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Writing can take on many forms and do many things for people. It can be a fascinating or soothing hobby, a career, a passion, a job. But writing can have a more important role. Writing can be a coping strategy that can assist in stress relief, can increase feelings of positivity, can help manage anxiety, and can help to process trauma. Writing can be a form of therapy. Writing may do this in the following ways:

  1. It can help you honor yourself and your life story.

Vocalizing your story can be hard. Putting words to your pain can be excruciating. Putting your inner words and dialogue onto paper can be an effective alternative to speaking your story out loud. Moreover, it can provide emotional release and can validate your experience.

  1. It provides a way to share your story with others.

Some stories are traumatic. Some stories are hopeful. Some stories are either, or and both.  Sharing your story for others to read can provide normalization to others – that is, it can let others know that other people share similar pain. This, in turn, can provide positive benefits for the writer. Writing can provide a loud voice in order to share experiences.

  1. Writing can let unconscious material become conscious.

Writing out a traumatic event can help process trauma with the help of a professional therapist. Often we cope with stressful or traumatic things by compartmentalizing. It is as if our brain contains different compartments in which we can put different memories and emotions in an attempt to store them away for later.  Some memories and emotions can end up in our unconscious. Writing whatever flows out of your mind, called free association, is a way to tap into what may be stored within the unconscious mind.

  1. Writing has a calming effect on the brain.

Writing, particularly by hand, stimulates the same areas of the brain that meditation does. It engages the brain’s motor areas and memory pathways, and forces the mind to slow down while the hand catches up. This has the potential to allow more space for learning and memory integration.

Moreover, writing in cursive has further benefits. Handwriting is rhythmic and provides sensory soothing to the brain, which can decrease a negative emotional experience. It integrates sensation, movement control, cognition, and causes a calming slow-down effect.

  1. Writing can inspire hope.

Writing your future story can instill hope, create soothing imagery within your mind, and produce calm. It can also help you to set goals and perhaps start to plan a way to work towards the goals.

  1. It can help heal pain from relationships.

Writing apology and forgiveness letters can help right wrongs. Further, penning undelivered letters to those who have hurt us can assist with healing the hurt without ever having to make contact with that person.

There are many ways that you can write. Here are some practical suggestions:

  • Get a notebook and start a journal.
  • Create a blog and type out your story.
  • Write letters to your future or past self.

Remember, you are the author of your life-book. Every day can be a blank page on which to record, explore, hope, uplift, remember, and design. Writing regularly can restore, rebuild, and heal.

20181009_113447Erin Newman is a therapist by day, and a writer by night. She is also a parent, student, advocate, artist, and teacher.

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We are constantly engaged with technology, and, sometimes, it can be difficult to justify buying or bringing a notebook when we know that we can just type our work on our laptop, phone, or tablet. Technology affords us many great luxuries, but especially in the initial, frenzied, creative stages of writing, it can be best to go back to basics and pull out a pen and paper. The artistic freedom that a blank page affords can be liberating. While I may find myself frozen and frustrated before a computer screen, there is a special joy that accompanies writing with pen and paper. Below, I have compiled a list of my favourite reasons for going back to basics when I write.

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Automatic illustrations. Drawing, doodling, scribbling: whatever you call it, being able to add artwork instantly to whatever piece of writing you are working on can help to keep your creative juices flowing. Doodling can help you come up with new ideas, see things in different ways, and can even alleviate anxiety. For readers, illustrations (no matter how crude) can catch the eye, add to the tone, increase dimensionality, and make the piece feel more personal. Difficult to accomplish on the computer, but so automatic with a pen in hand, doodling has some major upsides for creative minds of all varieties.

Change the shape of words. Sometimes words need to be big, or zigzagged, or adorned with curlicues. They may need to be in seven different colours, or dripping with slime, or be spread out all over the page. Maybe you want to insert a word that requires a different alphabet, like Arabic or Ukrainian, right in the middle of your English poem. Something that can be difficult and frustrating to accomplish on the computer can become a fun and invigorating project on paper. Easily being able to make your words look how you want helps to maintain the flow of creativity and can lead to greater satisfaction at the end of your work period.

Spell however you want! Trying to write a short story from the perspective of a child? Are you looking to stretch out or compress words in the song you’re writing? Have you coined a new term? Are you perpetually distracted by your spelling mistakes when all you want is to quickly get an idea down? It can be infuriating to have to go back again and again to change what autocorrect has “fixed” for you, or try to continue on bravely writing amongst the many red underlined words in your document. Writing on paper will never pose this problem.

Format the words on the page easily and quickly. Whether you want words in all four corners of the page but nowhere in between, or spaced out like bricks, or placed in the shape of a dress, writing on paper will always allow you this luxury with the least amount of fuss.

Piece together pieces of different drafts. Have you ever found yourself writing draft after draft of the same idea, sentence, or poem? Well, there’s no easy backspace or delete function when you’re working with paper, and, if you’re like me, even if something was crossed out in a crazed bout of frustration, I can usually still read it. After I have written all my drafts, I can take all the pieces of my brainstorming, take the best from each, and weave them together. On a computer, my ideas are so easily deleted; on paper, they remain traceable.

rachaelRachael Heffernan has recently completed a Master’s Degree in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta. In the course of her academic career, she has received the Harrison Prize in Religion and The Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship. During her undergraduate degree, Rachael was published twice in The Codex: Bishop University’s Journal of Philosophy, Religion, Classics, and Liberal Arts for her work on Hittite divination and magic and philosophy of religion. Rachael has also had the opportunity to participate in an archaeological dig in Israel, and has spoken at a conference on Secularism at the University of Alberta on the Christian nature of contemporary Western healthcare. Her wide-ranging interests in scholarship are complemented by her eclectic extra-curricular interests: she is a personal safety instructor and lifelong martial artist who has been recognized for her leadership with a Nepean Community Sports Hero Award. She is an enthusiastic reader, writer, and learner of all things, a tireless athlete, and a passionate teacher.

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This article was written by Liz Hill – new staff Writer and Researcher for The Drawing Board.

This past Sunday, I put my shiny new Art Gallery of Alberta membership to use – something I hope to make a weekly occasion. I have my favourite artistic styles and movements, but I enjoy many kinds of art on different levels. Interpretation, analysis, and criticism are all good fun to me, but I purchased my student membership at the AGA in part to facilitate a less intellectual, but no less important, side of my relationship to art.

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When I go to a new exhibition I will read all the informational plaques, scrutinize the works through my art history background and knowledge, and, in general, try to understand them. I enjoy this, but that intellectual part of the gallery experience is not so much different than what can be accomplished with a slide projector and a good lecturer, or a big glossy Taschen coffee table book. What makes visiting an art gallery so beneficial for me is the sensory and psychological experience: to be in a quiet environment designed to focus a primarily visual, and perhaps spatial, experience, and to engage with a form of expression that, whether it is beautiful or ugly, complex or simple, is nearly wordless.

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As you stand in front of each work of art, the ebb and flow of time is dictated by your own attention and engagement with the particular piece and the moment that encapsulates it and you, not by a schedule composed of half hour comedies and hour long dramas, or chapters of approximately twenty five pages, or hour and twenty minute classes divided by ten minute intervals. In these moments of purely visual attention, there is no multitasking or overstimulating background of digital notifications. Most importantly for me, the linguistic filter of analysis and categorization that overlays all day to day experience for us overly-intellectual types falls to a quiet background hum.

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Getting tangled up in the words in our heads is an occupational hazard for students, academics, introverts – anyone with a commitment, whether personal or professional, to Figuring It Out. The It that needs Figuring Out could be the meaning of an obscure Middle English text, the inner workings of the earth’s tectonic plates, or even one’s own inscrutable subconscious. The problem is the same though – for all your hard toil in the realm of abstracts, and all your moments of brilliant insight, your ideas don’t add up, your thoughts run in circles, and you’re left bound up in the tendrils of your own overworked mental processes. Whatever conclusion you were seeking is more obscured than illuminated by all your thoughts and words and logical reasoning.

I could put this frustrating situation down to the inadequacy of language to express truth, and accept that truth is either ineffable or non-existent and become some peculiar Postmodern mystic. Perhaps I will take that path in retirement, but for now I am practical. I am a student and a writer – I deal in words and truth-seeking and telling for a living. I live and work in my head, so I must make it a hospitable place. This means periodically clearing away the mental detritus, all those thoughts and words and logical tricks that have embedded themselves like weeds and grown around my mind like morning glory.

This is where the art gallery comes in, and the need to find a refuge from words, even as someone who lives in a world more made of words than atomic matter. For me, the focused visual experience of looking at art clears my mind without dulling it. My intellect is engaged and works away in the background, while my consciousness can relax and appreciate the moment. For others, physical activity might have this effect, or working with one’s hands. As we begin to approach the peak of the school term, I think it is important to remember to make time for these sorts of activities, so that when our minds need a break from all the words words words, we have some more refreshing options than another night with Netflix.