Post #46 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing and Healing – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Helpful Writing Tips for Writing and Healing
Women’s Memoirs is pleased to welcome Jan Marquart, LCSW to our website. Jan helps those suffering from stress symptoms, including PTSD, use the power of writing to transform their lives. Jan says:
“My writing and work with hurting clients have blended together. We live by our philosophy and the contents of our hearts. That is where counseling and writing become one.”
Kendra and I invited Jan to give you her best tips for bringing the benefits of writing and healing into your life.
6 Tips for Starting Yourself on the Path of Healing
Health care today boils down to one thing: preventive action. We need to review our health on many levels. What are we eating, drinking, saying, deciding? Beyond that, it is imperative that we review those situations or traumas from our past that still have a hold on our emotional and mental energies. Have we been traumatized? Are we withholding forgiveness? Have we refused to admit we are angry or depressed? How do we get our lives in focus? One word: write.
Research shows through the work of Prof. James Pennebaker of UT, author Maxine Hong Kingston, and others, that writing just 20 minutes a day on physical symptoms, stressors, traumas, or letters of forgiveness, can reduce and eliminate symptoms of stress.
Here are six tips to follow in sequence. Write in full detail the following:
1. What is the event or trauma and what happened?
2. What are the effects and power of the injury or situation in your life?
3. What is the actual wound; explain the pain or distress in minute detail?
4. What is your desire for healing?
5. What is your plan to resolve and let go?
6. What is your vision for a healed you?
Author Jan Marquart, LCSW, gives a six-week online therapeutic writing workshop to lead participants through the steps to recover from PTSD and other symptoms of stress. You can contact Jan about her workshop on writing and healing through her website: www.JanMarquart.com
