Writing for a Healthy Life
Karen Sanders is an editor, writing coach, and founder of the Write Here, Write Now Community. Over the past eight years, she has edited fiction and non-fiction work for many publications, including online articles, novels, self-help books, and website content, and today she is on YOMU talking about, yes, writing, and how it can help you.
As a child, I was obsessed with two things: reading and writing. I loved the ability to get swept away into magical worlds, where trees could speak and animals went on adventures, and as soon as I was able to, I began writing my own stories.
It’s no surprise, then, that when times got hard and I lost my dad to a brain tumour when I was just eight years old, instead of talking through my feelings, I wrote them in the form of fiction.
Before we discuss the writing itself, let’s look at how deeply our emotions and thoughts are attached to our physical health. You’ve probably noticed in times of high stress, you might get ill more often, feel more tired than usual, and generally have less energy. This is because, when we experience emotional turbulence, our body’s defences can weaken, making us more likely to get sick.
In the 1980s, Professor James Pennebaker and his graduate student Sandra Beall carried out a study covering this very thing. They invited students to partake in an emotion-based experiment. Each student was asked to write for fifteen minutes for four days in a row. Some were asked to write about their most traumatic experiences, while others were asked to write about trivial matters, such as the layout of their rooms.
The students who wrote consecutively about their trauma and confronted long-suppressed emotions left the writing sessions feeling unhappier than when they began the process. However, over the next six months, students visited the student health centre fifty percent less often than those who had written about mundane things.
Pennebaker’s colleagues found that after a mere four days of creative and expressive writing, the participants’ white blood cells began replicating faster, indicating an improved immune system, which explains why those who processed their trauma saw an upturn in their overall health.
So, why does creative writing work so well to help us process our emotions? Creative writing allows us to project and express our emotions in a way that tricks our brains a little. It’s a way to make sense of those tougher emotions by taking away the personal side and providing an outlet for our feelings, enabling us to process them in a different way.
Creative writing also encourages self-compassion. By putting feelings into words, we can better understand ourselves and others. This understanding builds resilience, helping us to navigate challenges more easily.
For those wanting to try, here are a couple of exercises to help you process any lingering unprocessed emotions to lead you to better mental and physical health.
Create a character that is going through something similar to you. Write a scene or story from their point of view, focusing on how they deal with their emotions. This can provide distance from your own feelings and offer insights into how to handle them.
Alternatively, think of an experience you have had that is connected to a strong emotion. Write a piece of flash fiction (less than 1000 words) the conveys the essence of that emotion using strong imagery and the sensations you experienced at that time. This will help to unblock some of those feelings that have been taking up space in your mind and begin to process them.
In conclusion, creative writing offers a powerful means to processing your feelings, leading to better mental and physical health. Whether you're dealing with day-to-day pressures or working through long-buried pain, writing can be used as a tool to heal.
Don’t focus on what your writing looks like, put your attention on the way it feels. You might just find that writing brings you a stronger connection to yourself and helps you to live a healthier, less stressful life.
Karen has worked with include Amazon bestsellers Ker Dukey, Lisa Hobman, Heather MacKinnon, and international bestseller, Maya Nicole and you can find out more about Write Here, Write Now to further your creative writing journey here, and see her other services here.
