatest benefits were obtained when:
1. They wrote regularly for short periods of time in peace and quiet
2. They limited the time period for which they would write about a certain event, normally to less than two weeks
3. They wrote without attention to style, content, spelling or grammar, letting the story “spill out”
4. They wrote for themselves and not an audience other than those involved or those close to them
5. They wrote only when they felt strong enough and able to face the past difficulty
6. They imposed a fictional narrative on the story
There is little new to add to existing research here, although I did find the responses from bloggers interesting and I am not aware that this has been covered before.
This post is going to be low on personal opinions; I would rather simply share some of my findings with you.
My first major finding would be that writing facilitates emotional understanding, that by writing about past difficulties, we frame those difficulties in a way that is graspable and comprehensible. Some people mentioned that they felt their physical health had improved as a result of writing.
Overall, those who seemed to get the most benefit from writing, and I’m still open on this particular observation, were those who imposed a fictional narrative of some sort. I’m not quite sure how this works but it probably reflects my own experience of writing too. Maybe it’s about the act of taking a messy, complicated or disturbing experience and turning the experience into a story that makes it more manageable. Perhaps, the dimension of adding fictional narrative somehow placed their personal story at a distance where they could see it more clearly. I’m not entirely sure.
People who wrote about personal difficulties over long periods of time derived less benefit from writing their stories, than those who set themselves short-term limits to write and wrote their feelings in a “splurge” without regard to style, content or grammar.
For people who wrote about their emotional pain over long periods of time, there was a tendency to get locked into a cycle of self-pity and endless introspection. This was most pronounced in those who published extended stories of personal anguish in a web log (blog) My overall impression was that what happened, more often than not, was that it attracted a club that held itself together through the sharing and mutual identification with the emotional difficulty. The odd one or two people reported that they found the identification of others with their personal problems normalised their experiences.
“It made me realise that this problem was not only about me and that it happens to others too.”
People found it generally useful to share and talk about those stories with those close to them or others involved in the life episode, but less beneficial to discuss the issues with the public via a blog.
For bloggers, I noticed a tendency to do transference and identification with others participating on their blog. This was not always helpful to the writer, to the person trying to come to terms with his or her own emotional past. There’s a piece here about five posts down the page on transference and identification if you are interested to know more.
For people who had written about past emotional experiences over an extended period, I asked, “How easy would it be to write a new story going forward in your life, to write the next chapter of your own life?”
This question was frequently expressed along these lines:
“Do you feel able to write stories about how it might feel to be empowered to lead the life you wish to lead? Are you able to pick up your “pen” (metaphorically speaking!) and say “Okay, that was all my story then, but I have my own life and I’m going to move on with the script?” What’s the next chapter?” By the way, if you did that would you feel you were letting yourself or others down, including the readers of your blog? What and how would you like to exist beyond the present?”
This question interests me greatly, but I’m unsure if I have a sufficiently large response to give feedback as yet. I have a notion that those whom I asked the question found it to be interesting “food for thought”.
So in summary, most people who used story-writing to come to terms with emotional difficulties, pain and upheavals, said that story writing improved their emotional wellbeing, and sometimes their physical health.
The greatest benefits were obtained when:
1. They wrote regularly for short periods of time in peace and quiet
2. They limited the time period for which they would write about a certain event, normally to less than two weeks
3. They wrote without attention to style, content, spelling or grammar, letting the story “spill out”
4. They wrote for themselves and not an audience other than those involved or those close to them
5. They wrote only when they felt strong enough and able to face the past difficulty
6. They imposed a fictional narrative on the story
There is little new to add to existing research here, although I did find the responses from bloggers interesting and I am not aware that this has been covered before.
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