Writing In Therapy: A Tool For Healing

By Nadine M. Payn

Good psychotherapy takes you on a healing journey. Writing while in therapy can be an excellent tool to accelerate your progress. For over 30 years as a psychologist and writer, I've helped clients who are "stuck" experience powerful emotional breakthroughs with journaling and in-session writing. Making time for writing is the first step in honoring your right to discover your own voice. Therapeutic writing begins as a mystery and becomes an awesome adventure. When you allow yourself to uncensor and go deeper than your conscious mind, you'll be surprised at what you can achieve: a healing shift in perspective. Accompanying this cognitive shift is an emotional release that, while sometimes painful, leads to relief, empowerment, and a new freedom to make behavioral changes that improve your life in the present.

Let me illustrate with the story of "Joel." I've changed his name and details to preserve his confidentiality/anonymity, and he gave me permission to quote his writing.

Joel was a 41 year old single man who came to see me because of problems in relationships. He'd never been married but had "serial monogamy" with women since his twenties. None of his relationships lasted more than three years. Joel had studied Simon and Garfunkel's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover": "Slip out the back, Jack; Make a new plan, Stan; Just drop off the key Lee, and set yourself free...." Joel had tried most ways, leaving behind a trail of female tears and anger. Now as he was entering his 40s he wanted to get married and start a family. He guessed he must have had some responsibility for the failed relationships, but mostly he considered himself "a good guy," just "very picky."

As a psychodynamic therapist, I believe in the power of the Unconscious mind and the impact of childhood events on self-esteem and interpersonal relations. Dysfunctional family dynamics can set in motion self-defeating relationship patterns that continue insidiously in adult life until they are addressed.

To oversimplify and summarize a year of therapy, Joel, the firstborn son, had been the apple of his mother's eye. Mom had a history of depression and viewed her child as the answer to all her problems. She doted on Joel. Dad was a successful businessman, dominant at work and home. Although he was proud to have a son, he resented his wife's exclusive focus on Joel. When Joel was a baby, his father pretty much ignored him. As Joel grew older, Dad, who was elegant and athletic, mocked his son's shyness and clumsiness. Joel was humiliated and turned to his mother for comfort. She enjoyed this special alliance and was in no hurry for Joel to grow up. She fostered dependency rather than a growing son's need for separation/autonomy. Joel was afraid of his dad and welcomed his mom as Protector. But as he became a young teen he began to experience her as suffocating and intrusive. One memory that filled him with disgust was during a formal family photograph session. "Mom combed my hair twice," Joel told me, "and used her own spit to keep a stray lock in place. Yuck!"

It became clear that Joel was highly ambivalent about his girlfriends based on his experience of his mother. He loved her devotion and hated her possessiveness, but as the good son felt powerless to break away. In romances with women when he was an adult, Joel craved that familiar attention and adoration, but as a relationship progressed, he felt claustrophobic and angry. Joel didn't know how to say "no," or how to express his need for space. So he'd bolt. "Hop on the bus Gus, you don't need to discuss much..."

While intelligent and a top-notch computer scientist, Joel was not by nature self-reflective. It was a big step to enter therapy. I thought he was a good candidate for writing. Early on, I asked him to keep a journal, including his dreams. He had a hard time getting started, so I did the following exercise in session. I asked Joel to write the word, "MOTHER," on a sheet of paper, one letter for each line, and then to "free associate" to each letter, i.e., write whatever came to mind even if it seemed irrelevant or ridiculous. Here's what Joel wrote:

M  outh wanting every piece of me
O  nly smiling when I'm "a good boy"
T   elling me I'm sweet, not like most males
H  olding me when I'm sad or scared instead of pushing me to stand up for myself
E  ver watching over me, Evil eye watching me!
R  efusing to see the Inside Me: brat, bad, braggard, brave, BOY!

It took Joel only five minutes to write this. He was amazed at what showed up! All that anger erupting from his Unconscious! In the next session I invited Joel to write an uncensored letter to his mother (not to send to her) with both appreciations and resentments. His first attempt was measured and diplomatic. I asked him to write again, and this time, to be less rational. To alleviate any guilt, I said he was writing to the Mother-In-His Head, not the frail 78 year old mother in his current life. Joel's second letter was intense and came straight from that young "Inside Me" rage. This catharsis led to Joel's realization that the problem with his romances was not that he was "too picky" but that he projected the Mother-In-His Head onto women. He was ambivalent about intimacy because of his need to please women so they would adore him, as his mother had. Then he'd resent them when he over accommodated, stifling his own needs. He'd leave his lovers out of self-protectiveness and suppressed rage.

With those first steps of letting his Unconscious speak through writing, Joel was able to liberate his muffled voice and ultimately shift from ambivalence and anger towards women to speaking audibly and honestly about his needs. By the end of therapy he was in a new kind of relationship, one grounded in mutual loving intimacy and respectful autonomy.