Creative Writing For Mental Wellness

Writing is one of our most hallowed and human traditions. For as long as we have scribbled glyphs on walls and tablets of stone, we have used it to say something about what it feels like to be human. 

Through writing we can record and observe our own thoughts and feelings from a comfortable distance. It is a window through time for us to observe a single moment, and all that we thought was worth writing down about it. 

I am here to tell you that writing is something worth doing. Not as something you can put on your resume, or even necessarily show to anyone. Writing is an end in and of itself; rewarding to your effort and worthy of your time.

“The primary purpose of art is to enrich your own life… Because our society values utility, people often ask writers when they’ll ‘sell’ their book. You never hear someone playing basketball in a church gym being asked when they’re going to join the NBA.”— Brandon Sanderson

How Is Writing Good For Your Mental Health? 

The first thing I will tell you about writing is its greatest selling point: writing is fun. 

You may have reservations about that statement, and I will hold space for you now. Perhaps the act of handwriting or typing makes you feel self-conscious because you are inexperienced. Maybe when you’ve shared your creativity in the past, it was met with mockery, judgment, or (somehow worse) apathy. None of these are fun. 

But writing is extremely fun when you can accommodate the ways that writing is difficult for you.

DIY Therapeutic Activities To Start Journaling With

So you’ve decided that writing is something you deserve to do. You want to express yourself. You want to feel better. You want to have fun.

But you have to start. And maybe you’ve never started before, or feel uncomfortable because you’re not sure where you’re supposed to start, or afraid because you don’t want to start by yourself.

We can fix that. Let’s use writing to cope with the uncomfortable reality of being alive.

Creative Writing Is DIY Depression Relief.

Writing is a tool you can use to manage symptoms of depression. We can better understand the human perspective and become witness to our own extremely subjective thoughts and patterns. These are the creative writing techniques I use to manage my depression.

• Start Writing. It doesn’t matter what. You just need to start somewhere. Fingers on keyboard, pen to paper, and rubber to road. Don’t let yourself stop to think. Slam on the keyboard if you must, scribble lines that mean nothing, and approximate inexactly. Where you cannot complete, outline to your comfort. Where you cannot outline, simply make something up (if only to see what it would look like wrong).

• Write In A New Place. We live in sunny Saint Petersburg, Florida! You don’t have to write at your desk. You can write anywhere. Your phone is a keyboard. Pen and paper are portable. Go to North Shore Park, look at the waves, and write while you sit on a picnic blanket in the grass. It can be productive and inspiring to do something in a novel way.

• Write With A Friend. We think of writing as solitary. Why? Does it have to be? There are many genres of writing that require or encourage the participation of others. Round robins are a type of narrative fiction where authors take turns writing it. This concept of taking turns can go much more in depth than taking turns every few paragraphs. You can write poetry with your friends, exchanging authorship each line and trying to follow a simple structure, together. Simpler formats like haikus and diamond poems work really well for collaboration because the constraints are really clear.
• Write In A New Style. Constraint is creative. It’s why lyrics and poetry are so beautiful. The words you don’t write, the punctuation you don’t use, and the things you elect not to mention are just as meaningful as the ones you do. Write a poem. Write a novel. Write about yourself. Write about someone who’s never existed before. Just as long as it’s something you haven’t written before.

“Having constraints on our choices is not inherently bad; sometimes we love having constrained choices (ever heard of predicament bondage? having a friend choose where you’re going for dinner so you don’t have to?). Capitalism and colonialism are evil for many reasons, but particularly because they rob people of true, autonomous choice. If maintaining a job to earn money to have food and shelter is the only way to ensure your material survival, then your choices, on some level, functionally become work or die. And while yes, there are a billion choices to be made within this framework, and many people do not work and still live, the structure of the social system constrains us in ways that actually are oppressive because we don’t get to choose them.”— Caryn Sherbet, LMSW

We Can Find Lasting Anxiety Relief Through Self-Expression 

Anxiety and overwhelm need comfort and they need distance. The comfort to calm down when anxiety overtakes your body, and the distance to see the situation for what it is instead of what it feels like. 

All of these activities are variations on making a list, which I find is one of the simplest ways to find comfort and distance when anxiety has you in its clutches. 

• Making The Right List. You can make a list of anything. Some of the greatest songs and poems of all time are just lists. This is a list of things Christopher Smart considered about his cat. This is a list of things Alanis Morrisette considers ironic. The point is thus: you may choose to make a list of anything. If we choose to make the right list it can enlighten, engage, and empower us. Make a list of things you do to feel strong. Make a list of mistakes you’ve observed yourself making. See the many moving parts in their totality.

• Write And Observe Your Stream Of Consciousness. Writing gives us a window through which we can observe ourselves from about five feet away. Anxiety often convinces us that every thought deserves to be believed. Once those thoughts are written on paper, they lose some of their authority. We begin to notice patterns. We notice assumptions masquerading as facts. We notice fears repeating themselves with only minor costume changes. The page becomes a place where your thoughts can exist without needing to control you.

• Make A Pros And Cons List. A classic for a reason, and a great tool for seeing the big picture once you’ve calmed down. Anxiety has a habit of presenting every decision as though the entire future hangs in the balance. A simple pros and cons list interrupts that illusion. It slows the mind down enough to separate genuine concerns from imagined catastrophes. 

Writing Helps Us To Process Traumatic Memories

Trauma is a consequence of experiencing something so emotional, so painful that the mind could not process it all at once. The conscious mind controls our thinking and experiencing is limited, but the unconscious mind that controls our body and breath is vast. What the conscious mind cannot handle is given to the unconscious body for keeping. Not for good. Not forever. Just because it did what it had to for survival. 

Through writing, and knowing, we can untangle the trauma in the body. What thrives in the shadowy subconscious is extinguished by the light of awareness. You are not the mind of your animal body, nor are you the body that curses its own hyperactive mind. You are the sum of the mind and body, working together to figure out when you’re going to eat and where you’re going to sleep.

This is how you can use writing to handle what happened in the past when it’s living in your body.

• Make A Timeline To Process The Past And Plan For The Future. Draw a line with the present moment in the center. On the left side, plot out some of the big moments of your life. On the right side, plot out things that could happen in the future. For each moment of great pain in your past, pair it with a moment in your future that it allowed. Moments that could happen, that feel real when given permission to hope. “I could not follow my dream when I was a child… But when I was an adult, I could follow my dream once more.”

• What Lessons Did We Learn? What are the lessons we carried with us from these big moments in our lives? These lessons served us, or at least made sense to us at the time, but for what reason? Why did we take away these lessons from these moments? For good or ill, what have you taken away from the life that was given to you?

• What Could We Have Learned Instead? The circumstances of your situation go unchanged. The trauma is still there. The past exists behind a transparent but unreachable curtain of memory. But we still get to choose what lessons we learn from the events of our life. Our education is ever unwritten, the sum of all the things we’re yet to know but one day will. It is your choice what the lesson is and whether or not you learn it.

What Kind Of Journaling Works As Depression Treatment? 

Daily journaling is an excellent way to stay mindful and keep up with the habits that treat your depression. But it has to be done to gain its benefits. 

Depression acts like a voice in your head that tells you to not bother. This is the biggest obstacle to finding depression relief in your journal. If you can make the effort to keep doing it, even when you don’t feel like it, then that means you’re building the habit of doing it. 

If you can build the habit, if you can do it every day with fullness of mind and body, then you can use creative writing for its medicinal properties. 

These are the questions I would consider (and write in my journal about!) to build a healthy habit of journaling in your daily life.

• Do you connect more with numbers? How could you incorporate tracking numbers, ratings, or graphs into your journal? 
• Which behaviors are worth tracking? What are you doing too much of or not enough?
• What do you really connect with? What is worth remembering about each day that you wish you could look back on?
• How can you make your journal more visual? Would you be happier putting color and stickers in your journal? 
• What time of day will you journal? Will you do it more than once?
• How can you make sure that you have time to prepare for the day ahead?
• How can you make sure that you have time to process each day when it’s over?

How Can I Use Creative Writing For Anxiety Relief? 

Making lists is great; that’s my go-to for anxiety relief because it is a versatile tool for assessing a situation with many moving parts. But you have more options for anxiety treatment than just making a bunch of lists, and that’s exactly what we’d like to help you with.

Creative writing can offer you anxiety relief quickly and effectively when applied in the correct doses. These are writing prompts for anxiety relief that you can complete in five minutes or less:

• Write About Your Self-Soothing Tools. It can be inspiring to compare what you’re journaling about to a concept we already understand. Top 5’s, tier lists, and creative analogy are all expressive tools in your utility belt. Here’s an example: What’s on your Mount Rushmore of anxiety relief options? For me, it’d have to be Music, Quality Time, Responsibility, and (in the George Washington position) Taking A Really Deep Breath. 

• Cathartically Destroy Your Own Intrusive Thoughts. When we write something down, we bring it into the physical world. That means it’s not just bouncing around in our mind anymore, and that also means it is a tangible physical object that can be saved or destroyed at your leisure. Your intrusive thoughts are not you, they are just in your hands and they can be handled and thrown wherever you choose. Burn them. Flood them. Tear them into a thousand pieces, twice. They are not you, but they are yours to do with what you want.
• Write Slowly And Calmly. It’s good to write fast. We can lock in and channel the messages that our subconscious is sending to us. But there is a time and place for working slowly. Write just a sentence or two, but do it slowly. Make it pretty. Make it poetry. Consider your words, choose them with care but without self-judgment.

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Sunny Ebsary is an educator, multi-modal artist, and writer specializing in the intersection of myth and mental health. Sunny’s writing walks the line between poetic and logical, giving readers a chance to interface with the mind and imagination. Sunny’s been putting pen to paper since he was a child, writing everything from albums, novels, and plays, to essays, interactive games, and of course, many articles! While studying both psychology and writing, he realized his real passion in life was helping others unlock their creative spark. Whether he’s leading a D&D game, directing a production, or diving deep into the brain, you can be sure Sunny will be ushering you toward finding meaning in your life.