creative writing therapy courses

Temenos Education

Foundation certificate in creative writing for therapeutic practice.

Unlock the transformative power of writing to elevate your client's journey and explore innovative ways of engagement. Join our course to equip yourself with emotional insights and literary strategies, forging the path to more impactful therapy

Unlock the Therapeutic Power of Writing

with Monica's Expert Guidance

Join us on a transformative journey into the world of therapeutic writing and enhance your professional practice, opening imaginative ways of working with your clients.

Guided by Monica, a seasoned expert in the field, this journey will be an adventure that will take you into the powerful world of writing, sharing deep connections with your clients. You'll both gain profound insights into different perspectives of emotional and psychological well-being. This will make a significant difference to the impact of your therapeutic work.

If you're wondering how to seamlessly integrate this transformational process into your practice, Monica is here to support you. Her expert guidance will provide access to proven methods and techniques for working with creative writing. These skills will help you provide more comprehensive and impactful therapy and also lead to a profound shift in how you engage with your clients.

Are you ready to unlock new dimensions of self-expression and healing in your practice?

Contact us to secure your place

By the End of This Programme, You'll Have Acquired:

Enhanced therapeutic writing skills.

This course equips you with therapeutic writing skills, allowing you to unlock the transformative potential of writing and elevate your professional practice. You will provide more impactful therapy, thereby facilitating a deeper level of self-expression and emotional healing in your clients.

Deeper Client Connections

Guided by Monica, a seasoned expert, you will embark on an extraordinary journey into the realm of therapeutic writing. You'll establish profound connections with your clients, gaining deeper insights into their emotional and psychological well-being, and making a significant impact on their lives.

Innovative Engagement Strategies

The course offers innovative methods to engage with your clients. This empowers you to adapt your approach to their individual needs, thereby expanding the dimensions of your therapeutic practice. Furthermore, you'll explore how therapeutic writing has evolved to include creative writing and how creative writing can address a range of issues in therapeutic practice.

Emotional Insights

A core component of the training involves deepening your understanding of emotional insights. You'll gain the ability to effectively guide your clients through their emotional journeys using writing. This process-oriented approach is crucial in unlocking the creative flow of writing and revealing insights into emotions.

Literary Strategies for Therapy

The training introduces you to the main literary strategies used in creative therapeutic writing. These strategies will significantly enhance your therapeutic work by facilitating self-expression and healing. You'll also trace the historical evolution of therapeutic writing, including its roots in Freud's flow of free association.

Transformation and Self-Support

The course emphasizes that using therapeutic writing is powerful and transformative. However, it's vital for practitioners to be comfortable with their own writing practice and to have adequate support for themselves before introducing writing into their practice with clients. This approach ensures both you and your clients benefit from this unique and effective therapeutic process.

Above All Else...

By acquiring these comprehensive benefits, you will provide more meaningful therapy, leading to a profound transformation in how you engage with your clients. Additionally, you'll be encouraged to maintain a work journal, promoting personal growth, enhancing clarity of thought and intentions, and building confidence in the therapeutic writing process. Ultimately, you will be prepared to unlock new dimensions of self-expression and healing in your professional practice.

The Foundation Certificate in creative writing for therapeutic practice will Transform Your Therapeutic Approach.

Enrollment will open soon.

A One-Time Payment

12 monthly payments of £50

5 monthly payments of £120.00

Enrollment opening soon

What's included in the foundation certificate in creative writing for therapeutic practice, a 25 hour live training over 18 weeks.

Each Session will include an introduction to the theme, suggested reading material (a book chapter, a short text given beforehand), writing, sharing, working in pairs / small groups, discussion and Q&A.

The Seven Sessions

There will be specific texts recommended for each session; these will be given in good time to allow for reading and reflection.

The theoretical framework of strategies and process.

Belief System: what underpins your work

Authority of the Self: Skills, Trust & Your Truth

The Healing Power of Writing: mental health & traumatic memories

Fears & Frustrations: addressing blocks & anxiety creatively

Extending The Metaphor: Insights & Surprises

The Unsent Letter: an incredibly powerful way of writing directly to another

Final Sessions 8

In this course, you will gain an introduction into using creative writing for therapeutic practice. Learn the main literary strategies used in creative therapeutic writing and an understanding of how writing reveals insights into emotions

Learning will be mainly experiential backed by reflections and discussions; writing is an excellent way of assessing what you know and what you think and can then act as the impetus for further learning

Using this kind of writing is powerful and transformative and requires practitioners are comfortable with their own writing practice and have support for themselves before introducing writing into their practice with their clients/patients.

This foundation certificate will broaden your work with clients supporting you to assess and work with a range of complex client presentations, working safely and effectively.

Teaching various writing styles will serve as an introductory gateway to deeper explorations within the therapeutic client relationship.

The initial seven sessions will be spaced mostly two weeks apart, offering you ample time to fully absorb the training content and seamlessly integrate it into your therapeutic practice. Throughout this journey, you'll also have opportunities to engage in readings, share valuable insights, and reflect on how your own writing has enriched your therapeutic approach. As the course reaches its conclusion, we will address any remaining topics and provide answers to any questions or concerns you may have, ensuring you are well-prepared for the next phase of your professional development.

Furthermore, you will be encouraged to maintain a personal work journal as a private tool for self-improvement. This practice will significantly enhance the clarity of your thoughts and intentions. Through consistent writing, you'll not only build confidence in your therapeutic writing skills but also gain experience which will help guide your own clients.

Supervision time will be integrated during the training.

Any special requests? Please contact us at [email protected]

Course Fees

You can choose to pay the course fees in one single payment or choose our instalment plan. Get full course access as soon as you pay the first instalment. Contact us to apply to the pay what you can option

Course Dates

Who can apply to the training .

Qualified carers or trainees in year 2

Application process

Please follow the link to apply on the Temenos website and to pay your deposit. This is to secure your place on the course.

You will be invited to an hour and a half induction meeting for course orientation for course orientation and to ask any questions. It will also be an opportunity to get to know your peers.

Once you've registered for the course, you should get in touch with us. Please send us your qualifications, express your motivations for enrolling in the training, outline your expectations, and provide information about your prior writing experience. This information will help us tailor the course to better meet your needs and goals.

Powerpoint slides will be used during the training.

An initial reading list will be provided upon acceptance onto the course.

All the session will be recorded and accessible after the course

You will have access to all the videos from the self learning videos of the Foundation certificate

As a student, you will have the opportunity to take part in either two 20-minute one-on-one sessions with Monica or a single 40-minute session as part of the course. Additionally, you will be able to engage in peer group discussions and participate in forum interactions.

Additional information

It’s important that the learning environment is safe for you and your group. Should the material of the course impact you to the point where your learning & that of the group is impacted then your tutor will arrange a tutorial with you. In exceptional circumstances, for your safety, you may be withdrawn from the course.

An assessment will take place for the final presentation at the conclusion of the programme. To be eligible for certification, a minimum attendance rate of 80% during the live training sessions is also a requirement.

25 Hour Training Course

Join our training on zoom

30 Day Money Back Guarantee

30 Days to Change Your Mind

We get it, life happens and plans can change. Here's what you need to know about our cancellation policy for the Foundation Certificate in therapeutic writing.

Refund and Rescheduling:

Should you wish to withdraw within 30 days of making the full payment or the first instalment, and there's still over a month before the course commences, we'll provide a full refund.

If you've been enrolled for more than a month, but there's still over 60 days until the course begins, you're eligible for a 50% refund.

For those who decide to cancel with 30-60 days remaining before the course starts, we can offer a 25% refund.

Regrettably, if there are fewer than 30 days left before the course starts, we cannot offer a refund.

If you're on a payment plan, refunds will be calculated based on the amount you've already paid. Please note, any outstanding amounts are still payable to Temenos Education Ltd.

If circumstances change, you have the option to reschedule and join a future training programme within the year, subject to availability.

Substitution:

Unable to attend the course? Not to worry. You can nominate a suitable replacement to attend in your stead at no additional cost. They will need to meet all the course prerequisites.

We aim to be as accommodating as possible. Should you have any queries or require assistance with the cancellation or rescheduling process, our team is here to assist.

So... Any Questions? Here's What Your Fellow Learners Have Asked Before Clicking Enroll.

The course will be conducted on the Zoom Video Meeting Platform. Participants will receive a link to join the sessions prior to the start date. Ensure you have the Zoom application installed and a stable internet connection for the best experience.

25 hours over 18 weeks

Indeed, the Foundation Certificate is thoughtfully designed to accommodate practitioners of all experience levels. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just beginning your journey in the field, this course provides essential knowledge and practical skills in therapeutic writing. We acknowledge that not all frontline practitioners initially possess experience in guiding client journeys, but many do bring transferable skills to the table. This training is meticulously crafted to harness and further develop these skills, making it a valuable choice for novices and experienced practitioners alike who aspire to excel in the realm of therapeutic writing.

Yes, upon successful completion, you will be awarded the Temenos Qualification with the title of Foundation Certificate in therapeutic writing.

Yes, you will have continued access to the course materials even after completing the programme.

No, there is no prior knowledge required to enrol in this course. Possibility of pre-course reading as a foundation for the deeper work and focus on the therapist’s role and writing process.

Certainly, within the course, participants will engage in numerous opportunities for practical application. These include active participation in both large group discussions and smaller, more intimate group settings. This multifaceted structure guarantees ongoing learning, hands-on experience, and a consistent path to improvement throughout the entire training program.

This course is thoughtfully crafted to empower professionals with a profound understanding of the nuanced art of therapeutic writing. It substantially enriches their skill set in this specialized field of practice. By delivering comprehensive knowledge and practical techniques, it equips professionals to provide holistic support to clients seeking therapeutic writing as a means of self-expression and healing, thus fortifying their expertise. Professionals completing this course will be well-prepared to create nurturing and creative spaces for self-exploration, facilitate transformative therapeutic interactions, and provide invaluable support to individuals on their journey of self-discovery and healing through the transformative power of the written word.

The teaching approach used in this course is a multifaceted one, combining various instructional methods to ensure a comprehensive learning experience. It includes a blend of lectures, group discussions, hands-on practical exercises, case studies, and interactive activities. This approach encourages active participation and critical thinking, allowing participants to gain a deep understanding of the subject matter while honing their practical skills. Additionally, the course promotes a learner-centered environment, where participants actively engage with the material and with each other, fostering collaborative learning and mutual support.

Monica Suswin

Senior Practitioner, Expert in Writing and Teaching for Well-being and a solid understanding of psychotherapy

Monica has a long history of working with the written and spoken word as well as a background in humanistic psychotherapy, training with Gerda Boyesen, the Norwegian founder of Biodynamic Psychotherapy.

She has worked as a producer for BBC Radio 4, and gained an MA in Creative Writing (Sussex University 2002).

Her contributions to the field of Writing for Wellbeing have been published in anthologies and journals and more recently a couple of articles in Therapy Today (2022/23). 

She is the author of four books on creative therapeutic writing, drawing on her own experimental and exploratory writing with exercises and notes for practitioners. The series is edited by Dr Gillie Bolton, an international expert in the field. She has given presentations and spoken about the beneficial impact of expressive and imaginative writing at conferences and Surrey University.

Monica is a member of Lapidus International (The Writing for Wellbeing Community) and NAWE (The National Association of Writers in Education).

Monica s website

Are you ready to immerse yourself in a profound and transformative journey ? This unique training experience is designed to elevate your therapeutic expertise, fostering a comprehensive understanding of therapeutic writing. Armed with this knowledge, you will be well-equipped to guide and engage in meaningful conversations and therapeutic sessions.This training is your gateway to creating a profound impact in the lives of your clients.

Beginning your training journey with Monica Suswin

Dear Participants,

I am thrilled to welcome you to our upcoming therapeutic writing course. As you embark on this transformative journey, I will share why I am honoured to be your tutor through this experience.

With over 20 years of developing my own style of writing workshops that cater to both creative and therapeutic needs, I have had the privilege of witnessing the profound impact of writing on personal growth and healing. My extensive background in humanistic psychotherapy and running groups has equipped me with the skills to understand and meet the specific needs of individuals within a group, whether it's a small gathering or a larger assembly.

The ability to adapt to different group sizes and contexts is a hallmark of my work. I've led sessions for groups as small as two participants and, on occasion, larger groups of over 35. My experience also extends to delivering presentations at university settings and conferences, where I've shared my work through readings of prose and poems with contextual explanations.

I understand the therapeutic power of writing on a deeply personal level. Having faced and overcome six separate clinical depressions, I've explored the healing potential of creative therapeutic writing first-hand. My journey through these experiences forms the basis of my book, "A Fox Crossed My Path: Creative Therapeutic Writing on a Depressive Illness”. In one of our sessions I'll be drawing examples and suggestions from this book.

My training at the BBC in the 1980s instilled in me a rigorous commitment to ethical standards, which I bring to all aspects of my work. This dedication extends to how I collaborate with others, my handling of the written and spoken word, and my adherence to the ethical and moral codes of a practitioner working therapeutically.

As your tutor, my mission is to create a safe, supportive, and empowering environment for your personal and professional growth. I look forward to embarking on this enriching journey together and exploring the incredible potential of therapeutic writing.

Best wishes,

Is the Therapeutic Writing Institute right for you? Start here to find out.

Credentials Training Programs

Want to create your own programs and classes? Learn about our credentialing programs and download an application.

Schedule of Classes

Browse class descriptions and register for our current classes.

Continuing Education

Most of our classes carry NBCC-approved continuing education units (CEs).

Student Center

Get help, read our policies, and request transcripts.

Center for Journal Therapy

Learn about CJT, Journal to the Self, upcoming retreats, and working with Kathleen Adams.

Is TWI Right for You?

Let us send you a special 12-page report, Is TWI Right for You? It’s filled with easy-to-read information about how the Therapeutic Writing Institute program works — program requirements, schedules, costs, an application for admission, and much more!

Questions about the Therapeutic Writing Institute and its offerings? Contact us any time.

J is for Journal

FREE course on journal writing! You’ll receive a link to one lesson a day for a week. Whether you’re just getting started or a seasoned pro, J is for Journal offers 50+ writing prompts and seven thought-provoking lessons.

Journalversity

Want a shorter, more flexible option for continuing education and personal growth? Journalversity is a collaborative learning community and one-stop, non-stop experiential learning in All Things Journal.

Announcing Spring 2024 Classes

TWI’s newest class schedule is now available! Classes eligible for CEUs offer 8 hours of continuing education for counselors upon verification of satisfactory course completion and submission of course evaluation.

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MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes

This programme is validated and quality assured by Middlesex University and you will receive a Middlesex award on successful completion.

Middlesex University Programme Spec 

Metanoia Institute has begun the process to be able to award its own degrees. This will not affect students starting in 2023.  Please see here for further details

If you have any questions please get in contact with us below and we will respond to your enquiry.

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Therapeutic and Reflective Writing

Know yourself through words ..

This long-established and ground-breaking course for personal and professional development will provide you with an understanding of therapeutic and reflective writing techniques for working personally or with groups.

The course explores the main approaches in therapeutic and reflective writing by encouraging you to explore your own life through writing. Weekly readings offer a theoretical background for those intending to apply their learning to others.

Delivered online over eight weeks, the course has been designed by tutors who are pioneers in their field as well as highly experienced online teachers.

You will finish the course with new skills and practical techniques for personal exploration and use with clients and groups.

This is a certified CPD course and those who successfully complete it will receive a Certification of Completion confirming their learning and study hours.

You can book a place on the course as an individual, or if you would like a bespoke version of this course for your team please contact us at [email protected]

Also suitable for beginners. 

Anne Taylor

Anne Taylor is a writer, teacher, Feldenkrais practitioner and writing group facilitator. She worked for many years as a journalist and university lecturer before embarking on an MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development and the facilitation of writing groups with various organisations and universities.

Victoria Field

Victoria Field is a pioneer in the use of writing for health and wellbeing and is a qualified biblio- poetry therapist. She has published several poetry collections and a memoir, has edited three books on therapeutic writing and has contributed to many academic and popular publications.

CPD accreditation

This course has been independently accredited for integrity and quality. It reaches globally recognised CPD standards and benchmarks for active learning that develops professional skills, competence and career aspirations.

How it works

We give you the theory in the form of videos, podcasts, written lectures and reading extracts. In the case of our live workshops, this includes a live online seminar.

You put it into practice by completing the writing assignments.

You share your work with the small group of fellow writers and the teaching team.

Your tutor and fellow learners read your work and give professional-style feedback on your submission. Giving feedback notes helps to build your skills as an editor - a critical part of the writing process.

You reflect on the exercises with the group and share what you’ve learned.

You use what you learned from the feedback and discussions to review your work and improve it.

Things to know

This course is for anyone looking to develop their understanding and skills in therapeutic and reflective writing for personal development and/or for use in their professional practice.

It’s suitable if you:

• Want to explore therapeutic and reflective writing for your own well-being and personal development
• Are a counsellor or therapist and would like to use writing with your clients
• Are interested in how fiction, life-writing and memoir can benefit well-being
• Would like to include techniques such as journaling, biblio-poetry therapy and metaphor in your toolbox for self-care or use with clients and facilitating groups
• Are seeking a CPD (Continuing Professional Development) course (20 hours didactic learning, 20 hours peer learning)
• Are looking to grow your creative skills
• Enjoy the discipline of deadlines and peer learning
• Want to join a friendly and supportive small group of learners
• Can dedicate a minimum of 5-7 hours per week to the learning (at a time to suit you).

Members of Lapidus can claim a £50 discount* for this course. Please get in touch with us at [email protected] for more information.

*This discount cannot be used in conjunction with the early bird discount or any other offers.

This professional training allows you to:

• Learn skills suitable for personal exploration and to use with clients and groups
• Gain an overview of therapeutic and reflective writing
• Learn ways to use journaling and expressive writing
• Explore the theory and practice of biblio-poetry therapy
• Look at how personal experience can be transformed into memoir, fiction, poetry or drama
• Understand the value of metaphor in writing for personal development
• Learn key coaching techniques
• Gain insight into the value of being in writing groups
• Expand your faciliation skills
• Feel confident in using a range of resources and exercises
• Nurture your creativity
• Develop transferable professional skills (discipline, attention to detail, ability to work to deadlines)
• Increase professionalism in working with others
• Feel more confident in responding to other writers’ work and receiving responses to your own work
• Build greater independence, autonomy and judgment as you self-direct, self-manage and realise assignments to the course briefs.

Each course is divided into sessions. These sessions are released one by one (weekly or fortnightly, depending on the course). 

There’s no need to log on at a set time. You can work through the learning materials whenever suits you, day or night, wherever you are in the world. Just complete the assignments and join forum discussions by the session deadline. 

Our teaching method is based on the science of active learning: you read/listen/watch, try out, share and reflect. It’s a social experience – you become part of a small group, feeding back on each other’s writing to build a supportive bunch of readers you trust. Find out more here .

Sessions become available on Monday morning each week. While there are set deadlines for posting your work and giving feedback to fellow classmates, our 24/7 digital campus means you can work through the course materials at your own pace. This course is flexible, with no pre-recordings or live classes . All the interaction is via the online forums, so you can dip in and out, fitting study around your work or family commitments, and making it easy to participate from anywhere in the world. See our FAQs for more information on the learning journey and how we teach.

Session 1: Introduction – What is therapeutic and reflective writing and how can it be used? This session will introduce you to the genre, the course and to one another through a series of practical assignments, readings and writing exercises.

Session 2: Journal Writing – What are journals and how can they be used creatively and therapeutically? We will explore this question and how to use expressive writing effectively through a series of tutor-led writing exercises and reflections.

Session 3: Biblio-Poetry Therapy – The practice of biblio-poetry therapy includes reading and responding to texts as a way of exploring our lives. This session will introduce some of the theory of biblio-poetry therapy and how it has developed into a distinct practice, and explore a number of classic poetry therapy texts and exercises.

Session 4: Writing Your Self – We will focus on how the material of our personal experience can be transformed into fiction, drama and memoir. We will look at how shaping expressive writing into something more formal can increase a sense of mastery and enable transformation.

Session 5: Reflective Writing and Practice – We’ll consider what we mean by reflective writing and its relationship with reflective practice and other forms of therapeutic writing for educational or professional development as well as transformation in our personal lives.

Session 6: Writing, Metaphor and Coaching – Metaphor has the power to transform our thinking through coaching and writing. You will be invited to engage in a series of exercises and reflections using a range of methods including the ‘clean language’ coaching model.

Session 7: Writing in Groups – We will focus on therapeutic writing in groups and how it offers such a rich and nuanced opportunity for personal growth. We will explore the reasons for this through some key texts and theories. There will be opportunities to discuss facilitation skills as well as the process of being in writing groups.

Session 8: Creating Your Future – We will draw the course to a close with some final writing and reflections on your personal writing journeys and individual portfolios. We’ll look at the many ways you can take your learning and reflective-writing experience forward.

At the end of the course, you will be well prepared to move onto our follow-on course  Running Writing Workshops .

Join our alumni community 

After your course finishes, you can join our online alumni community – a friendly group of writers supporting each other as they continue to explore and develop their writing. There’s no cost for this. It’s easy to access via the online classroom, where you can:

• Revisit all your course materials, including tutor notes, feedback, videos, podcasts and forum posts
• Rejoin your classmates, and continue working together in a private space
• Meet alumni from other courses to find beta-readers and share work on our critiquing forum
• Network with other writers working in your genre or area of interest
• Take part in regular ‘sit and write’ Zoom sessions, to push forward with your work-in progress
• Join our monthly live alumni events with our expert tutors and industry guests, including agents, editors, publishers, competition and festival organisers, and prizewinning writers.

Taking things further If you’d like to continue on to another Professional Writing Academy course,  please get in touch  for more details.

Meet your course team

Healing with Words

More about Anne Taylor

Poetry Therapy Pioneer

More about Victoria Field

Kate McBarron

Kate is a writer, editor and writing for wellbeing practitioner & researcher. She is passionate about words and their ability to enhance our daily lives, from relaxation to self-discovery and workplace wellness.

Kate is cofounder of  WritingForLife.co.uk  and founder of  WriteToRelax.com .

More about Kate McBarron

Start your journey

£ 560

Earlybird price

£ 504

(Including taxes)

I’ve loved everything about this course: the required reading, the writing exercises, the added challenge of having to reflect on my own and others’ work, and the privilege of being a learner again. I found the level was about right – not too easy, not too difficult. The format for giving feedback worked well for me as I sometimes get a little bored with ‘live’ online forums. I valued reading others’ work and being able to post my comments on them online in my own time.

Find out about our payment plans and get in touch.

Course Alumni

Meet our writers.

Laura Steen

I kept hearing stories about the efficacy of writing for well-being schemes and the enrichment they can provide for prisoners and those with mental health difficulties — the type of people I would one day like to work with. Over these eight weeks, I found myself learning and writing in ways that were completely unfamiliar to me, yet allowed me to process and make sense of my experiences more effectively than I ever had through talking.

More about Therapeutic & Reflective Writing

Creative writing can help preserve our mental health

Introduction to Therapeutic and Reflective Writing tutor Anne Taylor explains how writing can preserve our wellbeing.

Poetry can change your life

PWA course director Victoria Field interviews William Sieghart about his poetry prescriptions and the ability of poetry to renew the human spirit.

My journey into therapeutic writing

English teacher Laura Steen embarked on our Therapeutic Writing course with one goal in mind: to find wellbeing through writing. Here is her journey.

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Long Program: The Therapeutic Writing Institute

The Therapeutic Writing Institute (TWI) is a fully on-line academic institute. Its mission is to be the premier source of standards-based education and training on the theory and practice of life-based writing for healing, growth, and change across the life span. It opened cyberdoors in 2008 and now has a global student body of 800+.

TWI is the professional training division of the Center for Journal Therapy. It was created by Kay Adams in response to the outpouring of requests she had for a curriculum-based alternative to guided independent study or the short-form training intensive.

Upon formal application and completion of an intensive course of study that spans 2-3 years, trainees graduate with the credential Certified Journal Facilitator or (for licensed therapists) Certified Journal Therapist. Licensed therapists also have the option of the Certificate of Advanced Study in Therapeutic Writing, a streamlined track that does not result in credentials but does document a cohesive course of study.

Some students opt to take classes for personal and/or professional development “a la carte,” without the container of a training program. These students are welcomed and encouraged to participate at the same level of engagement as our trainees.

A Quick Self-Check Guide

We want you to succeed! And we know that our brand of online learning isn’t right for everyone. Three areas strongly predict success with our program.  Assess yourself!

1: BASIC COMPUTER LITERACY

The TWInstitute program is conducted entirely online, on a learning platform that was chosen to be both sophisticated and simple to navigate. However, all of our classes require that you have basic computer skills. You must be able to:

• fluently manage email
• upload and download files
• navigate website menus
• have high speed internet on a reasonably current and well-functioning computer

2: COMMITMENT TO EDUCATIONAL COMMUNITY

TWI is an educational community with actual classes, teachers, texts, homework, assignments, discussions and learning objectives.  Please bring your own best practice and agree to:

• honor the ground rules and learning agreements of the Therapeutic Writing Institute
• be a participating member of a serious educational community for the full term (subject to exceptions should urgent needs arise)
• schedule necessary time each week (average 3 hours/week/class) to participate in reading, writing and online discussion, as assigned
• pay tuition ($350/class for non-trainees, $295/class for CJF and CAS trainees) when due

3: EXPERIENCE WITH ONLINE LEARNING

• If you’ve previously taken (or taught!) online classes in a college or university setting (perhaps with learning platforms such as BlackBoard, eCollege, etc.) you will likely find the TWI learning platform to be familiar and easy to navigate.
• If you haven’t had specific online education, but you’ve participated in an informal online class that used an email discussion format (such as yahoogroups, Google groups, etc.), there’s an excellent chance that you’ll do well.
• If this is your first online learning experience, but you meet the criteria in 1 and 2 and you’re willing and able to learn, you’re likely to do just fine. We provide new student orientation, tutorials, and personalized technical support.

If it seems that you would be a good candidate for TWI, please download the special report, Is TWI Right for You?, which offers a comprehensive overview of the training program, including requirements for completion and costs.

Certification Training

The popularity and awareness of journal writing as a self-help tool has never been higher.  Nearly every self-help author, health and wellness program, recovery method, spiritual practice and management expert recommends journal writing as a primary path to self-understanding.

Training as a Certified Journal Facilitator (or, if you’re a licensed psychotherapist, a Certified Journal Therapist) could put you right on the cutting edge of this trend.  There are opportunities in every community to teach journal writing classes and lead therapeutic writing groups – in churches, libraries, rec centers, universities and colleges, adult education programs, clinics, corporations, employee assistance programs, psychotherapy and coaching practices, hospitals… even living rooms!

Learn more by visiting the Therapeutic Writing Institute >>

Endorsement of Credential

The International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy (IFBPT) is the (501)(c)(6) independent standards-setting board for the field of biblio/poetry therapy, the broadest definition of which includes all forms of therapeutic writing.

The Federation has endorsed the Therapeutic Writing Institute as a curriculum-based training that meets requirements for a cohesive program of standards-based teaching. TWI graduates may, upon application and payment of fees, recieve IFBPT endorsement of their Certified Journal Facilitator or Certified Journal Therapist credential.

Schedule of Upcoming Classes

Please go HERE   to see what is offered for the current or upcoming term.

Center for Journal Therapy

3440 youngfield st., #411 wheat ridge, co. 80033 phone: (303) 209-9599 contact us >>.

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Creative writing therapy, or therapeutic writing is a form of therapeutic intervention that uses writing as the tool to explore and express your thoughts, feelings and emotions. It’s also known as journal therapy – and it’s essentially the art of writing in a journal to heal yourself. 

Writing therapy can be a useful tool for people who struggle with mental health, have experienced trauma or grief, or are simply looking for a creative outlet to process their thoughts and feelings. Today we’re going to explore what creative writing therapy is, how it works, and the potential benefits of writing therapy. We’ll also share writing therapy prompts to help you get started and explore writing therapy today. 

Please keep in mind that there is no true substitute for seeing a licensed therapist, and if you feel like you could benefit from talking to someone and getting help with what you’re going through – you’re not alone! There are tons of incredible therapists out there to help you. Here at Made with Lemons we’re big advocates for therapy and if you’d like a more inside scoop to our own journey with therapy, join On Your Terms . It’s a wellness newsletter that shares a more inside look to our own wellness journey as well as tools to help you along yours. Learn more about On Your Terms here.

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What is Creative Writing Therapy?

Writing therapy, also known as therapeutic writing, is a form of creative and expressive therapy that involves writing about your personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. It can take many forms, including journaling, poetry, creative writing, letter writing, or memoirs. Writing therapy can be done individually or in a group setting. It can also be facilitated by a therapist, counselor or writing coach.

The purpose of creative writing therapy is to help you express and process your emotions in a safe and supportive environment. It’s helpful to be able to write out your thoughts and feelings that might be hard to articulate in other ways. 

You might also see therapeutic writing used to help explore issues that are difficult to discuss in traditionally talking therapy sessions. And when your therapist invites you to try writing therapy, it’s also used in conjunction with other forms of therapy, such as trauma-focused therapy, to enhance its effectiveness. 

An example of creative writing therapy could be writing a letter to a person who hurt you, and then shredding or burning the letter to release some of the hurt and anger. 

How Does Therapeutic Writing Work?

Writing therapy works by allowing individuals to express their thoughts and feelings in a way that is both private and creative. The act of writing can help you organize your thoughts and gain clarity on your emotions. Writing can also be a way to release pent-up emotions and relieve stress. 

For example, if you’re feeling stressed after a long day of work, taking a few moments to write down what’s stressing you out and allowing yourself to let it go, can help you have a calm and more relaxing evening. 

Writing therapy should be a truly non judgemental space. It’s a time to write without worrying about grammar, punctuation, or spelling. The goal here is to let words flow freely, without judgment or criticism. Creative writing therapy sessions can be structured or unstructured, and sometimes it’s helpful to use prompts or exercises to help you get started. (i.e. what in your life is bringing you the most anxiety, or writing a letter to your friend to express ___________ hurt you when they said that.)

Oftentimes we find it easier to write about our hurt, our pain and the experiences that caused that, as opposed to opening up to talk about those things. In this way, writing can be a way to explore and process complex emotions such as grief or anger in a safe and supportive environment, where no one can get hurt further by what’s being felt and expressed. 

Potential Benefits of Writing Therapy

Now let’s talk about some of the benefits of therapeutic writing. 

Improved mental health

Writing therapy can be a tool that helps you manage symptoms of depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions. You can use journaling therapy to express and process difficult emotions, which over time can lead to improved mental regulation and a better sense of control over your thoughts and feelings. 

Increased self-awareness

Creative writing therapy can help you gain a better insight into your thoughts and behaviors. By reflecting on your experiences through writing, you can start to identify patterns and gain an understanding of yourself. 

Stress relief

Therapeutic writing can be a way to relieve stress and reduce anxiety. Writing is often cathartic, allowing you to release pent-up emotions and start to feel relief from things that would otherwise feel overwhelming. 

Improved communication skills

Journal therapy can also help you improve your overall communication skills. When you practice expressing yourself through writing, you can develop more confidence to communicate more effectively in both your personal and professional relationships. In essence, writing your feelings can help you communicate them better when needed. 

Increased creativity

Lastly, creative writing therapy can also be a way to tap into your creativity and imagination. We talk a lot about your inner child around here, and journal therapy can be another helpful way you can interact with your inner child. Through writing you can explore new ideas and perspectives, leading to your own personal growth.

How to try Creative Writing Therapy Today

Now let’s talk about how you can try therapeutic writing for yourself today. These tips are going to help you get started with writing therapy from home, as a personal activity to help heal yourself. 

Set aside dedicated time for writing therapy

Like most self improvement and self care techniques, it helps to set aside a dedicated time to write regularly. We know this can be a challenging task, especially if you’re struggling with mental health issues or challenges in your life. A good place to start is to set aside a few minutes each evening to write and decompress from your day. It can be just 2 minutes before bed. Remember, therapeutic writing is a non judgemental activity, so the amount of time you dedicate isn’t important, it’s just important to show up for yourself. 

Find a quiet and comfortable space

Find a place that’s quiet and comfortable, and where you can write without interruptions. Some people find it helpful to create a writing ritual, such as lighting a candle or playing soft music to create a sense of calm and focus. Find what works for you, in a space where you can be alone for a few minutes. 

Choose a writing therapy prompt or topic

At the end of this guide we’re going to share writing therapy prompts to help you explore creative writing therapy and give you a starting point. You can also talk to your therapist to get prompts, or find some online. Prompts can be general, such as “write about what makes  you grateful or happy”, while others can be more specific, such as “write about a time that you felt overwhelmed.”

Write freely and without judgment

The most important thing about writing therapy is to write freely, without judging yourself. Allow yourself to write without worrying about grammar, punctuation or spelling. Don’t put a time limit on your writing, or feel like you have to write a certain number of words or pages. The goal here is to allow your thoughts and emotions to flow freely without any judgment at all. 

Write honestly and openly

Along with being judgment free, it’s also so important that you write honestly and openly. Writing therapy is a space for honesty and openness. This space is created for you to share your thoughts and emotions, even if they're difficult or uncomfortable to confront. Just be open to exploring them, and remember that you don’t have to share this with anyone, so it’s a space where you can be fully honest with yourself. 

Reflect on your writing

After writing, you can take a few moments to reflect on what you have written. It might even be helpful to come back to what you have written at another time, when you have a clear head or have left the emotions behind. This can help you consider the emotions and patterns that you have expressed. Doing this reflection can help you gain more insight into your thinking patterns and emotions for future sessions. 

Consider sharing your writing with a therapist or counselor

Lastly, consider sharing your writing with a therapist or counselor. They can help you process emotions and gain a deeper understanding of yourself. Sharing your writing can also help you feel less alone in your struggles and provide important validation for your experiences. 

20 Writing Therapy Prompts

• When do I feel the most like myself?
• How do I feel at this moment?
• What do I need more of in my life?
• What do I look forward to every day?
• What is a lesson that I had to learn recently?
• Based on my daily routine, where do I see myself in 5 years?
• What don’t I regret?
• What would make me happy right now?
• What has been the hardest thing to forgive myself for?
• What’s bothering me? And why?
• What do I love about myself?
• What are my priorities right now?
• What does my ideal day look like?
• What does my ideal morning look like? Evening?
• Make a list of 30 things that make you smile
• Make a gratitude list
• The words I’d like to live by are…
• I really wish others knew this about me…
• What always brings tears to my eyes?
• What do I need to get off my chest today?

Creative writing therapy can be a powerful tool for exploring and processing thoughts and emotions. When you set aside a dedicated time to write, and create a safe and supportive space for yourself, you can gain insight into your emotions and develop better tools to manage them. With practice and commitment, writing therapy can become a habit for your self care routine. 

If you’d like to build the habit of writing therapy in your own life, then we’d like to invite you to download our habit tracker. It’s super easy to use, beautifully designed and completely free. All you need is a google account to access it. Grab a copy of our habit tracker here.

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What Is Creative Writing Therapy

Table of Contents

What is creative writing therapy?

Creative writing therapy, or therapeutic writing is a form of therapeutic intervention that uses writing as the tool to explore and express your thoughts, feelings and emotions. It’s also known as journal therapy – and it’s essentially the art of writing in a journal to heal yourself.

How far could creative writing act as therapy?

Whatever the format, writing therapy can help the individual propel their personal growth, practice creative expression, and feel a sense of empowerment and control over their life (Adams, n.d.). It’s easy to see the potential of therapeutic writing.

What is creative writing training?

Studying creative writing will help you enhance your general linguistic skills and hone your unique writing voice. You’ll learn new ways to express yourself clearly and creatively in various written forms. Those enhanced communication skills can be a powerful asset in the business world as well as your personal life.

What are the different types of writing therapy?

It may be supervised by a mental health professional or even occur with little or no direct influence from a counselor. There are several types of writing therapy, including, but not limited to narrative therapy, interactive journaling, focused writing, and songwriting.

What is an example of writing therapy?

Compose a letter. Imagine this person has written to you and asked you: “How are you doing, really?” Another exercise is to “write to someone with whom you have ‘unfinished business’ without sending it.” The goal is for you to gain a clearer understanding of your own thoughts and feelings about the person, she said.

What is an example of creative therapy?

Creative therapy uses art forms — such as dance, drawing, or music — to help treat certain conditions. Trained therapists can administer creative therapy to help people experiencing a range of mental, emotional, and physical issues. Creative therapy does not require a person to have any sort of artistic ability.

What is the purpose of writing therapy?

Writing therapy is a form of expressive therapy that uses the act of writing and processing the written word for therapeutic purposes. Writing therapy posits that writing one’s feelings gradually eases feelings of emotional trauma.

How do you start therapeutic writing?

• Create a routine of your journaling habits. Many people begin journaling with the best intentions, but find that the habit is difficult to establish. …
• Find somewhere quiet to write. …
• Decide on the topic you want to explore. …
• Start writing! …
• Repeat. …
• Sources and references:

Is creative writing good for your brain?

CREATIVE WRITING STRENGTHENS OUR MEMORY: It can help contextualise ideas and make them more manageable in our brains. The written word can be more trustworthy than our own thinking. Even a small note on a piece of paper might spark our recollection of an unfinished task.

What are the 4 types of creative writing?

The primary four forms of creative writing are fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and screenwriting. Writers will use a mixture of creative elements and techniques to tell a story or evoke feelings in the reader. The main elements used include: Character development.

Can I teach myself creative writing?

Many beginners can feel intimidated or embarrassed by their creative work and where their imagination takes them. Through freewriting, creative writing exercises, writing prompts, and practice, you can improve your own writing skills to become a better writer.

What skill is creative writing?

Creative writing is an art. And like everything artistic, it requires imagination. Whether it is a poem, story, blog, or any other form of writing, the writer must use imagination and expression to evoke emotion from the readers.

Who created writing therapy?

James Pennebaker was the first researcher that studied therapeutic effects of writing. He developed a method called expressive writing, which consists of putting feelings and thoughts into written words in order to cope with traumatic events or situations that yield distress (Pennebaker & Chung, 2007).

What kind of writing do therapists do?

Most of those I spoke to said they jot down information about symptoms, demographics, treatment history, and personal history during that first meeting so as to get a sense of both what potential issues they’ll be tackling and who the patient is more generally.

What are the 6 writing techniques?

The Six Traits of writing are Voice, Ideas, Presentation, Conventions, Organization, Word Choice, and Sentence Fluency. It creates a common vocabulary and guidelines for teachers to use with students so that they become familiar with the terms used in writing. It develops consistency from grade level to grade level.

What are the benefits of creative writing in therapy?

CREATIVE WRITING HELPS YOU TO EXPRESS YOUR FEELINGS: Some may also use creative writing as a way of connecting with others. Sharing tales and perspectives while also learning from, and supporting one another. Writing about difficult situations can help us release our feelings in a healthy way.

What is creative writing and examples?

What is an example of creative writing? One example of creative writing is fiction writing. Fiction includes traditional novels, short stories, and graphic novels. By definition, fiction is a story that is not true, although it can be realistic and include real places and facts.

What is creative writing in simple terms?

Creative writing, a form of artistic expression, draws on the imagination to convey meaning through the use of imagery, narrative, and drama. This is in contrast to analytic or pragmatic forms of writing. This genre includes poetry, fiction (novels, short stories), scripts, screenplays, and creative non-fiction.

What is creative arts therapy used for?

Creative arts therapy is a profession that uses active engagement in the arts to address mental, emotional, developmental, and behavioral disorders. Creative arts therapy uses the relationship between the patient and therapist in the context of the artistic process as a dynamic force for change.

Related Posts

Why is art journaling therapeutic, what is art journal therapy, why is art journaling important, does journaling help with mental health, what is the goal of expressive arts therapy, what is dbt art therapy, what is gestalt art therapy, what are 3 writing prompts, what are four benefits of art therapy, leave a comment cancel reply.

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MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes

Metanoia institute, different course options.

• Key information

Course Summary

Tuition fees, entry requirements, similar courses at different universities, key information data source : idp connect, qualification type.

MSc - Master of Science

Subject areas

Creative Writing Occupational Therapy

Course type

About the course

Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes is a growing field of research and practice. This unique non-clinical MSc course gives students the opportunity to learn experientially through writing and discussion, to receive taught content on theory, and to develop skills and resources for working in the field of CWTP. The core values of the course are humanistic and person-centred, emphasising people’s potential for growth, change and movement in a positive direction in their lives.

Time commitment: The programme is taught over 10 weekends per academic year, in each of the first two years – 7 weekends Live Online and 3 weekends In Person in Bristol UK (November, end of March, beginning of July - there is no online teaching on these days). Students require a minimum of 5 hours’ personal study time per week. Participants undertake a research project in Year Three.

Who is this course for?

People with an interest in writing in a broad sense including literature, stories, narratives and spoken word, and in how working with these can contribute to wellbeing on individual and social levels People currently working, or aiming to work with others who seek training to prepare them for working with CWTP People in other fields who wish to employ the resources and practices of CWTP to tackle problems, enhance organisations and communities, or envision pathways in diverse cultures and settings

The course offers students opportunities

to engage with creative writing using diverse forms and approaches to find their own voice in practising CWTP to build knowledge and skills with emphasis on the integration of theory and practice engage experiential learning, group work, practical skills training, peer feedback, and creative and personal development

UK fees Course fees for UK students

For this course (per year)

International fees Course fees for EU and international students

To be confirmed

Applicants will normally be expected to have: A first degree or equivalent qualification. Already using creative writing whether personally or professionally. A Short Course Certificate in Counselling (minimum 15 hours), or equivalent academic experience; willingness to undertake counselling for themselves, if appropriate. The personal qualities which have been identified as crucial in therapeutic work and in courses of this kind, namely warmth of personality, flexibility of thinking, the capacity for sensitive response to a wide range of people and issues, and the ability to critique and evaluate ideas and outcomes. This course requires applicants to submit 12 sides of their creative writing.

Liverpool John Moores University

Ma screenwriting, ma novel writing (distance education), middlesex university, ma in english (creative writing and english literature), university of hull, ma in creative writing (online).

Creative Arts Therapies Explained: 18 Best Courses and Ideas

In ancient Greece and Rome, participation in theater acts was “prescribed” for individuals with depression or anxiety.

Likewise, tribal communities around the globe have been using dance, music, and painting in healing for millennia (Degges-White, 2011).

If you’re interested in taking the next step in your career to become a creative arts therapist, look no further. In this article, we’ll give you a basic introduction to the field of creative arts therapies, recommend some training options, and point you toward our favorite resources you can use with your art therapy clients today.

Before you continue reading, we thought you might like to download our three Grief Exercises [PDF] for free . These science-based tools will help you move yourself or others through grief in a compassionate way.

This Article Contains:

What are creative arts therapies, a brief history of creative arts therapies, how to become a creative arts therapist, training options: 9 courses and degrees, 5 best online programs to consider, how to use creative arts in counseling, top 4 activities and ideas for your sessions, helpful resources from positivepsychology.com, a take-home message.

Creative arts therapies (CATs) involve

“the implementation of an arts intervention by a trained, credentialed creative arts therapist; the presence of a systematic psychotherapeutic process; and the use of individualized treatment interventions.”

Bradt & Goodill, 2013, p. 970

Like other therapies, CATs address patients’ specific therapeutic issues and include the phases of patient assessment , treatment, and evaluation. Further, CAT interventions can consist of a broad range of artistic practices, including (Bradt & Goodill, 2013):

• Dance/movement
• Expressive writing
• Psychodrama

CAT differs from more general art-related healthcare practices in that CAT practitioners should be licensed and accredited.

Another difference is that more general art-related healthcare practices encompass a broad continuum of care, and the patient may play a more or less active role in the performance or creation of the art.

For instance, a performance put on by a group of artists for a patient would fall under the broader umbrella of general art-related healthcare but not be considered CAT, which centers around patient involvement as part of a targeted psychotherapeutic intervention.

When did it begin?

Founded in 1855, St. Elizabeths Hospital’s Department of Behavioral Health in Washington, D.C., had pioneering campuses in the therapeutic fields of art, music, dance, bibliotherapy, and psychodrama, and is widely considered to be the birthplace of CAT.

Marian Chace, a dancer and therapist born in Rhode Island, believed that dance was a powerful medium through which humans could meet their essential need for communication and understanding (Winerman, 2005). She is recognized as one of the first to use dance to meet the needs of patients with severe mental health challenges, practicing at St. Elizabeths Hospital in the 1940s after observing the positive effects that movement could have on symptoms of trauma (Sandel, Chaiklin, & Lohn, 1993).

A key figure in the founding of the American Dance Therapy Association, Chace ultimately became the Association’s first president and has left a long legacy of dignity and compassion in her work.

Arleen Hynes, a librarian and bibliotherapist at St. Elizabeths, discovered that inviting her patients to relate to poems resulted in evocative and creative responses that expressed their inner lives (Winerman, 2005; Rossiter, 2004). She began focusing on literature that stimulated the imagination rather than on narratives and trained herself to conduct therapy with poetry (Lamb & Friday, 2006).

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The requirements for becoming a CAT will differ between countries and states.

The minimum qualifications for conducting any form of therapy involve different supervised internship hours and accreditation requirements.

To learn more, be sure to look at our dedicated article How to Become a Therapist: Requirements, Degrees, & Experience  or consider purchasing our in-depth guide, On Becoming a Therapist .

The standard pathway for becoming a CAT typically proceeds as follows (New York Health Careers, n.d.):

• Complete a bachelor’s degree that includes coursework in both creative arts and psychopathology.
• Complete a master’s degree in CAT from a registered/accredited program.
• Complete a minimum number of supervised internship hours (e.g., in New York, this is 1,500 hours).
• Undergo accreditation to practice therapy in your country or state.
• Pass a CAT test/exam, such as the Art Therapy Credentials Board, the Certification Board for Music Therapists, or the New York State Case Narrative Exam.

Interested in being trained as a creative arts therapist? Here are some of the degree options around the world.

Bachelor’s degrees

The following bachelor’s programs are recommended entry points for learning about CAT. They do not fully prepare students for licensure or certification to practice CAT, as this requires a minimum of a master’s degree.

The University of Tampa – Bachelor of Arts in Art Therapy, USA

This BA program gives students a well-rounded introduction to the therapeutic arts, teaching its applications for working with a range of intrapsychic phenomena.

Particular applications include the use of arts for personal growth, rehabilitation, and self-awareness .

The program includes topics on the following art mediums:

• Printmaking

You can learn more on the program’s website .

University of South Wales – Bachelor of Arts (Hons) Creative and Therapeutic Arts, Australia

This bachelor’s program allows students to develop their future practice as a CAT in community and educational settings.

Across three years, students will learn innovative creative and therapeutic arts methods through art practice placements and theory-related skill building from leading experts.

Placement opportunities include those in community settings, such as women’s centers and children’s play therapy settings.

Find out more on the program’s website .

Ikon Institute of Australia – Bachelor of Arts Therapy, Australia

This undergraduate program gives students a broad knowledge of psychotherapy and therapeutic skills while emphasizing the processes of art therapy.

In particular, students will practice the artistic modes of:

• Visual arts
• Storytelling

For electives, students can choose topics including eco-psychotherapy, art and social action, indigenous approaches to health and wellbeing, and dreams and symbols.

Master’s degrees

The following is a sample of accredited master’s programs designed to prepare students for licensure and certification as a CAT.

Pratt Institute – Creative Arts Therapy Graduate Degrees, USA

New York’s Pratt Institute is a global leader in higher education, offering two accredited graduate degrees in CATs.

The Master of Professional Studies in Art Therapy and Creativity Development is an accredited 60-credit program synthesizing creative, aesthetic decision-making and psychotherapeutic practice and theory through experiential learning.

The Master of Science in Dance/Movement Therapy is structured similarly but emphasizes dance/movement as the means for therapeutic change based on the healing processes proposed by psychodynamic theory .

You can learn more about these programs on the institute’s website .

Leeds Beckett University – Master of Art Psychotherapy Practice, UK

This program, run in partnership with Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust, is designed to meet the national training criteria to practice and register as an art therapist or art psychotherapist in the United Kingdom.

Training focuses on developing students’ ability to deliver safe and effective care using visual art and image making. It also gives students access to work placements in a broad range of settings, including general hospitals, disability services, and forensics.

You can learn more on the program’s website or by viewing the program’s course overview .

University of Melbourne – Master of Creative Arts Therapy, Australia

This two-year degree program provides an overview of theories related to health treatment involving the arts, which can be applied in a range of contexts.

Students will learn about contemporary practices in the field of art therapy and explore the similarities, differences, and differing effects of various art forms.

Several Australian licensure bodies accredit the program for CAT and connect students with a broad range of placement opportunities.

You can learn more on the University of Melbourne’s website .

Doctoral programs

Note that the following doctoral programs are designed to help students pursue a nonclinical career or expand on other programs’ clinical licenses. They do not prepare graduates for clinical licensure or certification.

Saybrook University – PhD in Psychology: Creativity Studies Specialization, USA

In this doctoral program, students will discover the value of nurturing creativity to help achieve health and organizational outcomes.

In particular, students will learn to analyze and conduct psychological research while strengthening their skills to work in a range of public, private, and nonprofit sectors, such as the arts, health, consulting, and social transformation.

To learn more, visit the program’s website .

Florida State University – PhD or EdD in Art Education: Concentration in Art Therapy, USA

The art education PhD or EdD at Florida State teaches students the skills to make substantial academic contributions to the field of art therapy, with many of this program’s students making major contributions to the literature in faculties and colleges around the United States.

In particular, students of this program will gain the skills to teach, lead research teams, publish and present findings, engage in advanced clinical practice, and develop art therapy education programs.

To learn more, visit the program’s website or view the College of Fine Art’s handbook .

University of Haifa – School of Creative Arts Therapies Doctoral Programs, Israel

Israel’s School of Creative Arts Therapies at the University of Haifa offers creative arts therapy PhD programs with the following specializations:

• Art therapy
• Music therapy
• Dance/movement therapy
• Drama therapy

These programs are designed to train students in the skills to forward research in CAT, focusing on theory development, evidence-based practice , and basic and applied research.

You can learn more about these programs and get contact information by visiting the program’s website and downloading their information leaflet .

For even more programs and information, be sure to take a look at the American Art Therapy Association’s website .

If you’re looking to complete a university-level qualification in CAT, know that many programs have online or blended modes of instruction. To get the latest information on the availability of these online options, we recommend reaching out to advisors at your chosen college or university.

Edinboro University – Master of Arts in Counseling, USA

Edinboro University in Pennsylvania is one of the few universities worldwide offering a 100%-online master’s program in art counseling.

The program is accredited and provides students with a solid theoretical and practical foundation upon which to build your own art counseling practice.

Students are invited to select a practicum opportunity and internship in a specialty area of their choice in their local community. This course can also be taken as an abbreviated post-master’s certificate by those who already have a master’s in a related field and are looking to expand an existing skill set.

You can learn more about this program and its offerings on Edinboro University’s website .

Certificates and diplomas

If you’re looking to dip a toe in the field of creative arts therapy or expand an existing skill set, consider the following online training options:

• College for Educational and Clinical Art Therapy (CECAT) Servicing over 30 countries via its online offerings, CECAT offers a range of certificates, diplomas, and introductory courses in English, German, Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic.
• Healing With the Arts ( available on Coursera ) The activities in this four-week course offered by the University of Florida draw on dance, visual arts, music, and writing to help students discover their inner artist and promote physical, spiritual, cognitive, and emotional healing within themselves.
• Therapeutic Art Life Coach Certification ( available on Udemy ) With a focus on tools about releasing pain, finding meaning, and accessing intuition , this course supports licensed therapists and coaches looking for new tools and ideas to integrate into their practice.
• Positive Psychology Art Coaching ( available on Udemy ) This course teaches coaching that supports children’s self-esteem , confidence, and wellbeing using arts and can be adapted for a combination of one-to-one and online group coaching sessions.

Just as the arts have taken hold in therapy, there are many avenues to apply the arts in counseling. Further, there are often many advantages to doing so.

Here are just a few ways you might use creative arts to support the clients of your counseling practice (Degges-White, 2011):

• The arts are universal and can help a diversity of people across cultures and demographics.
• Visual arts can aid people with limited verbal ability or in situations with language barriers.
• Music therapy has been shown to benefit individuals with age-related diseases/disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
• Movement through dance can help people with physical disabilities stretch and gain mobility.
• Expressive writing is accessible to people of different abilities through tools such as dictation and specialist keyboards.

Overall, creative arts can help counselors move beyond simply talking to discover innovative pathways to achieving a client’s goals.

For more useful resources, look at the books Integrating the Expressive Arts Into Counseling Practice by Suzanne Degges-White and Nancy Davis and The Creative Arts in Counseling by Samuel Gladding. Also check out our article Expressive Arts Therapy: 15 Creative Activities and Techniques which is specifically dedicated to Expressive Art Therapy.

Art as empowerment: the virtue of art therapy – Ann Lawton

For useful ideas for your next creative arts therapy session, consider the following free worksheets:

• 3-Month Vision Board This worksheet encourages your clients to set three-month goals by drawing pictures of their ideal future in eight life domains.
• Honesty: Why, How, and What As a learning exercise rather than a specific therapeutic intervention, this worksheet begins with a series of questions and reflections about honest versus dishonest behavior and concludes with an activity inviting children to illustrate their understanding of honesty by creating a poster.
• Drawing Your Fears This exercise invites children to identify a scenario that is causing them anxiety and draw different ways the scenario might unfold to result in different outcomes.
• Gratitude Gifts This activity invites children to reflect on things or people for which they are grateful. They are then asked to draw what they are grateful for in a series of gift boxes.

For even more ideas, be sure to check out our dedicated blog posts exploring therapy via the visual arts , movement , narrative , drama , and music.

17 Exercises For Grief & Bereavement

Apply these 17 Grief & Bereavement Exercises [PDF] to help others process difficult emotions, leverage self-compassion, and find balance following painful loss.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

For even more useful ideas, consider checking out the many resources available through the Positive Psychology Toolkit© . This toolkit contains over 400 carefully developed tools to support your therapy or counseling practice, with many templates centering on the creative arts.

Here, we illustrate one activity from this resource as an example of the way color and creativity can be used to strengthen understanding of links between the body and one’s emotions.

Visualizing the Bodily Experience of an Emotion

This exercise aims to increase emotional awareness by inviting clients to explore and draw their emotions in the body.

• Materials Colored pencils, watercolor paints, crayons, or textas; blank silhouettes/outlines in the shape of a body, printed on sheets of paper.
• Introduction Have you ever noticed that different emotions manifest differently and in different areas in your body? For example, when we are angry, we might feel heat rush to our heads, chest, and fists; when we are sad, we might feel a heaviness in the chest and tired all over. In this exercise, you will explore and draw where you feel your emotions in your body.
• Activity Steps First, choose an emotion. This could be an emotion you have been struggling with recently or one you are experiencing presently, such as anxiety, anger, or happiness. Next, take two of the pieces of paper with the outline of a body. On one template, use the different colors and materials to represent which parts of the body feel most activated (i.e., sensations feel stronger or faster) when you are experiencing this emotion. On another template, indicate which parts of the body feel most deactivated (i.e., sensations feel weaker or slower) when experiencing this emotion.
• Wrapping Up Complete the previous steps for any other emotions that you are curious about, pleasant or unpleasant. Doing so will allow you to become more aware of and familiar with your emotions and recognize them in your body when they arise.

For a done-for-you version of this activity, including facilitation instructions and printable templates, be sure to take a look at the Positive Psychology Toolkit© .

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others move through grief in a compassionate way, this collection contains 17 validated grief and bereavement exercises . Use them to help others find balance as they attempt to make sense of a life that has been irrevocably changed.

CAT is a well-established yet growing practice, and demand for therapists trained in CAT may well increase.

At the core of creative arts therapy is a focus on the act of creating art rather than the final product. By emphasizing this focus, practitioners can give clients opportunities for self-expression and discovery of unseen parts of themselves, making the shift to a creative medium or mode often worth it.

We hope this article has inspired you to consider a career in creative arts therapy or to begin integrating artistic practices into the care you provide. If you know of any other resources or avenues for training in this field, be sure to let us know in the comments – we’d love to hear from you.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Grief Exercises [PDF] for free .

• Bradt, J., & Goodill, S. (2013). Creative arts therapies defined: Comment on “Effects of creative arts therapies on psychological symptoms and quality of life in patients with cancer”. JAMA Internal Medicine , 173 (11), 969–969.
• Degges-White, S. (2011). Introduction to the use of expressive arts in counseling. In S. Degges-White & N. Davis (Eds.), Integrating the expressive arts into counseling practice (pp. 1–6). Springer.
• Hynes, A., & Hynes-Berry, M. (2011). Biblio/poetry therapy: The interactive process: A handbook (3rd ed.). North Star Press.
• Lamb, Y. S., & Friday, W. P. S. W. (2006, September 15). Arleen Hynes, 90: Bibliotherapy pioneer. The Washington Post . https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401712.html
• New York Health Careers. (n.d.). Creative arts therapists . University at Albany, SUNY, School of Public Health. Retrieved from https://www.healthcareersinfo.net/creative-arts-therapists/
• Rossiter, C. (2004). Blessed and delighted: An interview with Arleen Hynes, poetry therapy pioneer. Journal of Poetry Therapy , 17 (4), 215–222.
• Sandel, S., Chaiklin, S., & Lohn, A. (Eds.). (1993). Foundations of dance/movement therapy: The life and work of Marian Chace . American Dance Therapy Association.
• Winerman, L. (2005). Express yourself! Psychologists are bringing creative arts therapies into the mainstream. Monitor on Psychology , 2 (36), 34–35.

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What our readers think.

Unfortunately this profession is not regulated here in Australia. It is a good overview, however, it is disappointing to see undergraduate programs listed, which are expensive and are not the international minimum standard to become an art therapist, and that you have left out The University of Queensland’s (School of Medicine/Department of Psychiatry) Master of Mental Health-Art Therapy, which is a highly regarded post-graduate program.

Thank you Karis to mention the Mater Program of Mental Health-Art Therapy in your country. I agree with you that the overview is fine and a help to get informed about the differenct landscapes of trainings. I am dissapointed that the announcement of the free “Grief PDF” turned out to be a salary promotion. I would not have given my email for that. Giving my email was a “thank you” to https://positivepsychology.com for getting more newsletter suscribers and potential users

Good day Freda,

My apologies in advance should have accidentaly received incorrect worksheets. Could you please verify whether the three free grief worksheets included the ‘Drawing Grief Tool’, ‘Objects of Connection’ and the ‘Prescription to Grieve Tool’? Which worksheet did you perceive as a salary promotion?

I will definitely look into this upon your feedback.

Annelé Venter Publisher

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Are you looking for the best online creative writing courses? You may have found some promising classes online, but you may also be unsure if the course is actually good. How can you know you’ll benefit from the course without spending your money first?

The good news is, there are creative writing courses out there for everyone, and they’re sure to improve your writing. Even better news, the best online creative writing courses share many of the same qualities.

If you want to learn how to write creatively, or if you simply want to improve your everyday writing, the best online creative writing courses can transform your writing abilities. Let’s explore what you might learn in creative writing classes, and how they help writers of all skill levels.

The Best Online Creative Writing Courses: Contents

What do you do in a creative writing class?

• Reputable Instructor
• Clear Course Description
• Promise of a Great Experience
• Constructive Feedback
• Focus on Craft
• Respect Your Creative Autonomy
• A Writing Community
• Motivate You to Write
• Jumpstart a Writing Habit
• Broaden Your Literary Horizons
• Offer a Healthy Creative Outlet
• Give You Next Steps

How to Make the Most of Online Creative Writing Courses

Every online creative writing class is unique, and different courses emphasize different things. We have classes that are entirely generative, meaning the focus is on writing new poems, essays, stories, or making headway into a novel or memoir project. Other courses might have more of a workshop component, in which you share your work with the class and receive feedback on how to improve your writing.

Some online writing courses also focus on specific skills or types of writing. You might take a class focused entirely on learning the tools for revision, or on learning the elements of fiction writing so you can later employ them in a story or novel.

In short, the best online writing courses typically include the following:

• Lectures and discussions on a topic of creative writing craft.
• Assignments that help you generate new work or revise old work.
• Opportunities to give and receive feedback with your fellow classmates.
• Feedback on your work from the instructor, who themselves is a successfully published author of the type of writing you’re producing.
• A weekly video call. Some courses, including ours, are entirely text-based and asynchronous, but many classes meet at least once a week on Zoom.

In addition to all of this, you will make new friends and connections in the best online creative writing classes. Writing is often a lonely experience for writers, and the bonds you make in creative writing workshops can last a lifetime.

12 Things to Look For In the Best Online Creative Writing Courses

The best online creative writing courses will sharpen your writing skills, help you find your confidence, and introduce you to new communities of writers. How do they do it? Here’s 12 things to look for to make sure you’re spending your money on the right online writing class. 

1. The Best Online Creative Writing Courses Have a Reputable Instructor

Your course is only as good as the instructor who teaches it. For online writing classes to teach you the craft, they need to have reputable, trustworthy instructors. A great instructor will also be empathetic, community-oriented, adaptive to your writing needs, and a great writer themselves.

A great instructor will also be empathetic, community-oriented, adaptive to your writing needs, and a great writer themselves.

Do some research on the course instructor: they should have a terminal degree in their field (M.A., M.F.A., Ph.D., etc.), as well as a significant publication history. A reputable instructor will make all the difference in your course: as part of their education, the instructor should have undergone dozens of writing workshops, submitted to countless literary journals, and had their work scrutinized by critics and book lovers alike.

In order for an instructor to help you develop your creative writing skills, they need to be successful on their own. The best instructors are what make the best online creative writing courses.

2. The Best Online Creative Writing Classes Have a Clear Course Description

What does the course teach you, and what will you learn week by week? In addition to listing a reputable instructor, the course description should tell you exactly what you’ll gain from taking the course.

In addition to listing a reputable instructor, the course description should tell you exactly what you’ll gain from taking the course.

Be sure you know exactly what you’re getting out of your online creative writing course, including what you might learn and write in the process. Consider what will help you the most as you embark on your writing journey: entering a course with certain goals or learning objectives will help you make the most of the course’s lectures and writing assignments.

There should be no ambiguity: if you’re paying for the course, you deserve to know exactly what you’re paying for. And, if you have questions, ask the program administrator before you enroll. They should be happy to hear from you!

3. The Best Online Creative Writing Classes Promise a Great Experience

The best online creative writing courses prioritize one thing: YOU! Your learning, your goals, and your writing should be at the center of your experience. And, your course should guarantee that experience.

The best online creative writing courses prioritize your learning, your goals, and your writing.

Creative writing classes can be a risk, since they probably won’t confer university credit and you probably haven’t interacted with that instructor before. You want to be confident that your learning is guaranteed, otherwise you’ll only waste your time, money, and creativity.

Before you enroll in an online writing course, look to see if the program administrators have a student promise . Your experience in the course should be the number one priority of the instructor and administrators; otherwise, you’re better off looking elsewhere for the best online creative writing courses.

4. The Best Online Creative Writing Courses Offer Constructive Feedback

In addition to useful lectures and assignments, creative writing courses give you access to helpful, instructional feedback. Most instructors hold Masters or Doctoral degrees in English or creative writing and, as a result, they have ample knowledge of what works in literature, as well as tons of experience in giving feedback.

Creative writing courses give you access to helpful, instructional feedback.

In the best online creative writing classes, an instructor will both inspire you to write and guide you towards being a better writer. Their feedback will cover the many aspects of great writing. For example, your instructor might comment on:

• Unclear language
• Ideas that need to be expanded
• Sentences that are too wordy or passive
• Opportunities to use more engaging vocabulary
• Places to improve writing structure
• Grammar and spelling corrections

Finally, an instructor will tell you what you are already doing well in your writing. When you write a really great metaphor , use interesting word choice, or find a moment of great insight, your instructor will tell you—highlighting the creative writing skills you have already mastered.

5. The Best Online Creative Writing Courses Focus on Craft

You might be wondering how creative writing classes are different from high school English. The big difference is that, where a typical English class focuses on basic grammar and literacy skills, creative writing classes focus specifically on craft.

Creative writing classes focus specifically on craft: the elements of language and storytelling that make a work of prose or poetry successful.

What is creative writing craft? Craft involves the elements of language and storytelling that make a work of prose or poetry successful. Focusing on craft is how creative writing classes primarily improve your writing.

Your writing class might focus on the structure of a short story, the different types of literary devices , the importance of effective word choice , or the elements of storytelling . A writing class should break down successful works of literature into the components that make it work, giving you the tools to practice your own creative writing skills.

Additionally, craft-focused writing helps you with everyday writing. From improving your vocabulary to structuring an email, the creative writing practice translates to improved writing in every aspect of your life.

6. The Best Online Creative Writing Classes Respect Your Creative Autonomy

One of the benefits of creative writing classes is the perspective you get from different writers. No two writers are working on the same projects, and in your course, you’re likely to work with students of different genres and writing styles.

your creative authority should be respected no matter how new you are to creative writing.

With so many different writing philosophies in one class, the new ideas you encounter can help strengthen your own writing. But in the worst-case scenario, a student or instructor might try to force their writing philosophy onto you. This is always unfair, as there is no one-size-fits-all writing advice, your creative authority should be respected no matter how new you are to creative writing .

For example, let’s say you’re writing a poem about your childhood cat, and the instructor thinks it should be a poem about your experiences growing up. No matter how many times you explain you want this poem to be about your cat, the instructor keeps telling you to write more about your childhood. By ignoring your goals for the poem, the instructor is not respecting your creative autonomy, because they think they know your writing needs better than you do.

No matter where you are in your writing journey, you are a writer, and you deserve respect and compassion as such. Every writer is on a constant journey of growth and discovery; your instructor and course should acknowledge and respect that. In your course, you will encounter many different ideas, but you should also encounter the freedom to accept or reject those ideas. It’s your writing: you get the final say!

7. The Best Online Creative Writing Courses Foster a Writing Community

A creative writing course fosters a creative writing community . This community gives you the motivation to create, as it creates a safe environment to experiment, take risks, and grow in your writing practice.

A writing community gives you the motivation to create, as it creates a safe environment to experiment, take risks, and grow in your writing practice.

For even the most solitary of writers, writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Participating in a community of word enthusiasts can jog your creativity and give you useful feedback on your work. Additionally, the feedback you provide other writers in the community also helps you learn. It’s a self-fulfilling, self-sustaining process, where members of a writing group can continuously grow, improve, and fine-tune their love of the craft.

In fact, well-known authors throughout history have been a part of valuable writing communities, such as The Beat Poets, Stratford-on-Odeon, and other famous writing groups .

When you enroll in creative writing classes, you also take part in a writing community. Foster relationships, make new writing friends, and forge your own writing group—it may one day be famous, too!

8. The Best Online Creative Writing Classes Motivate You to Write

Writing is a skill that you can only develop through practice. For anyone just starting on our writing journeys, the best online creative writing classes keep you motivated and accountable.

The best online creative writing classes keep you motivated and accountable.

Every instructor works differently, but you can expect the following in a creative writing class:

• Creative writing prompts
• Daily journaling assignments
• Helpful revisions
• Inspirational readings
• Ideas to combat writer’s block
• Different opinions on how to write creatively

Some courses are even designed to motivate you, such as our course Write Your Novel! The Workshop With Jack . Sometimes, the biggest struggle is simply to begin, and creative writing courses help you do that.

9. The Best Online Creative Writing Classes Jumpstart a Writing Habit

The best online creative writing courses will get you into a writing habit. By combining lectures with thought-provoking assignments, one of the primary goals of a writing course is simply to get you writing.

You’ll gain the most from your creative writing courses if you block out the time to write every day.

To make the most of your creative writing classes, try to find time to write every day. It’s best to write at the same time every day, but if your schedule doesn’t allow this, sneak time where you can.

Here are some ways you can steal time as a writer:

• Journal for 15 minutes before you go to bed.
• Write while you wake up with your morning breakfast or coffee.
• Keep a journal on your phone during work and lunch breaks.
• Write on your commute to and from work. If you’re driving, consider keeping an audio journal, where you write by speaking into your phone’s recording device.
• Write on your phone while running on the treadmill.
• Put pen to paper while taking a bath.

These ideas won’t work for everyone, and it all depends on your schedule and lifestyle. Nonetheless, you’ll gain the most from your creative writing courses if you block out the time to write every day, no matter how brief that time is. And, your course should help you find the time to write!

10. The Best Online Creative Writing Courses Broaden Your Literary Horizons

You need to read great writing to produce great writing. The best online creative writing courses will introduce you to great literature, giving you additional opportunities to explore the writing craft.

The best online creative writing courses will introduce you to great literature, giving you additional opportunities to explore the writing craft.

In creative writing classes, you might read both classic and contemporary literature. As writers, it’s good to have knowledge of both worlds. Classic literature introduces you to the bedrock of modern writing, including the devices and rhetorical strategies that make for effective poetry and prose.

Contemporary literature, on the other hand, gives you a glimpse into today’s literary zeitgeist. It’s important to understand today’s publishing landscape and the type of work that’s being published, even if you don’t intend to write like contemporary authors.

In fact, it’s better if you don’t try to write like anyone else! Reading other writers shows you what works in literature and what doesn’t, giving you opportunities to experiment with form and style. But, at the end of the day, your writing is for you, not for publishers or particular writing schools.

Use your creative writing classes as opportunities to explore literature, experiment with words, and discover what you’d like to write yourself.

11. The Best Online Creative Writing Classes Offer a Healthy Creative Outlet

Creative writing classes offer a healthy outlet for your creativity and emotions.

A healthy writing space can supplement your emotional health and wellbeing.

How is that so? With a space to put thoughts to paper, many writers inevitably reach breakthroughs about their own feelings and experiences. This is true regardless of whether you write poetry, fiction, plays, articles, or creative nonfiction.

Now, even the best online creative writing courses can’t replace the benefits of therapy. But, a healthy writing space can certainly supplement your emotional health and wellbeing. Between the prompts, community, and writing habits that a creative writing class fosters, you’re sure to come away from your course with renewed emotional health.

12. The Best Online Creative Writing Courses Give You Next Steps

Your education doesn’t end at the end of your course. If anything, the best online creative writing courses are only the beginning of your writing journey!

The best online creative writing courses are only the beginning of your writing journey!

The best online creative writing courses give you opportunities for continuous growth. Those opportunities can take many forms, such as: a list of literary journals to submit to, further readings on a topic of interest, future creative writing classes, or even simply the instructor’s email.

If you’re ready to move on to the next level of your career, your instructor should provide you with next steps. And if you crave more learning, ask the instructor!

A creative writing course is much like life: the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Being an active participant will teach you as much about creative writing as the instructor will, because engaging with language is how you grow as a writer. Actively working with suggestions and ideas, keeping a daily writing practice, and offering other students constructive feedback will all boost your creative writing skills.

A creative writing course is much like life: the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.

Additionally, do your research before you enroll in the course, or you might end up taking a class that isn’t suited to your needs. Look up the instructor for the course, their teaching style and previous publications, and how much experience they have as a writing coach. If they don’t seem well suited towards your learning style, they might develop your creative writing skills, and they won’t be worth the cost.

Find the Best Online Creative Writing Courses at Writers.com!

Are you looking for a writing community? Are you ready to get writing? Check out some of the upcoming courses at Writers.com , the oldest creative writing school on the internet.

Sean Glatch

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FREE FALL: WRITING AS CREATIVE THERAPY

This practical and participatory weekend workshop explores how Gestalt can be used to develop your creative expression. It’s ideal whether you want to use creative writing for personal satisfaction or professional development.

Who’s the workshop aimed at?

You don’t need any previous experience of creative writing or Gestalt. This two-day workshop is ideal for anyone, at any level, who wants to learn a Gestalt-based approach to creative writing. It’s popular with people interested in using writing in a therapeutic setting, It also attracts people who want to boost their confidence in creative expression – whether for self-help or as a therapeutic tool.

What’s covered?

It’s a predominantly practical workshop, with plenty of writing and sharing. There will also be some brief theoretical discussions to explain the rationale behind the exercises. Themes covered include:

• Free Fall writing as a technique to write through writer’s block
• Autobiographical writing
• Projection as creative discovery
• Secrets, metaphors and poetry as medicine.

Course tutor

Angelika Wienrich is a Certificate tutor on the counselling faculty here at the Gestalt Centre as well as a guest tutor to the Diploma level.  In addition to this Creative Writing as Therapy weekend, she also offers an experiential Gestalt weekend entitled Gestalt in Action.   She has been a psychotherapist since 1988 and has a background in research and higher education. She has also worked as a staff counsellor within the NHS. She holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Creative Writing in Personal Development from Sussex University (gained in 1999) and is a member of the Playback Theatre Company .

£250 self-funded; £290 sponsored

29 & 30 June 2024, in person.

Timings: 10.30 am to 5.30 pm on both days

“It was amazing how quickly I began to let go of my anxiety and my self-censorship. By lunch time I must have written more than 4000 words and shared my excerpts with most of the people in the room.”

Moyra, Leadership Coach

Courses and events to unlock your creativity and inspire a new perspective on life

Get in touch.

Questions on courses, timings or fees? Ready to book your place? Want to know more about room hire or finding a counsellor? We have the answers you’re looking for. Add your name plus a contact email address or telephone number to the contact form and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Alternatively, you can call us (8.30am to 5.30pm, Monday to Friday) on the number below.

CALL US ON 020 7383 5610

• Please contact me about * Please contact me about… Courses and workshops Room hire Finding a therapist/counsellor Low-cost therapy scheme Open evenings and events Problems using this website Something else Add me to your mailing list

“Writing by Prescription”: Creative Writing as Therapy and Personal Development

• Open Access
• First Online: 16 December 2020

Cite this chapter

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• Leni Van Goidsenhoven 5 &
• Anneleen Masschelein 6  

Part of the book series: New Directions in Book History ((NDBH))

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This chapter investigates how-to books on creative “life writing” for therapy, transformative learning, and personal development, in short, therapeutic writing. This subgenre of writing advice is situated in two different domains with psychology and pedagogy on the one hand, and life writing and creative writing on the other hand. After a brief overview of the history of therapeutic writing, we focus on Jessica Kingsley Publishers (JKP), a leading international niche publisher in the field of neurological and cognitive differences. JKP offers a combination of popular-science books, memoirs, and self-help publications, as well as a series of how-to books on writing for therapy or personal development. By this specific grouping of genres and formats, JKP turns its readers into writers and also guides the process of writing by setting out standards for narratives about neurological illness and disability, both in content and form. Combining both textual and contextual analysis, we examine the advice oeuvres of three JKP authors, Gillie Bolton, Kate Thompson, and Celia Hunt, to see how they relate to the therapeutic and self-help ethos as well as to more literary forms of creative writing, and how they negotiate the ideas of becoming a writer through craft, therapy, and self-expression.

You have full access to this open access chapter,  Download chapter PDF

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• Therapeutic writing
• Life writing
• Literary advice
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• Gillie Bolton, Celia Hunt
• Kate Thompson
• Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Introduction

In The Author is Not Dead (2008), Micheline Wandor extensively cites Gillie Bolton’s writing advice for starting authors, a six-minute freewriting exercise, as an example for what creative writing should not be:

For most creative writing teachers, the tone and content of the above is probably not at all problematic. However, this does not come from a CW textbook. It is taken from a patient’s leaflet in a GP surgery, used to help with ‘anxious’ or ‘depressed’ patients. In that context, it may be couched in the most productive way. But the fact that it is indistinguishable from CW advice, should give us all pause. This extract leads into the heart of CW methodology, which is suspended in an uncomfortable contradiction in the Romantic/therapy axis. (Wandor 2008 , pp. 118–119)

In the eyes of Wandor, and of poet and creative writing scholar Nancy Kuhl, good creative writing is about language and craft, rather than about self-expression. While this may be a legitimate therapeutic aim, it is detrimental for the field of creative writing. Creative writing for therapeutic reasons (hereafter “therapeutic writing” or TW) indiscriminately praises all creative efforts, leading to uncritical, unproductive, and overly self-referential writing. Contrary to Wandor and Kuhl, we consider TW handbooks as a subgenre of the contemporary CW handbooks selections which caters to a “niche” of illness and disability narrative writing, which is increasingly becoming part of the field of memoir writing (Couser 2012 , p. 12). At the same time, we will argue that TW handbooks can potentially reach a surprisingly broad and diverse audience of patients, aspiring writers, counselors, creative writing teachers, and qualitative researchers experimenting with new methods of “writing as inquiry” (Richardson and St. Pierre 2005 ). In the twenty-first century, in the wake of the so-called memoir boom, therapeutic writing has left the therapy room and entered the commercial sphere, as a relatively large and stable market for illness and disability narratives has developed (Rak 2013 ). While Kuhl deplores that the “connection between creativity and psychotherapy is relativist and deeply marketplace oriented” (Kuhl 2005 , p. 10), we seek to draw attention not only to the long history and diversity of TW, but also to the possibilities that it can entail.

In the present chapter, we will focus on three of the most important advice oeuvres in this field. Gillie Bolton has published widely on how every person, especially medical professionals and their patients, can benefit from expressive and exploratory writing. Kate Thompson explicitly focuses on journal writing as a therapeutic tool, and Celia Hunt is the founder of a postgraduate program in creative writing and personal development at the University of Sussex. All three authors have been published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers (JKP), a leading international publisher of professional, academic, and self-help books in the field of neurological and cognitive differences. Combining both textual and contextual analysis, we will investigate how the how-to books relate to the therapeutic and self-help ethos as well as to more literary forms of creative writing, and how they negotiate the ideas of becoming a writer, craft, therapy, and self-expression. We will argue that therapeutic writing advice serves as a formal and ideological framework which allows, guides, and also “coaxes” subjects to talk and think about the self, illness, and disability in a particular way (Van Goidsenhoven and Masschelein 2017 , p. 4). While this can be regarded as constraining, the institutional context of JKP also consistently encourages writers to become authors, and thus, against the explicit advice of its handbook authors, to make their personal writings public.

Therapeutic Writing: A Longstanding History and a Heterogeneous Field

The link between writing and health can be traced back to Antiquity, with Apollo as the god of both poetry and medicine, and with practices such as the Laments of Ancient Greece (Sijakovic 2011 ), and the supplication of the Ancient Egyptian through letter writing to the gods to heal diseases. (Williamson and Wright 2018 ). In his essay “Self Writing,” Michel Foucault shows how writing (and reading) in Greco-Roman culture was associated with meditation and how it functioned as a technique of caring for the self and of sustaining “the art of living” (Foucault 1997 , pp. 208–209). 1 Today, the popularity of creative writing as therapy and as a transformative healing purposes is associated with a society immersed in a culture of self-help, confession, and emotionalism, in which the therapeutic discourse has become a major code to express, shape, and guide self-hood (Illouz 2008 , p. 6; Gilmore 2001 ; McGee   2005 ).

In the past four decades, there has been an explosion of interest in the history and practice of creative writing for therapeutic, transformative, and healing purposes, not only from counselors, clinicians, academics, and writers, but also from researchers, who have examined its psychological, social, and emotional benefits. Thus, TW has become an academic, therapeutic, and creative field in its own right, albeit a heterogeneous one. Even those involved, as Anni Raw et al. argue, conceptualize, perceive, and interpret the practice in many different ways (Raw et al. 2012 , p. 97). 2 As a result, the terminology used to refer to therapeutic writing practices ranges from “creative (life) writing for therapeutic purposes,” to “therapeutic creative writing,” “personal expressive and explorative writing,” “expressive writing,” “programmed writing,” “controlled writing,” and so on. Likewise, the definitions may highlight different aspects: transformational and health outcomes, self-expression, or the dichotomy between creativity and craft. Therapeutic writing involves a variety of professions, sites, approaches, and goals. Workshops can be organized as one-to-one sessions, or as groups, led by a writing facilitator who can also be a professional author, a creative writing teacher, as well as a clinician, a health practitioner such as a nurse, a social worker, or therapist. TW can be embedded within another therapeutic trajectory, or it can serve as a therapy on its own. It can take place anywhere according to the maxim that “you only need pen and paper,” and the structure and principles can be adapted to specific groups: prisoners, refugees, children, psychiatric patients, etc. The approaches of TW workshops range from using narrative and psychodynamic models of counseling, to more informal and intuitive styles of practice. Participants are referred to as patients, clients, or service users. Some methods focus on writing by people with mental illnesses (e.g., depression, anxiety, schizophrenia), or somatic illnesses (e.g., asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, immunity), prioritizing either social or aesthetic outcomes, or a combination of the two. Finally, different genres can be chosen for the writing itself, such as journal writing, autobiography, poetry, song lyrics, drama, and letter writing.

Considering this diversity, it is not surprising that academic research on therapeutic writing is found in various disciplines, especially in journals devoted to the intersection between arts and health, journals focused on different forms of therapy, and journals on life writing. Broadly speaking, there are two approaches of the phenomenon: On the one hand exists the quantitative approach of experimental psychologists, who have conducted randomized controlled trials of the effectiveness of TW as a therapeutic tool while on the other hand, within more qualitative-oriented research found in educational studies (and more recently in literary and cultural studies), scholars develop a more holistic view of self-development and creativity. 3

Programmed Versus Non-restrictive Writing

A pioneer of the first type of approach is social psychologist James Pennebaker, who, along with colleagues, experimented with what they call “expressive writing” in relation to psychical and emotional health. In order to measure the effects of expressive writing, the participants’ blood pressure readings, heart rates, and self-reports of mood and physical symptoms are gathered before and after each writing session. Many variations of the Pennebaker procedure have been developed since. 4 The majority of these research projects and therapeutic set-ups work with short writing tasks that are restrictive and highly standardized, hence the term “programmed writing” (L’Abate 2004 ; Smyth 1998 ). The many attempts to systematically prove the effect of therapeutic writing and the preoccupation for quantitative outcomes are likely to go hand in hand with an effort to prove to the effectiveness of art to funding agencies or to more broadly promote its usefulness for society (Swinnen 2016 , p. 1379; Williamson and Wright 2018 ). After years of developing and conducting randomized controlled trials, internationally and across different populations, there seems to be evidence that therapeutic writing produces beneficial effects for patients, although it is not (yet?) clear why this is the case (Hustvedt 2016 , p. 101).

In contrast to the experimental paradigm and its “programmed writing,” a more qualitative approach focuses on so-called non-restrictive writing. The psychological discourse, with its emphasis on empirical evidence and concrete terminology, here gives way to a more humanist and ambiguous vocabulary, using words as such as “soul” (Chavis 2011 , p. 12), “inner picture” (Thompson 2011 , p. 41), “intuition” (Bolton 1999 , p. 35), and phrases like “a page full of tears” (ibid., p. 174), “speaking from the heart” (Moss 2012 , p. 247), and “the art of freefall” (Turner-Vesselago 2013 , p. 37). The research and workshops mostly stem from the idea that the aim of creativity is expression of the self. 5 The rationale follows that writing opens up a “window to the soul” and to the “personal truths” of the sufferer (in this case the person in need of therapy), as Bolton claims: “Writing offers a powerful avenue towards finding out what one thinks, feels, knows, understands, remembers” (Bolton et al. 2006 , p. 3).

Authors in this paradigm favor variable and eclectic writing experiments, indicated as a “multi-faceted” practice (Sampson 2004 , p. 17) or a “multidimensional jigsaw” (Bolton 2011 , p. 9). Workshops are explicitly client-centered and based upon a meaningful relation between client and facilitator, paying attention to imagination and creativity (Bolton, Hunt), to artistic merit in terms of the specific qualities of writing as an act and process (Sampson), and in some cases also to craft (Freely, Hustvedt). Underlying the different approaches, however, is the emphasis on the therapeutic effects of these workshops and on mental and physical well-being they afford. Whereas the experimental approach addresses an academic or specialist audience, the qualitative approaches draw broader audiences of both academics and practitioners, facilitators as well as writers. For this reason, TW advice authors commonly evolve from creating more specialist books (in terms of content) to more popular works such as handbooks. This evolution can be viewed in light of two tendencies: the professionalization of TW, and the pervasiveness of therapeutic culture.

Since the 1980s, in the Anglo-American world TW has been institutionalized by two professional organizations: The National Association for Poetry Therapy (NAPT) in the USA, and The Association for Literary Arts in Personal Development (Lapidus) in the UK. These organizations offer training programs for candidates who boast a double background in psychology (or counseling) and in literature, developing standards, guidelines, and set research agendas. Lapidus is part of the Arts Council policy on literature provision in England, and the academic Journal of Poetry Therapy , edited by Nicholas Mazza, serves as the official mouthpiece of the NAPT. In the twenty-first century, TW as a discipline entered many academic programs in both Medical Humanities 6 and in Narrative Medicine. 7

TW handbooks also fit in with what many studies have described as the “triumph” of therapeutic discourse, usually based on a psychoanalytic understanding of self and society, in the twentieth century. 8 Psychology is not just a body of knowledge produced by formal organizations and experts, and its vocabulary has widely entered into social and cultural life via multiple institutional arenas and mass media. In Saving the Modern Soul, Eva Illouz analyzes the intersections of therapy, self-help, and autobiographical discourse (Illouz 2008 , pp. 7–8). She argues that the combination of popular psychology and the cultural industries has led to the mass-production of objects, like TW handbooks. This has led to the widespread distribution of therapeutic discourse, which has shaped a new qualitative language and interpretative framework to think the self and others (ibid., p. 155). 9 In Illouz’s view, therapeutic culture is a “structure of feeling,” an inchoate, pre-ideological mental structure that is expressed in cultural objects (ibid., p. 156). The problem, according to Illouz, is that the discourse of therapeutic self-help is fundamentally sustained by a “narrative of suffering” (ibid., p. 173). Moreover, it resorts to standardized vocabulary and narrative structures which render it “highly compatible with the cultural industry because narrative pegs can be easily changed […] to renewable consumption of ‘narratives’ and ‘narrative fashions’” (ibid., p. 147).

In her study of self-help literature, Micki McGee ( 2005 ) examines how self-help, one of the most commercial forms of therapeutic discourse, is driven both by an optimistic faith in the perfectibility and capacity for continual improvement of the individual, and by a vicious circularity inherent in the very labels it creates and perpetuates. Therapeutic self-help books are presented as necessary guides to attain the intended realizations of the self, or of the desired achievements possible. While providing a (limited) comfort and improvement for the individual reader, they in fact set in motion a never-ending cycle of “work on the self,” in which suffering and victimhood come to define the self (McGee 2005 , p. 142). In what follows, we seek to draw attention to another type of cycle which may arise from the pervasiveness of therapeutic discourse, i.e., a cycle of consumption and activation, that ultimately allows new voices in the public domain and their (limited) forms of agency. In order to do this, we will take a closer look at the work of niche publisher Jessica Kingsley, that published the majority of TW handbook oeuvres in our corpus.

Jessica Kingsley Publishers: Turning Readers into Writers

Founded in 1987 with a bank loan of £5000, and with eight research books addressing an intended audience of social workers and practitioners, JKP has managed to achieve annual revenue growth for the past 30 years, and now publishes over 250 books a year. Because of their commercial success, they were able to open an office in Philadelphia (USA) in 2004, and have been collaborating with Footprint Books in Warriewood (Australia) as well. Jessica Kingsley herself retired in mid-2018, and sold the company to the multinational publishing house Hachette. Despite this change in management, the company policy remains focused on making specialized knowledge available for non-specialists, and the company still presents itself an independent niche publisher of “books that make a difference” (JKP homepage 2019 ). Although JKP is mainly known for its list on autism spectrum, the company now also plays a leading role in distributing books on neurological difference, healthcare, education, art therapies, social justice, counseling, palliative care, adoption, and parenting, with new areas including gender diversity and Chinese medicine. Across these topics, their catalog features accessible academic research alongside memoirs and handbooks, thus fostering an inclusive and non-hierarchical publishing policy.

Kingsley attributes the company’s commercial success to the combination of a focused and programmatic publishing list, her marketing background, and adherence to a clear policy. At the same time, she does not merely want to conform to the market, but rather their press seeks out new directions in order to counter psychiatric stigmas and negative associations with, for instance, neurological differences (Tivnan 2007 ). For the JKP team, it is key to keep in constant touch with several communities, and by maintaining a close relationship, JKP learns about, and integrates new debates and new voices. As Lisa Clark, editorial director at JKP, states: “Being close to communities and the subject helps with identifying emerging topics and to stay abreast of changing language used around the subject” (Headon 2019 ). This way of working contributes to the emancipatory baseline of JKP’s policy and is visible in their catalog which includes memoirs by people who are traditionally not associated with authorship, even though they report about their lives in narrative forms. In this way, experience transforms into expertise (Van Goidsenhoven and Masschelein 2017 , p. 7).

However, this emancipatory stance has its limits. Although JKP is a niche publisher, it is not an experimental house. Its goal is not only to give voice to authors/communities, but also to create a public, and to sell. This means that JKP is not only looking for existing communities, but also actively creates a community. Today it is common for publishers to invest in reading communities and the construction of a brand profile, but JKP’s efforts to build a community with a highly specific target group are striking. Readers are addressed through intimate issues articulated in a sentimental mode that nonetheless exceeds the personal, and fosters recognition and understanding. 10 What is at stake here, is a form of community where readers are invited to share their experiences in such a way that the line between reading and writing becomes profoundly blurred. On the JKP blog, for instance, author Vanessa Rogers shared her writing tips for aspiring (life writing) authors. The post was accompanied by the straightforward message that “if you’re feeling inspired feel free to send in your proposal to [email protected]” (Rogers 2013 ).

Another manner of blurring reading and writing is through the large portfolio of advice books about creative life writing and therapeutic writing that actively shape the kind of publications that JKP seeks. Finding language to discuss (or even reflect upon) neurological difference or painful events in life is generally difficult, as is writing down your life story. To lower this threshold, JKP offers advice through books about writing, both creative and therapeutic. Twenty-two writing handbooks, published between 1998 and 2016, covering genres like poetry, journal, autobiography, and creative fiction, are included in the Arts Therapies catalog, alongside books on Play Therapy, Drama therapy and Story making, Dance Therapy, Music Therapy, Art Therapy, Mental Health, and Trauma and Wellbeing, addressing professional as well as general audiences. 11 Some of the handbooks are part of a series edited by Gillie Bolton, “Writing for Therapy and Personal Development,” which is framed as “appropriate for therapeutic, healthcare, or creative writing practitioners and facilitators, and for individual writers or courses” (Bolton 2011 , back cover).

The Arts Therapies catalog is dominated by “quest narratives” and “triumph narratives” as the most popular plot structures in the context of illness and disability narratives. 12 The quest story is mostly interpreted as a story that addresses suffering directly, that urges readers to accept failure, illness, or disability, and to use them to their own advantage (Frank 1995 , p. 115). Importantly, the JKP catalog neither focuses on the medical side of the healing process, in which a physician plays the most important role, nor on so-called supercrips, a term for people with an illness or disability who “nonetheless” excel at something like sports or science. Instead, the quest narratives are used to emphasize the positive aspects of being different, to focus on coping strategies in order to overcome obstacles in the interaction between an individual and society, and to highlight the promise of attainable progress and improvement. These formats and storylines are reinforced by paratextual elements, such as the titles that frequently feature phrases like “my way through,” “transformation through,” “healing power of creative expression,” “writing routes,” “writing works,” and “creative solutions for life.” The book covers, glossy and colorful with soft-covers depicting flowers, hearts, upward-leading staircases, writing angels, notebooks, and pens, are strikingly similar to other popular CW handbooks. Their two most recent handbooks, which are more geared toward fiction, both depict drawings of old-fashioned typewriters with colorful letters flying out, suggesting that writing is not just something to do in order to feel better, but also for fun.

The publisher’s explicit foregrounding of formats like the quest and triumph narrative, both in content and in form, can be read as a negotiation with the marketplace, since these stories are more likely to become bestsellers than stories that connote stasis or chaos (Frank 1995 , p. 83). The repetition of formats creates uniformity, which, along with offering a standardized vocabulary for complex and diverse topics, are strategies commonly used by cultural intermediaries like publishers. JKP’s approach nonetheless stands out because it effectively opens up possibilities for new types of voices, who in their writings, to some degree, resist standardization (Van Goidsenhoven and Masschelein 2017 , pp. 15–16). The TW handbooks published by JKP mirror and highlight this ambivalence, and they diverge from other popular CW handbooks in that they are more focused on process than on product: The handbooks encourage subjects to write purely for themselves, not for publication, even though the context of JKP  implicitly upholds this as a possibility.

Three Therapeutic Writing Oeuvres: Gillie Bolton, Kate Thompson, and Celia Hunt

Gillie Bolton, a British consultant in therapeutic and reflective writing, works largely but not exclusively, in health care settings. She comes from a background of teaching creative writing, which she combines in her handbooks with pop-psychology and self-help, and has written eight books, five of which are advice books. All published with JKP (three monographs and two edited volumes), those advice books are currently the most popular handbooks in the field of TW, covering genres from journaling, poetry, prose, and autobiography. They are accessible, geared toward a wide audience, and aim to be both informative and practical.

Bolton’s first advice book ( 1999 ) mainly focuses on the connection between theory and practice, but it already contains exercises and practical information. The two following advice books, Writing Works (2006) and Writing Routes ( 2011 ), are co-edited with Victoria Field and Kate Thompson. They are framed as essential roadmaps, containing a huge amount of examples, among which more than seventy clients/patients who share their writings and experiences. Her two latest advice books, Write yourself (2011) and The Writer ’s Key (2014), are designed as traditional literary advice guides, written in a hands-on and directive style wherein the reader/writer is always openly addressed and every chapter ends with Write! , “a menu of suggestions and strategies” to start writing (Bolton 2014 , p. 15). The directive tone is also visible in the text design and typography. Bolton uses, for instance, many lists describing what one must do and capitals letters in order to stress rules or techniques. 13 In all her handbooks, she explicitly states that the book chapters can be read and used in any order, depending on the reader/writer’s needs. All books contain appendices in which the exercises are arranged by genre (e.g., unsent letters, AlphaPoems, Diary), by client group (e.g., cancer patients, children, or the elderly), and by theme (e.g., childhood, illness, color).

At the same time, Bolton’s exercises are also organized in a “developmental way” (Bolton 2014 , p. 15), offering several foundational exercises which are important to begin with writing. One of Bolton’s most popular foundational exercises is, for instance, a CW-based exercise called the “Six Minute Write” (Bolton 2011 , p. 33), a sort of free (intuitive) writing to overcome beginner’s blocks. While Bolton’s main focus is on creating exercises for writing workshops with therapeutic goals, the handbooks also pay attention to writing as “a way of life” (Bolton et al. 2006 , p. 230). Entire passages are devoted to the act of choosing the best place to write or even the ideal notebook or pen: “Writing materials are significant. Different equipment is likely to create different writings with very different impacts” (Bolton 2014 , p. 41). Important for Bolton is that this way of life is attainable for everyone, since everyone can write: “If you trust yourself you cannot write the wrong thing” (Bolton 1999 , p. 11). This is in line with the democratic idea of self-help, a discourse which pervades Bolton’s advice books, for instance, through the use of certain metaphors such as “the key to unlock […] the secrets” and to “open the door” to your “life solutions” (Bolton 2014 , p. 17), or finding the key to help the writer to return “to the relationship with the self in a direct and immediate way” (Bolton et al. 2006 , p. 27). Also typical for the self-help discourse is the circular quest of continual improvement and reflection. Working on the self is presented as an endless process which “goes round and round in circles – excitingly and dramatically” (Bolton 1999 , p. 87). After all, “we keep on facing life changes” (Bolton 2011 , p. 8), and “when life becomes difficult […] the wisest person to turn to is often oneself” (Bolton 2014 , p. 17). Accordingly, the writing facilitator is like a “midwife” or a “helper-on-the-way” (Bolton et al. 2006 , p. 14). who “support(s). the writers in their own personal explorations and expressions” (Bolton 1999 , p. 128).

Together with Bolton and Field, Kate Thompson is the co-editor of Writing Routes and Writing Works . Unlike Bolton, she does not come from a creative writing background, but is a psychotherapist and certified journal therapist, whose main work is clinical private practice (both online and face-to-face counseling) and supervision of other therapists. Therapeutic Journal Writing: An Introduction for Professionals (2011) is her single-authored handbook in which she develops journal writing as a therapeutic tool. Contrary to Bolton’s advice, the book only focuses on journal writing as a genre, based on a protocol trademarked by Thompson.

The first chapters of Therapeutic Journal Writing offer the theoretical background, history, and key concepts of therapeutic journal writing. 14 Once the basics are covered, the focus shifts toward the techniques and protocol, each technique being elaborated in great detail in a separate chapter, illustrated with cases and ending with a “journal prompt” to get the reader started. The techniques are presented in a progressive way from structured to freer techniques, a principle Thompson borrows from Kathleen Adams’s The Way of the Journal ( 1998 ). 15 The reason for this progressive structure is to offer enough encouragement for less-experienced practitioners and more vulnerable clients. 16 Once the entire protocol has been followed, a personal structured repertoire consisting of several techniques can be assembled and used according to the writers’ own judgments as to what methods are appropriate for different times and for different reasons.

While Thompson consistently uses the word “technique,” and emphasizes the importance of formats and structured exercises, journaling, for her, is also an undeniable creative and personal act (Thompson 2011 , p. 15). This allows her to connect the protocol of expressive writing and the open strategy of handbooks, which further advocate writing as lifestyle, symbolized by the appropriate writing implements (ibid., pp. 41, 43). She encourages her readers to personalize the exercises, and reassures them that “you cannot write the wrong thing” (ibid., p. 53). In typical self-help style, the personal dimension of writing is related to her own experiences: “At each stage of my professional journey I have used therapeutic journal writing […] with myself to monitor my own process both in my professional practice and in my life” (ibid., p. 14). In an article on JKP’s blog that offers some advice on writing for yourself and with a group, Thompson also elaborates on her personal experiences:

My own journey from childhood diary writing in the 1960s to journal therapist in the 21 st century has indeed been an almost lifelong process. This journey continues today, propelling me into the modern work of blogs and internet therapy. (Thompson 2012 )

The integration of personal experience enlivens the protocol, but it also clearly frames journal writing as a technology for monitoring the self in terms of continual improvement (change, healing, growth) and a never-ending cycle of work on the self (from childhood until the present), which can even have benefits for someone’s professional career.

JKP’s third handbook author to be discussed, Celia Hunt, is Emeritus Reader in Continuing Education (Creative Writing) at the Centre for Community Engagement at University of Sussex Here, where she has set up the Certificate in Creative Writing as well as an MA program in Creative Writing and Personal Development with an associated research program in 1996. Hunt was also a founding member and first Chair of Lapidus. At the end of the twentieth century, Hunt published two TW advice books with JKP: The Self on the Page: Theory and Practice of Creative Writing in Personal Development (1998, with Fiona Sampson) and Therapeutic Dimensions of Autobiography in Creative Writing (2000). The former is an edited volume with a triple focus of providing an overview of different TW practices, on the application between theory and practice, and on possible exploration frameworks. The second book is based on Hunt’s doctoral dissertation, and gives a account of her trajectory from a more creative writing context to a therapeutic one. This book starts with a description of her work with students enrolled in an academic Creative Writing and Personal Development course, which means that their writings were graded, and that the therapeutic benefit of writing was present “by chance rather than by design” (Hunt 2000 , p. 186), but it led her to connecting creative writing work with writing as a tool in self-therapy or psychotherapy.

Hunt is convinced that literary techniques can stimulate self-knowledge and therapeutic effects: “Fictionalizing from ourselves and finding a satisfactory form for our fictions helps us to engage more deeply with our inner life, opening up possibilities for greater insight and self-understanding” (Hunt and Sampson  1998 , p. 33). The link between creative writing and self-understanding is of course not new. Hunt consistently refers to seminal CW handbooks, like Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers ( 1973 ) and Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer (1981), which claim that writing appeals to one deepest self. If you want to become a writer, so Brande states, it is best to be a balanced person, and the inverse is true as well: when a writer encounters problems with writing, there will be primarily personal problems, rather than a deficit in equipment and technique (Brande 1981 , p. 33). While Brande and Elbow state that writers need to work on themselves in order to become writers, Hunt turns this around and argues that it is important to (learn to) write in order to achieve a healthy and balanced self.

Stylistically, Hunt’s advice books are dense, providing detailed descriptions of writing exercises, 17 alongside psychoanalytic explanations. Contrary to Bolton and Thompson, Hunt offers a theoretical model of therapeutic writing, based on a “Horneyan literary psychoanalytic approach,” which suggests that writing “throw(s) light on the present structure of the psyche through increasing intellectual understanding and emotional experiencing of the defenses in operation” (Hunt 2000 , p. 160). 18 This psychoanalytic background is linked to Hunt’s post-structuralist literary and narratological frameworks, signaled by narratological concepts like “implied author,” “showing,” and “telling,” and references to scholars like Roland Barthes, Norman Friedman, and Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan. This makes her books less accessible, but then again, accessibility is not her primary intention. In Hunt’s view, TW as practice is not suitable for everyone:

Writing of this kind would clearly not be appropriate for use with all patients or clients, as they would need to feel relatively at ease with the written word and preferably to have some familiarity with writing techniques. I would suggest that this approach might be particularly useful for writers who present with writer’s block, or for people who are accustomed to keeping a diary, or are more generally interested in the literary arts. (ibid., p. 181)

Unlike her fellow authors, Hunt’s focus is on enriching TW with insights from creative writing, literary theory, and psychoanalysis.

Our brief characterization of three important TW advice authors and their oeuvres provides insight into the diversity and eclecticism of TW as a field, even in a commercial context such as JKP. Authors connect different traditions and framework, ranging from psychoanalysis, psychology, literary theory, and self-help, to underpin their theory and methods. Despite their diversity, however, they share a strong focus on writing as a process, rather than as product. For Hunt, writing-as-art and writing-as-therapy are not mutually exclusive (Hunt 2000 , p. 185), but they are qualitatively different. Writing a story for therapeutic purposes is first and foremost done to gain more insight in one’s own feelings. It is only by reworking these first drafts, that communication with the writer within can be achieved. Writing to create a literary product is, therefore, a long and laborious work, which is not for everyone. Likewise, Bolton agrees that a text is a construction that must be worked upon in order to achieve a product capable of communicating effectively with the reader/listener (Bolton 2011 , p. 48). The process is what counts, Bolton states, because patients will not benefit from the idea that they are creating a form of art as soon as they pick up a pen. On the contrary, therapeutic writing is primarily a private practice (Bolton 1999 , p. 225; Thompson 2011 , p. 52).

Still, sharing therapeutic writing with a known, trusted, and intimate audience might have some benefits. A group anthology of shareable, redrafted writings, which can be given to family or friends, can provide a wonderful affirmation. Likewise, an informal reading to the rest of the patients and staff in a hospice day-unit, for instance, can be a heart-warming occasion as well. But Hunt, as well as Thompson and Bolton, are adamant that this is not the same as publishing these writings: “A sense that these booklets should reach a wider public, or that writings could be published nationally, is NOT useful for this kind of writing” (Bolton 1999 , p. 136). This brings us to the heart of the paradox that we outlined earlier: the fact that TW advice occupies such a prominent part of JKP’s catalog and community-building strategy nonetheless reinforces the idea that therapeutic writings are a legitimate genre after all. After all, in JKP’s vision, patients/readers can become authors and/or therapists, and can even achieve star status within this field, as the example of “autie-biographical” author Donna Williams, illustrated (see Van Goidsenhoven and Masschelein 2017 ).

Moreover, as Wandor pointed out in the quote at the beginning of this chapter, the popularity of TW has led to a curious reversal in which TW advice has become increasingly indistinguishable from CW. This is not only due to the low quality of CW handbooks, as Wandor suggests, but also to the rising prominence of autobiographical and non-fictional creative forms as legitimate points of entry into the literary field, wherein we see literary advice manuals closely following these new trends. 19 Unlike Wandor and Kuhl, we do not propose that this phenomenon is in itself is deplorable. If we do see a tendency toward uniformity and standardization in narrative patterns at the commercial end of the offer of illness narratives, we also observe that the genre itself is developing and diversifying, bringing new voices to the fore, which greatly diverge from the previous self-help discourse, in the direction of activism, crip theory, or more experimental forms of creative non-fiction, rooted not only in autobiographical forms of writing, but also in artistic and qualitative research practices. 20

For this reason, it is valuable to draw attention to other feedback loops, apart from those of the self-help discourse that has become to intertwined with therapeutic discourse: Relations between reading and writing, between writing and research, between different domains of writing as a strategy of inquiry, survival and emancipation, and the market. Therefore, as Illouz puts it, when looking at TW handbooks, it is important to momentarily suspend judgment, in order “to understand how they have come to be what they are and why, in being what they are, they accomplish things for people” (Illouz 2008 , p. 4).

“Self Writing” is part of a series of studies of “the arts of oneself,” or “the aesthetics of existence and the government of oneself and of others in Greco-Roman culture” (Foucault 1997 , p. 207). Foucault examines how hypomnemata (a kind of individual notebook serving memory aids) and correspondence (letter writing) helped subjects to deal with emotions (e.g., anger, envy, gossip, flatter) or to overcome difficult circumstance (e.g., grief, exile, ruin, disgrace) (ibid., pp. 209–210). In Foucault’s account, writing and drafting raw material helps the writer to shape her life.

Several scholars have voiced the need for a general conceptual framework to ground therapeutic writing (Nicolls 2009 ; Hunt and Sampson 1998 ; Sampson 2004 ). There are a few valuable attempts to give an overview of the research literature across disciplines (Wright and Chung 2001 ; Williamson and Wright 2018 ), and to unravel the plethora of different terms and interpretative frameworks (Clift et al. 2009 ; Cox et al. 2010 ; Raw et al. 2012 ).

In their overview of the field, Wright and Chung ( 2001 ) speak of a continuum between a “mastery” and a “mystery” approach. Swinnen ( 2016 ) also makes a distinction between two types of publications, where one type is more interested in psychology, methodology, and measuring impact, while the other type is more interested in experiences and creativity.

Smyth et al. ( 1999 ) directed a similar study, but with a focus on journal writing and physiological symptomatology. Ryle ( 2004 ) and Prasko et al. ( 2009 ) conducted studies about journal and letter writing in the context of Cognitive Analytic Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

Depending on the framework in which the concept is used, “creativity” can denote a product, process, or a skill. Often, authors differentiate between Creativity with a capital C, the exceptional achievements of artists, scientists, and “small c creativity,” i.e., psychological skills rooted in everyday activities. In the field of therapeutic writing, creativity is interpreted as part of psychological growth, and the effects of engaging in creative practices are understood as beneficial for one’s quality of life and well-being (Swinnen  2019 , pp. 1–2).

Medical Humanities focuses on what the arts and humanities can offer to health care and medicine, not only in terms of improving medical education, but also by offering insight into human experiences of illness, disability, and medical interventions (Bleakley 2015 , pp. 12-59, Evans 2002 ; Brody 2011 ). Through a range of creative, arts-based interventions, they aim to affirm personhood and redress the biomedical focus on deficit and loss.

Narrative Medicine, a term introduced by M. D. Rita Charon, is defined as “a clinical intervention based on a specific communicative competence a fundamental tool to acquire, comprehend and integrate the different points of view of all the participants having a role in the illness experience” (Fioretti et al. 2016 , p. 8). Narrative Medicine is mainly involved in re-orienting medical education. In order to improve the narrative skills of physicians, Narrative Medicine draws on methods such as close reading of literature and reflective writing, based on the assumption that literary competence can improve empathy (Charon 2001 , p. 1897).

See Moskowitz ( 2001 ), Furedi ( 2003 ), Madsen ( 2014 ) and Wright ( 2011 ). Wright ( 2011 ) and Eva Illouz ( 2008 ) try to avoid the overemphasis of the pernicious effects of therapeutic culture, in order to provide a more nuanced explanation of the triumph of therapeutic culture.

The therapeutic discourse and its objects (like TW handbooks) are imbued with the Western notion of “healing.” For a more nuanced, critical and vexed claim of “healing” in the context of illness and disability, we like to refer to Eli Clare’s Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure ( 2017 ), a “writing mosaic” (xv) in which he uses his own experiences, multibranched pattern of histories and ideas and critical analysis to explore the many meanings of “cure,” “healing” and “fixed bodyminds.”

This community-building based on intimate issues and sentimental rhetoric adds up to what Lauren Berlant in The Female Complaint has called “intimate publics” of readers/consumers, i.e., a sense of community “constituted by strangers who consume common texts and things” (Berlant 2008 , p. viii), in which they participate in diverse forms of suffering and fantasies of transcendence.

This is the online classification on the JKP website. The printed catalog of 2019 is slightly different in terms of categorization.

In fact, the entire JKP catalog is dominated by quest narratives, but in some sub-catalogs, like that of autism, the quest is supplemented by the triumph narrative. A triumph plot implies a happy ending and achieving an idea of “normality” (Couser 2001 , pp. 79–80).

Lists are made out of directive assignments as: “Choose a peaceful time with at least 20 minutes UNINTERPUTED, and ALONE” (Bolton 2014 , p. 33).

Thompson even refers to James Pennebaker’s work, an exponent of the experimental paradigm (Thompson 2011 , pp. 26–27).

Examples of structured (and thus safe and controlled) techniques are, for instance, prompts for overcoming the first blank page (e.g., answering question, completing sentences, making a dialogue with the notebook), making lists, drawing a mind map, making acrostics and alpha poems. Examples of freer techniques are journal dialogues (i.e., imagined dialogues with the journal itself, or with other people, an illness, or an object), unsent letters (writing a letter to someone or something), and changing perspective (rewriting the narrative from another viewpoint or character).

The latter group receives markedly more attention than in other advice books. Thompson mentions for instance “working with (people with) low levels of literacy,” or “working with people who are unable to write” (Thompson 2011 , pp. 192–193).

For instance: Overcoming the Block by Freewriting (Hunt 2000 , p. 20), The Words to Say it: Dramatizing Real Events using Dialogue (ibid., p. 29), and Melody of Two Voices: Creating a Fictional First-Person Narrative (ibid., p. 31).

The importance of Karen Horney’s psychoanalytic theory is motivated by an emphasis on the present, seeking to explain psychic phenomena in terms of their function within the present character structure, whereas classical Freudian theory is diachronic, explaining the present in terms of the past (Hunt 2000 , pp. 64, 159). Hunt’s later work (which is not published with JKP) focuses more on a bodily felt-sense approach, based on neurophysiological, psychodynamic, and cognitive models of the self (Hunt 2006 , 2010 ).

In McGurl’s chronology of the influence of creative writing on postwar American phase, the phase subsumed under the maxim “Find your own voice!” occurs more or less in the 1970s and 1980s and is concomitant to the rise of identity politics (McGurl 2009 , Chapter 4).

Seminal essays on writing as inquiry are “Writing: A Methods of Inquiry” (2005) by Laurel Richardson and Elizabeth St Pierre and “Working at the Wonder: Collaborative Writing as Method of Inquiry” (2017), by Ken Gale and Jonathan Wyatt. In his most recent book, Therapy, Stand - Up, and the Gesture of Writing ( 2018 ), Wyatt is exploring the possible connections between therapy, stand-up comedy and writing as a method of inquiry. He theorizes these connections with the concept of “creative-relational inquiry.” Other researchers working on this topic are Norman Denzin, Caroline Ellis, Bronwyn Davies, and Jasmin Ulmer.

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Leni Van Goidsenhoven has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC). under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 804881).

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What Creative Arts Therapies Teach Us About DBT Skills Training

Bridging dbt with the arts for deeper understanding..

Posted April 15, 2024 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

• What Is Therapy?
• Find a therapist near me
• Research supports the effectiveness of combining DBT with creative arts to improve outcomes.
• Facilitators can teach wise-mind skills through drama therapy techniques.
• Action-based DBT utilizes storytelling and role-play to make skill learning more accessible and impactful.

In the ever-evolving realm of mental health, therapists are always exploring new and innovative methods to enhance traditional treatments. Creative arts therapists have led the way in utilizing art-based interventions to teach DBT skills.

Creative arts therapy combines visual arts, movement, drama, music, writing, and other creative processes to support clients in their healing process. Many mental health clinicians have embraced creative arts therapy interventions to improve their clients' health and wellness.

There is a growing body of research that indicates that therapists can utilize creative interventions to help clients learn and generalize DBT skills. In this post, I will provide a brief literature review of therapists who have been doing this integrative work and provide an example of how drama therapy can be utilized to teach the DBT skill of wise mind.

DBT and Art Therapy

Research indicates that integrating art therapy into established psychotherapy forms, such as cognitive-behavioral therapies, can have significant positive effects on client well-being. For example, a study by Monti et al. (2012) demonstrated the potential of mindfulness -based art therapy (MBAT) in alleviating emotional distress, highlighting the power of combining art therapy with the core feature of mindfulness in DBT. Though this study did not specifically discuss DBT, it demonstrated that implementing mindfulness, a core component of DBT, can assist individuals who are facing significant physical and emotional stressors.

Building on research that examined mindfulness and art therapy, several practitioners have contributed articles that specifically address the integration of DBT and art therapy within clinical populations. For example, researchers Huckvale and Learmonth (2009) led the charge by developing a new and innovative art therapy approach grounded in DBT for patients facing mental health challenges. Furthermore, Heckwolf, Bergland, and Mouratidis (2014) demonstrated how visual art and integrative treatments could help clients access DBT, resulting in stronger generalization and implementation of these skills outside of the session. The clinicians concluded that this integrative approach to treatment could reinforce skills, contribute to interdisciplinary team synergy, and enact bilateral integration.

Other notable examples from art therapists include Susan Clark’s (2017) DBT-informed art therapy, a strategic approach to treatment that incorporates creative visual exercises to explore, practice, and generalize DBT concepts and skills.

Expanding Beyond Visual Art Therapy

DBT has now been integrated with other expressive art therapies, including drama and music. Art therapists Karin von Daler and Lori Schwanbeck (2014) were instrumental in this expansion when they developed Creative Mindfulness, an approach to therapy integrating various expressive arts therapies with DBT. Creative Mindfulness “suggests a way of working therapeutically that is as containing and structured as DBT and as creative, embodied, and multi-sensory as expressive arts” (p. 235). These clinicians incorporated improvisation into their work, a tool that can be simultaneously playful, experiential, and grounding, ultimately producing substantial new insights for clients.

Moreover, music and drama therapists have recognized the benefits of multisensory skill teaching, expanding the creative techniques used to teach DBT skills ( Deborah Spiegel, 2020 ; Nicky Morris, 2018 , and Roohan and Trottier, 2021 ).

My Own Experience Integrating Drama Therapy and DBT

Personally, I am a big advocate of both dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and drama therapy. In fact, I love these modalities so much that I dedicated not only my master's thesis but also my dissertation to better understanding how to reinforce DBT skills through dramatic techniques. In the process, I developed a new approach called Action-Based DBT that uses dramatic interventions like storytelling, embodiment, and role-playing to create a supportive environment for participants to learn skills in a more personalized and embodied way. An expert panel review demonstrated that this format can effectively support skill learning, especially for clients who struggle with the standard format of DBT skills training. Additionally, mental health clinicians found the program easily adaptable across populations in both individual and group settings.

Embodying the Mind States

To illustrate this approach and its effectiveness, the following is an example of how drama therapy methods can teach the DBT skill of wise mind within the context of an action-based DBT group.

The facilitator begins the group session by reviewing general guidelines and introducing the targeted DBT skill for the day: wise mind. The group then participates in improvisational warm-up activities to promote creativity , positive social interaction, and group connectivity. Following the warm-up, the facilitator distributes the DBT mind states handout (Linehan, 2015) and provides brief psychoeducation on this skill. Three chairs are placed in the front of the group room, facing the semi-circle of clients. Each chair had a piece of colored construction paper taped to the front, reading as Reasonable, Wise and Emotion . The facilitator explains that each chair represents one of the three mind states: reasonable mind, emotion mind and wise mind. To encourage exploration of the mind states, the facilitator can assign a more specific role to each state of mind. For example, the reasonable mind is The Computer, the emotion mind is The Tornado, and the wise mind is The Sage. Group members are invited to think of a scenario in which they felt they had difficulty accessing their wise mind. Clients then take turns embodying each mind state by sitting in the chair and speaking from the respective role. When a client first sits in a chair, the facilitator aids in enrolling the individual by asking questions about the role (i.e. The Computer, The Tornado, The Sage). For example, the facilitator may ask about the posture, tone of voice, or a “catchphrase” for this role. The client then embodies the role and responds to questions from the group as the specific mind state. After the embodiment, clients engage in verbal processing. The wise mind directive supports clients in developing kinaesthetic awareness of the three mind states. Embodying these mind states within the context of a supportive group and engaging in verbal processing around the experience can increase awareness of the mind states, which is helpful for clients who are trying to understand their emotional response to lived events outside of the group setting.

The creative arts therapies offer a dynamic pathway to teaching and reinforcing DBT skills. Incorporating visual art, drama, or music in the process of learning DBT skills allows clients to engage with these concepts in a multisensory and embodied way.

In my personal experience, weaving drama therapy techniques into DBT skills training has proven to be profoundly impactful. The Action-Based DBT approach, with its emphasis on storytelling and embodiment, offers an immersive and experiential learning environment that can be especially beneficial for those who find traditional methods challenging.

Looking ahead, my next post will delve into how storytelling can be harnessed to teach DBT skills in a way that is both engaging and memorable.

To find a therapist, please visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory .

Clark, S. M. (2017). DBT-informed art therapy: Mindfulness, cognitive behavior therapy, and the creative process. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Heckwolf, J. I., Bergland, M. C., & Mouratidis, M. (2014). Coordinating principles of art therapy and DBT. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 41(4), 329-335.

Huckvale, K., & Learmonth, M. (2009). A case example of art therapy in relation to dialectical behaviour therapy. International Journal of Art Therapy, 14(2), 52-63.

Monti, D. A., Kash, K. M., Kunkel, E. J., Brainard, G., Wintering, N., Moss, A. S., Rao, H., Zhu, S., & Newberg, A. B. (2012). Changes in cerebral blood flow and anxiety associated with an 8-week mindfulness programme in women with breast cancer. Stress and Health, 28(5), 397-407.

Morris, N. (2018). Dramatherapy for borderline personality disorder: Empowering and nurturing people through creativity. Routledge.

Roohan Mary Kate, Trottier Dana George. (2021) Action-based DBT: Integrating drama therapy to access wise mind. Drama Therapy Review, 7 (2), 193 https://doi.org/10.1386/dtr_00073_1

Spiegel, D., Makary, S., & Bonavitacola, L. (2020). Creative DBT activities using music: Interventions for enhancing engagement and effectiveness in therapy. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Von Daler, K., and Schwanbeck, L. (2014). Creative mindfulness: Dialectical behavior therapy and expressive arts therapy. In L. Rappaport (Ed.), Mindfulness and the arts therapies: Theory and practice (pp. 107-116). Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Mary Kate Roohan, Psy.D., is a licensed psychologist and drama therapist and the founder of Thrive and Feel, a therapy practice that supports clients in managing emotional sensitivity.

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