Do you ever get so immersed in something that you lose the knack of seeing the bigger picture, the overview perspective? Taking a few steps back from the detail to take in the shape and form of a thing, outside looking in? Or perhaps you know that feeling when something becomes so second nature, so familiar, that describing what happens or how you do it feels a little unwieldy?

Well, that’s how I often feel about therapy, and particularly about therapeutic writing.

Maybe it’s best expressed by that proverb about not being able to see the wood for the trees. Because while the trees are truly wonderful to be among, I may be missing the insight to be gained from another perspective, and the value then of sharing that with you. It’s necessary then, and welcome, to wind my way back along the path out of the trees, and then to turn and look upon the woods. C.S. Lewis adapted this saying in a critique of a novel when he said ‘you couldn’t see the wood for the leaves’, and I think that’s more like it. The leaves, the twigs, the buds, the creatures, the ferns, the canopy, the paths well worn or untrodden. The infinite detail and symbiosis.

So, I’m coming out of the woods for a while to share with you what’s inside therapeutic writing, as I have come to know it over almost 5 years of guiding sessions, courses and workshops.

It truly is medicine. Therapeutic writing is a gentle, regulatory, exploratory practice that is proven through research to improve health and quality of life.

My approach to guiding this kind of writing has been shaped over many years of therapeutic work, and I place at the centre of session design your agency and awareness. You are in control of the pen and the words that emerge from it, and you come to trust over time that those words are for you and you alone. No one is reading your writing, this is a private experience just for you with no need to share. It can take a while to unstick from this feeling that our writing will be scrutinised and judged. A wound of education perhaps, the worry of legacy. We acknowledge this, we fold it in, this can become part of the reflective process.

Writing builds a moment of pause between thought and paper - something is transmuted across that invisible bridge. And there is response to the word on the page, at the moment that it appears. Suddenly we are in relation, a gentle traverse between inner and outer. We enter, with guidance and accompaniment, a dialogue of curiosity: unfolding, acknowledging, expressing, wondering.

Knowing - and often knowing more than we ever anticipate.

Not knowing - and learning to live more easily without all the answers.

What I know is that the page is generous: it gives, it holds. Where there is inevitable resistance or reluctance, the page mediates rather than judges. Equally reliable are the moments of catharsis and creativity it holds. Invariably there is some new discovery to be made, a stone upturned, a pathway cleared.

Therapeutic writing then is generative. It can be awareness in motion, a movement through the infinity loop from hand to heart and hand again.

I experience writing as regulatory: soothing, calming, stilling. Through expression in a supported setting, there is the possibility of powerful release. But it’s by no means always an easy practice, and I never wish to generalise my own experience to others. Your encounter with it will be as unique to you as you are to the world, and to your life’s constellations. So it is essential to interweave simple grounding practices among the writing, where we bring attention to the breath and to gentle seated movement.

Furthermore I guide in a way that supports you in your agency within sessions and within prompts too. You choose. I often offer adaptations of a prompt to meet your changing emotional capacity, an example being in adjusting the lens of a prompt from past / future to here / now. What I’m saying is that you have choices, always, within this practice, to enable to you to meet yourself just as you are. I commit to doing my best to honour and encourage your sense of what feels right and good for you.

I respect too your choice not to write at any point within a session. Much of the alchemy in therapeutic writing happens when we’re not writing at all. It happens in the spaces between lines and between words, with the pen suspended over the page and the gaze off in the middle distance. This is as much a part of the enigma of therapeutic writing as the words appearing in front of you.

Therapeutic writing with me is inspiring, moving, revealing and uplifting. In a time of chronic distraction and fragmentation, this practice offers you a reconnection with self and others, with creativity, with presence. Through writing in this way we feel the ground beneath our feet, so that we can move out into the world with more awareness, steadiness and vitality.

The leaves then…

So, let’s take a look at the details.

Therapeutic writing is guided insomuch as I offer a map, with the writing prompts as waymarkers for you to find your own path through the trees. We come to see how the path crisscrosses with those of others: the people who have gone before us, those we live among, and also those with whom we write.

I offer you a variety of prompts. Some are short and sweet, designed for immediate, intuitive response. To navigate the internal editor or critic, and to practice acceptance of and curiosity in what comes up. And there are longer form prompts too, those that invite you to linger in reflection upon a certain aspect of life, a particular relationship perhaps or a memory, a wish or a longing.

Some prompts emerge from quotes I share, or stories and folk tales, ideas from philosophy and literature. Some prompts nurture your creativity, others ask questions without seeking answers - instead they invite you into the rich meaning-making space of the in between.

Alongside the prompts, I guide you soundly with timings, with pace and with support.

Whether you join one of my monthly writing sessions, The Sunday Pages, or my 9 week course, Alchemy, there is a felt sense of collective experience even while there is emphasis on privacy. Together we tap into the universality of human emotional experience, and through our words we bring our uniqueness to meet in the common ground.

Ultimately therapeutic writing is a means to hear ourselves in the cacophony of living. It is a trustworthy way to slow and to witness. To wonder and wander amongst the flora and fauna of your landscape.

Take a walk in the woods with with me. The trees there thrum with truth, with wisdom, with life.

Alchemy begins on 25th September, and you’ll find more details here.

We next gather for The Sunday Pages on 29th September at 6pm.

And if you’d like to arrange a chat about therapeutic writing with me, just send me an email at ruthcoatescounselling@gmail.com or feel free to message me here.