How Is Writing A Healing Tool?

Have you ever finished writing something — a journal entry, a letter, even a few lines in the middle of the night — and felt, somehow, lighter? More clear? More yourself? That's not your imagination. That's writing doing exactly what it's designed to do. In this post, I explain exactly why writing heals.

Hit play or read the post below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQWP2iKI6Do

I'm Dr. Gwyn Erwin. Welcome to “Healing For Your Life.”

Why is writing such a healing tool?

I want to show you the various ways that writing is healing, and how I incorporate creativity into my work clinically.

I am a contemporary and developmental psychoanalyst in private practice for over 30 years. I have specialized expertise in human development from birth throughout the lifespan, and expertise in working with unresolved trauma. And I can tell you, writing is one of the most powerful healing tools we have, and I incorporate it in my clinical work as well as in my creative work.

Hand in hand with my clinical work, I have been a professional writer since I was 14 years old. I have done freelance writing, published books, journals, writing tools. I've brought 12 books of other people into the world. I'm an editor, a coach, and have taught at the university, and graduate, as well as private, writing levels.

Let me start with something that happens in my clinical work all the time.

When someone is in the middle of suffering, deep suffering, they're so inside the experience that they can't really see it clearly. The pain is consuming- It is everywhere. There's very little perspective. There might be awareness, but they don't have distance from it.

Writing helps create that expanded perspective, and that expansion is medicine. When you put words onto a page, something remarkable happens. You move from being inside the experience to being its author. You are no longer just the person the story is happening to. You are the person narrating that story, and that shift is the beginning of healing.

There's a phrase I love, one that I use, and encourage my writing and patients alike use it. Writing is instrumental in moving you from suffering to hope. Not instantly, not magically, but consistently over time. When you show up on the page, something significant happens towards our ultimate therapeutic and writing goal of thriving, and writing is one of the substantial paths to take you there.

The Neuroscience Explaination of Why Writing Heals

Let me give you the neuroscience version because it's both fascinating and validating.

When we experience difficult emotions, whether it's grief, fear, anger, confusion, those are processed in part by what we call the limbic system, the emotional brain. These emotions can feel chaotic, wordless, overwhelming, like something is happening you can't grasp.

Writing engages the prefrontal cortex or what we call the executive part of our brain, and it helps make meaning. Writing helps create language, and integrates the right and left hemispheres across the midline. When you write about what you're experiencing, you are actually building a bridge between your emotional brain and your thinking brain.

That is called cognitive integration, and it is fundamentally therapeutic. You don't have to write well to heal through writing, by the way. You just have to write.

Why Is Writing Such A Powerful Healing Tool?

Let's take a look for a minute at why writing is such a powerful tool that it can almost feel miraculous. Because writing names what was nameless, bringing our often wordless, speechless voice out of the basement of our beings. Writing gives our voice shape. Writing can make pain go from being unbearable to bearable., something we can make workable.

This is what my experience felt like. This is what it means to me. I've seen this happen hundreds of times, maybe thousands, in 30-plus years of clinical practice. Writing has a name. It has edges. It becomes something that you can hold rather than something that holds you.

One student who thought they had nothing to say found that once they began, the words didn't stop. A patient discovered the words were always there. They just needed a safe audience, whether it was me or the page. The page is the safe place. It doesn't judge. It doesn't interrupt. It simply receives.

The Difference Between Writing As Expression and Writing as Transformation

I want to make an important distinction, because this is where the magic really lives. There is a difference between writing as expression and writing as transformation.

Expression is releasing what's inside, and that's valuable. It's giving it a form. It's giving it a landing place. It's essential. But transformation is what happens when you keep going, when you write not just to release, but to understand. When you ask on the page, "What does this mean? What do I want instead? What kind of person am I becoming via this practice?"

That's when writing stops being a journal entry and becomes what I call a healing journey. A deliberate, intentional journey from suffering to hope, and hope to thriving.

Writing Is Not Just For Writers

Here's what I want you to realize: writing is not just for writers. Take that in.

Writing is for anyone who has something inside them that needs to show up and will support you in showing up in your life. Anyone who has ever felt too full of something to speak it. Anyone who wants to understand themselves more deeply and live more freely.

Explore Writing More Fully: Secrets To Spellbinding Writing

If you want to explore your writing more fully, I've created a free guide, “The 5 Secrets to Spellbinding Writing”, usable whether you're a professional writer or you want to use it for your own purposeful healing journey.

This guide will help you tap into your unique personal voice and discover what writing can do for you. The link is in the description below. Download it, and let's continue this journey together.

Please comment below, when has writing helped you? I read every single comment, and I would love to hear your story.

And, subscribe to my weekly email list and YouTube Channel, for your writing and healing content.

I'm Dr. Gwyn Erwin. Start writing, keep writing. Start healing, keep healing.

This is "Healing for Your Life™️".