As a writing coach, I often work with individuals writing memoirs. Most people don’t write memoirs based on super happy moments. They almost always write about surviving a difficult past, and often are still sorting through related issues as they begin their books. The writing process can help them do that.
For starters, writing is cathartic. Getting words down on paper externalizes the experience. This type of writing as therapy not only lessens the pain, it provides perspective.
Writing also provides a direct conduit into our subconscious, allowing us to get in touch with how we really feel or what we’re really thinking that we weren’t even aware of.
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Okay, that’s my own private theory, but it’s been well tested. I developed this theory after writing way too many letters to boyfriends I was upset with. The letters never got sent, but they provided me with countless aha moments. I’d write furiously, because furious was the operative word. Then I’d reread what I’d written. Inevitably I’d wind up saying to myself, “Wow, that’s how I feel? Or that’s what I really think? Or…wow, I get why I’m so upset.”
Yes, writing can help you gain perspective on what’s really going on inside. Way deep down inside you.
I was barely a teenager when I figured out that writing could help me sort out my emotions, which were on a rampage, and clearly my fabulous relationship choices reinforced that discovery. But my theory about writing as a direct conduit into our subconscious would be cemented when I wound up at a 12-step meeting for friends and family of alcoholics. I had made a deal with my then boyfriend that if I attended this one meeting, he would go to AA. So I opted for a writing meeting. Go figure. The assignment that day was to write about how we are powerless to change others. We were to copy the assignment at the top of the page and then write for 50 minutes. Being a good editor, I wrote for 45 minutes and allowed myself five minutes to re-read what I had written. The heading I’d written for my paper read: I am powerful to change others. Oops!
I know for a fact that this kind of truth serum effect when writing doesn’t just happen to me.
My friend, life coach Carol Delmonico and I, lead a workshop series called the Write Balance, in which we use writing to help people figure out what’s important to them. During the workshop, we have people write as quickly as they can for about 20 minutes about how they relate to the particular topic we’re addressing. Every time, we have people who don’t even remember writing the words on their papers. Every time, we have people who experience epiphanies about their lives. In just 20 minutes of writing!
Try it for yourself and let me know what happens. And stay tuned for my upcoming post on how memoir writing can become a super-charged vehicle for self-discovery.
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