Healing Through Personal Writing

Most of us don’t realise that often we seek to have our problems, our broken heart, our disjointed childhood, our grief, our lack of fulfilment and support, our depression, or any cracks in our lives fixed…by someone out there. We reach out to a GP, an MP, a lover, a fantasy character, a friend, or a pill, hoping that they can fix us.

I advocate that those who can save us are all dead which makes reaching out futile. Healing the heart happens only within you. Writing is one of the best tools we can use to delve in and create a safe and progressively strong foundation on which we can create new worlds.

That is where healing can be activated. Healing that is not scripted based on anyone’s opinion but your own state of being and in your control.

Remove Judgement

This is not writing for the public, but writing for you with the anticipation of carrying the effects of the experience to and through your life. Writing for yourself means there will be no judgement or critique of your writing ability. It is not about writing techniques or believable characters or a perfect arc or ensuring that the beginning meets the end. This is only a personal, almost shamanic journey to sooth your soul in which you bring your memory into play to write and rewrite your own history.

The intention is to trigger a healing process by changing your point of view about a hurtful memory or a discontented present or a fearful aspiration. By writing as a witness and not as a participant in the story you will be prompted to engage all your senses in your observation of a memory. There is a freedom in writing for no audience; it allows us to view our minds impartially and to write a different story, one that quenches our own soul.

Reboot Yourself

A timeline of events should be your focal point, but this does not mean just events of the past. The state of your being in the present and your aspirations of the future all have integral parts in your story. Memory is the fickle title we categorise all of these into.

You are and remain the hero of your own story, be prepared to distinguish the difference between the villains and the antagonists in your story. Separate the shadow from the dark in a sincere attitude; this might sound daunting but it becomes smoother when you realise you are merely a witness when writing for yourself. Then the hero can rewrite a memory without bias, only this time it will be written in stone. Most things work better if you turn them off for a while and turn them back on again. You will be re-writing your own memory after the halt of observing the associated…as a witness.

Although the main intention of personal writing is healing, it has the potential to be an inspirational method in your future writing. By writing for yourself you can aid the healing of emotional and mental wounds and enhance boundaries by dealing with what has happened and what is happening to you, in the context of storytelling.