Writing As A Form Of Therapy

[Ffm48]

When I was going through the darkest time of my life, I began writing down what I believed to be significant in getting me to the point of suicide. I sent the first draft in for assessment. Two days ago I received a mail confirming receipt and stating that I would receive the assessment report by 21 December. To my utter surprise the report was in my inbox yesterday. The assessor told me she could not put the book down once she had startet reading it. The report is 13 pages long and she also made a first edit of mhy manuscript (not part of the brief!). She concluded the report with:

Let me congratulate you on your achievement and encourage you to take the necessary extra steps to strengthen and tighten the structure and content of (title) as you redraft the manuscript, so that your very worthwhile story may be brought to a wider reading public.

At first I thought how on earth will I be able to edit the manuscript; I haven't the time. Well, of course, I have the time and I started on it yesterday and made up a timetable so I can do all the things I love; gardening, singing, going to concerts, and yes writing. That will work. 

But then I couldn't sleep. Reading through the report, reading through the editing suggestions the flood gates opened - I was reliving the trauma. I kept waking up - reliving the trauma. So overnight I was asking myself how can I do the editing? - will it be too distressing? Perhaps. but perhaps by fictionalising the story as I have to, in order to disguise the identity of living people I will heal.

My original post was removed; evidently the fairytale could not be be published due to anonymity concerns.

[Faith-and-Hope]

Certainly, if the fairytale gets published @Ffm48 .....

Hope it sets a platform for future therapy strategies.

❤️ Hugs

[Ffm48]

Thanks for your kind words @Faith-and-Hope.

[Faith-and-Hope]

You're a champion @Ffm48 .... and don't you forget it .....

❤️

[Ffm48]

Thank you for your kind words @Faith-and-Hope. Telling my story in form of a fairytale was easier for me to start of with. Once I had done that I was able to put my mind to actual happenings. For one the fairytale does not use names and is very reduced to the main thread without going into detail, e.g. the family lived in a land ruled by a wicked witch instead of "name" experienced atrocity 1, 2, 3 with all the gory details in "name of country".

Now that I've made up a timetable with a definite timeslot for all my routine activities (they're getting to be more and more 😉 , I feel the editing is a matter of business now, not so much an emotional one.

We'll see what happens.

[Faith-and-Hope]

It sounds like amazing progress to me ... and without intending to detract in any way .... a similar path to using puppets to help young children tell their therapy stories, only this is the adult version without the puppets ....

I think the concept itself is a therapy breakthrough .... there would seem to be something removed enough in penning it as a fairytale to actually get people's stories "out there" in a form they can cope with, and getting it out there has to be stage one in recovery, I imagine.

❤️

[Ffm48]

You're not detracting in any way, shape, or form. Using the form of the fairytale is exactly the same thing as using puppets for children. Btw, I gave a number of puppets to the little son of a friend of mine who I suspected to be abused. Of course, he had been told by the abuser that it was their very own secret. The conversation of the puppets clarified matters.

I wrote the fairytale in fits and starts. The first ended with the central character wishing to suicide after years of abuse. Then friends came into the story and so it continued to the point where the central character decides to forego suicide and live.

I'm really excited with this development.

[PeppiPatty]

Dear @Ffm48

How are you ? I've seen you around but my life is about mess and getting things done and just saying hello to the familiar quickly sometimes, Apologies, I just loved reading this...

My name is PeppiPatty I'm 49 years old married lady who lives with our doggie and my youngest son is always banging at the door to tell me of his latest dramas.......

My second husband is hugely more intelligent than me: It's cool for me to write that because we ....both extend each others lives very positively in different ways. 

I've been wanting to write this novel for years and years. At last, I'm in a place where I can see my Psychotherapist and see her about writing it. I've been writing it for about 6 months.....the first page is done and dusted. I have pages and pages of notes and research.....It is very exciting. 

So, I pay 100 per session to see her and its hugely too much money but I know her really really well, she has seen me for my own struggles for many years.........She has often lent me books throughout the years of other women struggling times of MI....often I have thought....oh I can see why this is a best seller........

We argue and my husband of course always wants to come. He doesnt say anything when at home with me and then in her office, all these words come out which are awesome...some of them I use. 

I really love reading about what you are writing. 

When I was 16, homeless and getting myself ripped to shreds mentally by my Mum, I just gotten out of hospital from having a major head injury and being in a coma for over 6 weeks. I remember going to bed one night and waking up and thinking not suicide but:

I remember thinking : I will get better. I will study and get better. 

I thought, that you maybe would maybe see how I was in intense stress.....I did some crazy things though 

PP

I've had a major head injury....

[Silenus]

Hi @Ffm48

Sorry I missed the pulled post...

Congratulations on your journey... fiction and fairy tales are powerful ways to deal with facts too dark to be easily approached...

If you are anything like me, the act of writing a thing allows intellectual and emotional processing to recommence, and for healing to work its rejuvenating power...

Sending hugs and happy vibes your way... best of luck with your manuscript... editing can be a lot of fun when approached the right way...

[Silenus]

Forgiveness... truly forgive those who have taken your loved ones from you or otherwise hurt you... they are merely a broken agent of time and change...

This will be visited upon you regardless... time and change will have their way with you... they will transform you irrevocably...

Do not despise the messengers... they are merely agents of glorious brutal time and change... pity them and try to save them perhaps, but do not despise them...

They will strip you to your barest reality... time and change... turning you slowly but surely into a broken thing... a broken thing who is hopefully still capable of understanding that other broken things betray and fail and hate and hurt, just like everyone else affected by time and change...

People die, move on... even institutions and empires crumble at the hands of time and change... even gods of antiquity pass from being venerated and vibrantly alive in the imaginings of their followers to being studied as a dusty artefact of the past or a collection of odd and interesting stories...

All the world has ever known, turned to dust by time and change...

Let your judgements be tempered by the aging image of yourself in the mirror... look yourself in the eyes deeply and truly... then apply forgiveness where it is deserved...

Realise that we all become broken things at the hands of time and change... then grow from a broken thing to someone who forgives, forgets and is transformed...