Contents
“Writing is a refuge, a space to say what we cannot say otherwise”
Psychology
The writer Silvia Adela Kohan explains in her book «Writing to heal» all the benefits for our mind of this activity
If tradition says that a newspaper is written to reflect an era, the reality is another: the motivation to capture our experiences is relief, taking them out to feel better. It is because of them that many conceive of writing as a cure. And among these “them” is the writer Silvia Adela Kohan. Also an expert in narrative techniques – she has almost a dozen books on it behind her back – she now publishes “Writing to heal” (Green Therapies, Urano Editions), with which she proposes a guide to explore “the healing power of writing.” And it is that, as he explains in the publication, «the written word allows us to establish a deep and sincere dialogue with ourselves, works like balm and it helps us understand the reasons for some of our actions. We speak with the writer, who explains why, in difficult moments, writing can be the best therapy.
Is writing a method of healing?
It certainly is. It’s fantastic, I check it every day with the students of my therapeutic writing workshops (they are taught, online and in person, one Saturday a month). The conclusions reached are different, but everyone who uses writing as an escape route agrees that it has helped them to displace a problem or has discovered ways to overcome it. Something basic is that words lead you to other words, and one thing leads to another until something illuminates the situation and you can change the focus. Delphine de Vigan says that she does not write about a topic, but writes so that the topics emerge as she writes and thus knows more about herself.
How can writing a journal help us, write about ourselves?
A diary is an interlocutor with oneself, a refuge, a space to say what we cannot say otherwise. But it can also be the trunk of spontaneous treasures if the purpose is to take notes for a book and find the true voice in it. At a time like this pandemic, which caught us off guard, hundreds of testimonial diaries are written. Faced with uncertainty and fear, there is nothing better than writing down internal sensations in a journal and noting what we feel “really”, to realize that it is not the same as what others say when they repeat phrases like “this is not a well but a tunnel “, or that” we will come out better. ” It is about discarding the official version and writing the small details that we have captured.
What if instead of an intimate diary we opted for a blog?
The digital diary plays with the illusion that privacy is stripped bare and its fragmentation produces a pleasant sensation by allowing us to enter through any of these fragments, but it is surely inferior to that produced by the intimate diary.
Can we also find benefit in writing fiction, or fiction our experiences?
It is as therapeutic to write about oneself and tell the lived experience as it is to write for literary creation, what changes is the purpose. You live life and see it as literary material or you live life and inquire about it. But it is writing that directs your desire towards one or another territory. For example, all of Amélie Nothomb’s novels are autobiographical; writing helped her overcome anorexia. Carmen Martín Gaite had the existential desire to meet a man, and since that man did not come, she said to herself: “Why not?” and he wrote a novel in which the man knocks on his door. Marguerite Duras was told by her psychoanalyst that if she wrote all the time she would not need to deal with him. If I continued listing examples it would never end, the vast majority of writers have found writing therapeutic, whether they have done it for that purpose or not.
How, a person who has never sat down to write, can approach it in search of benefits?
As we all speak, we should all write. If we have never written, we can start by making lists – of words, of memories, of wishes -: it is very gratifying, or to point out the fears, the unfinished stories, the words pending to be pronounced, the unfulfilled wishes or the unforgettable moments. A scene that crushes us, a phrase brings us associations, an episode that involves us emotionally … If you don’t write it, it gets lost or stays inside us. I recommend writing them, on the condition that you do not pass it through the filter of thought, but do it from the heart.
Does it make a difference, when it comes to this “cure”, whether we write by hand or on the computer?
I reject the idea that writing by hand is something old, and even romantic, since writing by hand helps emotionality, creativity, thinking and is proven to improve the functioning of neurons. Umberto Eco combined handwriting with the computer according to his mood or situation. Some subjects require the slowness of handwriting, precisely because paper resists the speed of thought. Others, especially those who have thought a lot, lend themselves better to being typed, because they literally have to be thrown away. There is no exact formula, everyone must find their own.