Writing Practice Prescription

I have coined the term WellWriting® to name an ongoing writing practice. WellWriting is a form of therapeutic, expressive, and focused autobiographical writing that has been shown to improve numerous health conditions. This form of writing is easy to do, inexpensive, and requires no research other than self-exploration.

WellWriting has helped many people recovering from traumatic events, enduring severe losses, and suffering from chronic diseases.

How to do WellWriting

Start by getting yourself seated with pen and paper or in front of a computer. Fifteen minutes a day, three times a week will serve well, though you should feel free to write more at anytime.

Get comfortable and set the clock. Then write as fast as you can without regard for style, spelling, or punctuation. Write. Don’t think. Keep the words flowing. Imagine the words flowing from deep inside you or out of the universe.

Remember that WellWriting consists of regular practice and use. Here are benefits reported by others who have done WellWriting exercises:

• They are more productive and focused.
• They experience a reduction of stress.
• They feel better about themselves.

Some caveats

This is your personal writing-keep it that way. If you can’t keep your writing safe and personal, then write it and let it go. Some folks have told me that they often write up what is painful and hurtful to them and then with ceremony burn the paper at the end of their writing session.

Consider this story from my book WellWriting for Health After Trauma and Abuse:

An acquaintance recently told me what she learned when she wrote about her African vacation. She said, “It was on that trip that our 23-year-old marriage began to unravel.

“For the sake of the children, we managed to get through another year, but then the kids were grown and away so we went ahead and got a divorce. This confused our children, who didn’t understand why we couldn’t go on together.

“So I began the story of our vacation and wrote about all the things that had gone wrong. It was very painful and it made me feel bad. But then later, I felt better. I had new insights that began to explain to me why all this had happened.”

In the end, she decided not to show the story she had written to her children. So my friend kept the insights and threw away the paper the story was written on.

Remember that your writing is about you-not how mean and bad other people are. They may be not nice folks who did not nice things to you, but your WellWriting sessions are about you. For the most part, you cannot control others. You can however, control:

• How you react to what happened to you
• What you will learn from what happened to you
• How you will change your life because of what happened and how it made you feel

If your writing makes you laugh or cry, keep going.

If you come up against great and painful resistance, back off and write about another event. Your writing practice will let you know when it’s time to visit things that were too hard to face earlier on.