Recently in Expressive Writing Category

In the hospital the other day, I had an experience in a group that was quite special. Actually, during this hospitalization, I have had several good group experiences. This one stood out, however.

There were five of us patients who showed up for the weekly "Expressive Writing" group, plus two group leaders. The directive was:

"Think of someone you look up to, real or imaginary, who has taught you something you can use (or do use) in your healing. Describe either the characteristics of the person, what they told you, or how you have been helped. Use expressive writing by telling a story, writing a poem, or anything that makes sense to you."

I wanted to focus this on a motivating statement which has helped me heal. At first, I wanted to write about what Karl Paulnack said about music and heart healing. Then I thought about some quotes by famous people.

But I settled on something that is intensely personal. I think the most helpful, validating, and motivating statement anyone has said to me, has come from my therapist, who from here on in I will call "My Healing Guide." Over a year ago, she said to me in an e-mail:

I never really reflected on these words at the time, but I saved them. About a month ago, I revisited the e-mails we shared. These words, in particular, have helped me enormously. They have given me strength to continue on this journey; one that often feels too long and too hard.

I have heard similar words from others involved in my healing, most of them verbal (which get a bit lost). All have been helpful and motivating, though none have ever been said so perfectly. There are also many statements from my family and friends that have helped me too. But, a therapy relationship is unique in that it is focused specifically on healing. And, as such, these words have special meaning to me.

I was prepared to read my statement out loud, but there was a second part to the group exercise. That consisted of each of us picking out one or two words or phrases from our writings and putting them on different colored heavyweight paper using magic markers.

We then placed them on the floor and we read our own. We then were asked, as a group, to arrange them in a line in any way that made sense. The group debated some of the ordering and we went back and forth a few times. We then taped them up on a board, in the order agreed upon, and read them out loud together as a group.

The list was:

The only word that appeared twice—came from two different people in our group—was strength. We felt it was important to use that word to bookend the list; strength was felt to be necessary for all of the in between words and phrases to exist.

I first learned about Wordle from a post last month by fragmentz. The other day Castorgirl made the post "Lost for Words". They both got me motivated!

I am a firm believer that diversified means of expression are necessary for healing, especially for those of us who struggle with dissociative problems. But, one could easily argue that this is important for any person to live a healthy life! Being able to express ourselves in different ways helps us be more flexible, encourages creativity, and just plain makes us more interesting people.

The connection to dissociative problems is particularly important. Through dissociation, we become accustomed to having parts of us handle very specific areas of life in mostly extremely rigid ways. If you look at such a person as a whole, one would most likely see all the variety that person possesses, and rigidity would probably not be the word that would come to mind to describe the whole person. Instead, the most common phrase I hear is "remarkably adaptive". That's little comfort most times to the person who routinely dissociates. The experience for someone who routinely dissociates in more extreme ways is usually one of fragmentation, lost time, and discontinuity.

The prognosis for dissociative disorders is good, I think, because we already have within us the necessary components to live interesting and creative lives most everyone strives for. I am not meaning to trivialize the process of healing or the struggles we face, but healing really is within our grasp and the destination is, I think, a wonderful place to end up and the journey itself isn't that bad either.

Art therapy, some aspects of my photography, piano, writing, and poetry have been very helpful in my healing. They have all provided ways to bridge what I know intellectually in my brain with what I feel in my heart. In many ways, through these means, I've been able to create a sort of glue that holds all the pieces of me together.

Wordle is very easy to use. In the simplest way, you can just enter a list of words in a form, and it will create a visual representation for you. More advanced uses allow the ability to weight the sizes of particular words and assign colors. From there, you can use the menus to decide how you want the software to lay out the words. You don't have strict control over word placement. But you can fiddle with the settings and create as many variations as you want.

I suggest to make screen captures as you go along because the software doesn't have a history function. Further I suggest you keep your list of words (and size and color tags if you use them) in a text editor. Then if you want to change anything, just change it in the text editor and paste that into the form.

What does what I created mean? The short answer is that these are the words taken from my "Contract" that have particular meaning to me. I weighted "Balance" the most, and that and "truth" are the only words in white. The pink words are kind of in the same class as balance. Grounding words are green. Nouns are in blue. Action oriented things I have to do to heal are in red. "God" is in purple.

To create your own, head on over to: Wordle.

For something similar, yet different, check out Tagul. It gives more control than Wordle, but many of the things it does you can do in a text editor with a little script control. But it's worth checking out.

Finally, if you are interested in words, see Visuwords, an online graphical dictionary and thesaurus.

If you click on the image above, you will see a higher resolution image.

Perhaps the most famous puzzle in probability
      is the Monty Hall problem.
It's based on the old game show called
      "Let's Make a Deal".

You are given the choice of three doors.
Behind one door is a big prize.
Behind the other doors are goats.

You choose a door.
The door stays closed.
Monty Hall, the game show host,
      knows what's behind all of the doors.
He opens one of the two remaining doors,
      always showing you a goat.

Then he asks:
Do you want to stick with your first choice
      or switch to the last remaining door?

What do you do?
Most people think that your odds of winning are
      always one-third no matter what you do.
But this is not true.

Probability theory shows that if you switch,
      your odds of winning actually double.
Instead of your odds being one-third if you stay,
      they are two-thirds if you switch.

Dissociation is a lot like this problem,
      except the rules of probability don't apply.

If you've read any of the posts here, you know that I advocate multiple approaches to healing from trauma. Expressive writing is one such approach. This was written at an inpatient group in about 10 minutes. The directive was to "write about an object you treasure." Earlier that morning, my therapist brought the sticks, along with other rhythm instruments, to a group where we explored rhythm and sound. I found that group to be healing and I was thankful she brought the sticks.

Such writing does not need to occur in a hospital. You can do these directives and explore multiple approaches in therapy or on your own. The goal is to find what works for you.