Therapeutic writing and narrative therapy, benefits

The therapeutic writing helps us reinterpret our history and give it a new meaning. At the brain level, there is research that supports that there are not only emotional benefits in writing but also bodily benefits.

What does therapeutic writing consist of?

Writing has certain advantages over thinking. Thoughts are immediate and unavoidable, redundant, messy, and tend to get mixed up, making it difficult to analyze things clearly at times.

On the other hand, through writing we get a distance with our thoughts, since we have time to structure what we want to write, we can erase and redo what we want to reflect, ordering in more detail and also gaining sequentially.

All this allows us to reflect more lucidly, asking ourselves new questions or answering the usual questions with different answers. That is, the writing helps us reinterpret our history and give it a new meaning.

Benefits of therapeutic writing.

At the brain level, there is research that supports that there is not only emotional benefits in therapeutic writing but also bodily benefits. Writing involves the simultaneous activation of the two cerebral hemispheres.

On the one hand, it puts the artistic, emotional and creative part of the brain (right hemisphere) and on the other hand the rational, critical and structured part (left hemisphere). Interrelated they facilitate the regulation of the limbic system and, therefore, emotional balance. Developing traumatic situations in writing reduces and improves the immune system.

How do you exercise?

Therapeutic writing can be exercised individually as part of a process of self-exploration and self-help, or also as part of a formal psychotherapy. Some of the benefits that it adds in the latter would be:

• Increases the person's involvement in therapy, keeping them more connected and reducing the space between sessions.
• Create a more active participation of the person.
• Facilitates emotional expression.
• Promotes reflection and reduces rumination of thoughts.
• It helps to take distance and to elaborate what was worked in session.

Most common uses of therapeutic writing

• Strengthen self-esteem.
• Know yourself.
• Promote social skills.
• Access unconscious information (eg automatic writing).
• Organization of objectives or decision making.
• Improve relationships.
• Duels and farewells.
• Future projection.
• Improve specific psychopathologies: anxiety,, insomnia, depression, etc. (the latter should be professionally guided).

Narrative therapy

We are narrative beings. We have been since the beginning of time. Already since prehistory we find the need to relate through cave paintings in caves. We turn our experiences into stories, not only by telling them to others, but also to ourselves.

The way we relate what happens to us conditions our lives and our relationships. In Huxley's words, "".

Narratives are necessary since they organize the great complexity of stimuli that make up the world. We select some specific aspects of our experience and we spin them internally through language, thus creating different plots that give meaning to our life.

We understand in this way not only our past (what happened to us, what we learned in the family or in society) but also our present (who we are, what the world is like, who we surround ourselves with) and our future (taking some decisions or others depending on how we will narrate ourselves in the future).

Narratives that help us

Now, not all narratives help us or are useful to us. Sometimes they limit us and create problems for us. What to do then? Honoré Balzac said “”. So let's change our narratives.

The stories we tell ourselves don't have to be forever. The human being is "multi-historical", that is, we can change our narratives and discover ourselves in different ways, for example, recovering parts that perhaps we did not include in our plot initially or giving more weight to other factors.

If we change our way of narrating ourselves, we also change the way we feel and understand. The power of the word is limitless.

What is narrative therapy?

Starting in the 1980s, some psychologists began to change their understanding of therapy as they realized that focusing excessively on problems limited solutions and personal resources.

A change in approach was needed. It began to be understood that the figure of the therapist It was not the focus of the solution, but rather the solution was in the person and their environment.

It was necessary to change the way in which the person understood himself in order to find solutions. It is not the same to say "I am depressed", as if it were a characteristic that you cannot get rid of, than to say "I have a depression." Placing the problem as something separate from the self made it possible for the person to re-narrate himself and fight to solve his problem. Hence lThe fundamental maxim of narrative therapy is "the person is never the problem, the problem is the problem".

Outsourcing is thus one of the fundamental maneuvers of narrative therapy. It has to do with separate the problem from the person. You can externalize feelings (eg sadness, jealousy ...), interpersonal problems (eg arguments) or even social or cultural aspects (eg machismo, racism ...).

Narrative therapy also places great importance on metaphors. Rather than saying "you are depressed" it is said, for example, "The Voice of Depression has been very successful in governing your life." Interviews with "Voice of Depression" can be done to help the person consider other ideas. You can also write letters to this part of the person and even have it respond. Ultimately, it is about changing the hitherto "dominant narrative" for an "alternative narrative."

• Writing helps us reinterpret our history and give it a new meaning.
• At the brain level, there is research that supports that there are not only emotional benefits in writing but also bodily benefits.
• Therapeutic writing can be done individually as part of a process of self-exploration and self-help, or also as part of a formal psychotherapy.

Cristina Agud Specialist in Clinical Psychology