Writing is not therapy, but it is/can be therapeutic

Over the last few years, I’ve started to pay attention to the specific ways writing functions in my life outside of a creative outlet. Aside from being a space to explore my imagination and storytelling, these are the specific ways writing has served a therapeutic function in my life:

1. My private writing allows me a space of unbridled honesty. The catch is, I have to be willing to be honest. As Octavia Butler once said, “Perhaps the act of writing itself was a kind of therapy”. Unlike public platforms which are subject to other people’s opinions, my private writing allows me to speak my entire, unprocessed truth in all of its complexities and contradictions without the opinions or views of others shaping it. It allows me to sit with and in my feelings and sort through them , even and especially when I don’t like them. It doesn’t demand that what I write be pretty, it doesn’t even demand clarity, all it demands is honesty (and without anyone else reading, its clear when I’m bullshitting or not willing to being honest myself). If I am dishonest, it is clear in my writing and uncomfortable in my skin. When I am honest, it provides a space of self validation without consequence and affirms the heights of my joys as well as the depths of my anger and sadness. Whenever, days or hours later, I go back and reflect on what I was feeling in that moment, it allows me to get a clearer picture of who I am, not who I try to be. And speaking of reflection…
2. Reading and reflecting on my private writing provides me a space to see my growth or places I need to grow. When you write consistently, it is easy to see how you are shifting or becoming more deeply rooted in your thoughts. Reading and reflecting on what I’ve written consistently, especially when I’m in a different head space than that of the emotion that compelled me to write, often allows me to see ways forward and the ways I’ve fallen backwards or meandered. Sometimes when I read what I’ve written, I either can’t recognize the author, or I find that the answer to a problem or issue I am facing has already been articulated in a moment of brutal honesty with self or about others. I have come to see patterns in my emotionality and person over the years through different journals (and even public writings) and it can be a wonderful and terrifying thing to see yourself. Always, though, it is a gift for the process of healing.
3. Writing and sometimes performances sometimes serves as a spiritual act. There are times that I need to write. I can’t really explain it, but sometimes a story or experience so overwhelms me that until I write it down and get it out of my body, I feel misaligned. In those moment, when I start writing, it’s sometimes not entirely clear to me what I need to write, but when I start to write, a story shapes itself right before my very eyes. It’s as if in that moment I am merely a vessel and my job is just to pick up a writing utensil and allow whatever needs to be released to come out. When I don’t honor this urge, it becomes hard for me to focus on other things with the story essentially writing itself in my head if I refuse to get it out. Similarly, there are times when I step on a stage and have no idea what I am about to do, but the moment I speak into the microphone, the entire show becomes clear to me. I barely remember what others have told me are my greatest performances, often because I let go of planning and allow whatever needs to get out be released. Again, I become a vessel. Those times aren’t “performed” by me per se, but are drawn out of a deep place within myself that I honestly don’t know how to connect to at times without storytelling. Malidoma Patrice Somé says, “Poetry and ritual evoke the world behind words, the world of meaning that resides in its fullness in nature”, and for me this rings true both in writing and performance. This also explains why I am so bad with commissioned writing. Often, I can’t write when or what I am told to write. I struggle immensely with it unless I already feel compelled to write in that direction. Writing for me happens because it has to, not even because I want it to.
4. Sharing my private writing reminds me I am not alone. That though my experiences are my own, they are also often not unique to me. There is a vulnerability inherent in sharing your private work that at times builds trust with those who choose to really listen. Sharing my work, specifically in smaller, more intimate settings has allowed me to connect with others who think, feel or share similar experiences. It has reintroduced me sometimes to people who I’ve known for years, but in a different light. Some of my best friends and most trusted companions are people I have written through complexity with and I’m deeply grateful for the experience of sharing and healing this provides in community.
   4b. Sharing my work publicly has also shown me how not alone I am. Sometimes, people across the world break down at hearing my work without what I would think is context. It is then I am reminded that my work is about the human experience, and with billions of us out there, odds are, my experiences really aren’t my own. That is a beautiful thing when I find myself isolated or alone. Sometimes receiving messages from strangers can be just as affirming as my close friends giving me encouragement. I have to often remember that even when I write with an audience in mind, I cannot dictate who reads my work and who it speaks to. That connection is healing. But even then as Maya Angelou says, “even if your work doesn’t resonate with others, it is still worth writing. And that in itself, is what’s important.”
5. Sharing my writing opens the doors for more complex and nuanced conversations and connections. I used to get frustrated because people would read or hear my work and react differently then when I just said the same thing in regular conversation. Eventually though, I realized that writing/poetry/art generally isn’t just an invitation for the author’s honesty, it’s an invitation for more honest connections and conversations to those who listen/receive the work too. The honesty my honesty brings out in others makes me feel deeper connected to others, something I find integral to my healing process.

And yet, I want to be clear that while writing and the performance can be therapeutic and even part of therapy, they are not therapy. Though I knew this intrinsically, it became extremely clear to me when I joined the world of slam. At the time I joined, a conversation was emerging about whether people were being rewarded for the actual quality of their work or for their emotionality, and often triggering stories. After all, what kind of judge (especially when they are randomly selected from the audience as in slam) is going to give a low score to someone who is bravely opening up about a suicide attempt, a sexual assault or other heavily emotional subjects. What made it even worse, is that most people who choose to share such work often are encouraged to dig into the emotions they had during the original experience, which in and of itself can have the opposite effect of being therapeutic when there isn’t proper space in the aftermath to address what is brought up (as is often the case in poetry slam).

I knew I didn’t have a long lifespan in slam in my second year. I would be encouraged by our teammates to “remember why you wrote it” and “to leave it all on the stage”, but I started to find that impossible, especially as I was encouraged by those around me (particularly white teammates) to write “more personal pieces” (which honestly pissed me off. ALL my pieces are personal, even and especially the ones people deem “political pieces”. After all, as a gender queer, Black, immigrant sometimes woman in America, my existence is political. But that’s another article entirely). All of my pieces that I wrote and have been shared during my time in slam were not written to be scored, they were written so that I could process through and release particularly painful experiences I was having. In those times, I was caught at a crossroads — it was therapeutic to write those pieces, but performing them sometimes left me back in the space I was when I needed to process (like this performance). I have alot of respect and admiration for people who have been in slam for years and years, but at the junction I entered into slam, I realized it was having an opposite effect than my writing usually did. It also was making me think more, too much actually, about my writing instead of just writing. So I quit slam at the end of 2017 (though on a random draw I was accepted into the 2018 Women of the World Poetry Slam which I ended up winning), and am now getting back into just writing for the sake of healing myself through honest writing and reflection.

What has really helped me heal as I got back into this process though was starting to see a therapist (who ironically recommended I write and otherwise create without intention or audience to help in my healing process). Because sometimes being honest in your writing and reflecting on it means you have to be honest with yourself afterwards that you are burnt out and you need help processing outside of just a space to release. I don’t think however, that I would have come to that place had it not been for my writing and the ways it allowed me to see myself.

I whole heartedly believe writing (and performing) can be and is therapeutic, but I also believe that at a certain point, it is not enough. At that point, it is OK and even recommended you seek actual therapy which I am very clear about when I teach my workshop “Write to Live, Live to _____”.

I think writing feels therapeutic because as Maya Angelou said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” There is so much agony already in the world, why not let your stories out and turn them from agonizing to therapeutic (and then go get a therapist if you find you need and have access to one).