Writing as therapy

Telling stories helps me turn negative emotions into something positive

Photo by cottonbro studio

A few weeks ago, while researching for my neuroscience blog, Unhack Your Brain, I came across a piece about how writing was a useful way to address feelings of anger and frustration.

Researchers found that writing down a reaction to a negative incident on a piece of paper and then getting rid of it — shredding or crumpling it into a ball and discarding in a trash can — helped release welling frustration.

That’s not entirely surprising. I’d guess every one of us has used a diary or journal as a way of venting at some point. For decades, therapists have used the writing technique as a way to get people to deal with negative thoughts.

It’s simple magical thinking: by externalizing a thought, feeling or desire onto a physical object, it first helps you clarify your thinking about it, and then enables you to separate yourself from the specific thing you’re trying to deal with. It’s the fundamental principle behind talismans and sigils. Austin Osman Spare devised an entire magical system based on that, the Alphabet of Desire. Whether you treat it as magic or psychology, it’s a highly effective therapeutic process.

I’ve always liked talismans. This was one of the first books I read on the subject.

However, what got me thinking was this.

And the throwing out portion of this practice is essential here — simply writing down your woes isn’t enough to reap the full benefits. The researchers instructed around half of the participants to store their papers in files on their desks or in clear plastic boxes instead of tossing or shredding them, and found that while those subjects’ anger dipped, it didn’t decrease nearly as much.

While most therapists and occultists generally agree that throwing away the negative thought is essential, authors and other artists often take the opposite approach. We publish our negative thoughts and share them with the world.

I started writing fiction at around the time my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Many of my stories were dark, wry, sometimes comedic musings on mortality, death, and regret. I didn’t entirely realize it at the time, but they were a way for both my mother and myself to come to terms with the inevitability of what was happening. After her death, I continued writing, because telling stories made me feel alive, and made me feel good about myself. My stories also allowed me to explore my own thoughts and emotions, reframing them into the experiences of imaginary Others: they were mine, but they were not me. Working out my feelings in the form of stories was a way of attaining mastery over them. I understood them, and then reshaped them into something else, something beautiful. It was a form of emotional alchemy.

At first, the only people who read my work were my family, my closest friends, and my writers’ group. But instead of keeping those innermost thoughts private or destroying them, as a therapist would recommend, I put them into a book and put them on the Internet for everyone to see. Again, I don’t think I realized it at the time, but that was an important part of my therapy. I had not only transformed emotions into stories, but I’d shown myself that I wasn’t afraid or ashamed of them.

I don’t think I’m unusual. Some of humanity’s greatest works of music, literature, film and art have been born from the artist’s need to come to terms with deeply traumatic events. We don’t crumple up our unwanted emotions and discard them. We use them as inspiration and proudly display them to the world. And it feels good.

Picasso’s Guernica. I could equally well have used the cover of a Taylor Swift album.