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The Healing Art of Writing
Recently, I read this article bit.ly/t6GnpF about how writing is now being used as a form for rehabilitation therapy for returning soldiers. Art therapy is often the only form of creative-based therapy people think of, but I was pleased to discover that more doctors are encouraging writing as a means of relaxation and rehabilitation. In these cases writing is used to ease the pain of traumatic events, but the healing art of writing can be used in many forms and has been for centuries.
The few examples of the emotions that writing can alleviate are:
Sadness: Jotting down feelings of loneliness and depression eradicate the pain by painting it on the page.
Happiness: Telling a story of elation or joy is not a form of bragging, but rather a means to share your happiness with others.
Anger: Venting about a troublesome situation is typical of humans, and writing it down only increases the cathartic nature.
For people dealing with particularly difficult times, writing is an excellent means of therapy. It is akin to watching a movie or reading a book, except you are the creator of the story. The facets of your newly written idea can either reflect your dilemmas or avoid them all-together. That is the beauty of writing. There is no definitive form. There are no restricting rules. You can transform a blank page into a place that only exists in the deepest recesses of your imagination. Writing is limitless.
Storytelling is a form of expressing emotion through the beautiful tangle of words. It can relieve stress, share delights or provide an outlet to experience escapism at its finest. The root of writing and reading is to share a common bond with the characters’ struggles while taking time to escape your own. And at some point, either in the middle of a sentence or at the end of the book, you’ll find the worries of the real world melt away at the stroke of a pen.
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2 Comments
I've been reading The Secret Life or Pronouns by James Pennebaker, which examines studies that show that people who wrote about and found meaning in a traumatic experience experienced healing.
True, Lisa. I think the theraputic results of writing are evident to writers, but I'm glad the public is being exposed to this fact as well.