Why write? Six reasons to write to improve wellbeing

Expressing feelings in writing can be cathartic and productive, much as it is in talking therapy. But how does this work? What are the benefits of using creative writing for wellbeing?

Writing for wellbeing

To understand yourself better

Writing can help to make sense of things. It can take many forms: list, diary, story, poem...

I often don’t know what I’m going to write when I begin. But as I get going, the feelings, thoughts, memories, and reflections begin to flow, one thing leads to another, and the pen moves almost without my guidance. Often, I only realise what I feel as I write it. Writing can bypass the censor of my conscious mind and show me something I wasn’t aware of.

To externalise pain

Writing can be a kind of expurgating, pouring forth, getting it out. I’ve done this through journalling, or writing a letter that is never sent, or writing a list of all the things on my mind at 3 o’clock in the morning. There is value in getting problems out of your system, onto the page. Even if the page is not kept, and no one reads it, it still brings relief. Articulating difficult experiences can release the pressure that builds when we keep things inside.

To share experience

You may choose not to share what you write, of course. But in a writing group, or with a therapist, or even with trusted friends or family, writing can be a way to communicate experience. And sharing it invites another person to respond, which can be validating, powerful and transformative. Discussions around pieces of writing can be fruitful, connecting, and significant.

‘To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.’

Kurt Vonnegut

To change perspective

An experience changes in the writing of it. It is hard to explain how or why this happens – that can be another blog post! But by putting it on the page, you will likely come to a different understanding of it. The process of writing, redrafting, reading, and redrafting can change our thinking about the topic.

There are ways of doing this more deliberately, for example: by writing in the third person or writing about an experience through the eyes of someone who witnessed it. Writing empathically, from another person’s perspective, can be insightful.

To create

Writing about an experience can give it another purpose. As I write about a painful experience, it becomes source material for my creativity – which gives it additional value or meaning. And the story or poem thus created can be a source of pride, even if the original experience was deeply unwelcome. And writing anything, happy or sad, leaves a record for myself, and anyone I choose to share it with.

For pleasure and relief

Creativity uses the right brain and can take us out of logical thought into a state of flow. There is something therapeutic about selecting just the right word to capture a feeling; or fitting words and syllables to the structure of a poem. The prescriptiveness, paradoxically, can be freeing. This process of creating is itself absorbing and rewarding and therefore moves us on from the source of the pain.

For all these reasons, writing can be beneficial: for private use, in individual therapy, or in a writing for wellbeing group.