The Therapeutic Power of Writing: Saves Time, Spark Creativity, And Relieves Stress.
If you ever have a pen and paper, you have two powerful tools that can relieve you of stress. Writing things down can help declutter your mind and help you focus on what is important. Have you ever felt the urge to put your thoughts on paper? Writing a book is not just about storytelling or sharing knowledge, it is a powerful form of therapy.
Whether you are journaling personal experiences, writing fiction, or sharing expertise. Writing helps process emotions, help us gain clarity, and even heal us from past trauma. In today's episode, my guest and I will be exploring how writing can be a tool for self-discovery, stress relief, and personal growth. And if you ever thought about writing a book yourself, but felt unsure where to start, this episode is for you.
Carla Vergot is an author working on her fourth book in her Lily Barlow series. She took time off teaching to write her first book. And during that time, her husband was diagnosed with cancer and that influenced her writing.
How Did Carla Discover The Healing Power of Writing?
Carla gave us a bit of background to her story. She went to college to learn how to write. The plan was to become a writer. She got a degree in language arts writing and editing and 30 years later had not written the first book. She was teaching special education. It was a good time for her family.
Later, she decided to take a sabbatical of one year away from teaching to write this book and just get it out, be done with it. When you are a writer, even if you have not written a book yet, it is in you. It is in you to do it and you feel it and you carry it with you. So the opportunity to get this out into the world, this is pretty priceless.
But as soon as she decided to do this almost immediately. her husband was diagnosed with cancer and it was an aggressive form of cancer. It was something that would take his life within three to six months.
So, her sabbatical was spent preparing for those end of life kinds of decisions they had to make together and it was a very dark time.
So, she had taken this time to write. He was in a lot of treatments and appointments and so Carla was still writing. She soon discovered that such a dark time need a lighter, funnier, twist to brighten her day. She wanted something to put some sunshine on her road. And so, her story went from what she originally intended to be a darker mystery to a very fun, flirty light. She calls it rom-com story, romance, comedy, and mystery. It was the therapy that she needed at the time.
So, Is Writing a Therapy?
Carla says yes. And I agree.
Many of the writers that she knows also use it as therapy. If you're a writer out there, you know that when you can write something, you feel better. It is almost like you have to get it out sometimes. Like if you need to exercise or if you need to eat the right thing or if you need to spend some time writing, it's one of those kinds of things. I do think that it's very therapeutic and it can be.
She distinguishes her experience of writing this book from journaling. "I have a lot of respect for journalers" she says. "I think it's a skill I wish I had. I've probably started a hundred journals and not been able to maintain not one of them, not a single one of them. And I think it's a failure on my part as a writer, but then I sort of corrected that thinking because not every tool works for every person."
So, Carla gets the therapy out of writing the story and wish more people were open to this idea because you can work out some of your situations, some of your big life struggles or traumas or experiences, you can work them out through characters, almost like role playing, but on paper. She did this with husband Ricky when he was sick. Rick is now cancer-free.
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