“I became a writer out of desperation … When I was young, younger than I am now, I started to write about my own life, and I came to see that this act saved my life.”
– Jamaica Kincaid, My Brother.
Expressive writing; intuitive writing; therapeutic writing. You’ve heard these phrases. If you are a writer of any kind – a poet, or a fiction writer, or you write in your journal often – you probably already understand how writing can help figure out who we are, where we want to go, and how to work through difficulties in our lives.
So, what is structured, expressive, intuitive, therapeutic writing?
Guided practice
Kathleen (Kay) Adams, a prominent and established voice in the field, is one of these. An author of 12 books on the power of writing, a psychotherapist, and poetry and journal therapist, Adams made a pivotal decision in the mid-1980s to make this new and ever-developing field her life’s work. And she has never looked back.
“I started writing a journal when I was a kid,” she said in a recent Zoom interview. “I thought I would write novels but ended up as a writer and editor for a publishing company in Denver. After six wonderful years in publishing, I realized that publishing wasn’t the work I was put on this planet to do.”
Hence, a grad program in counseling that led to giving workshops, and then the first pillars of her acclaimed Therapeutic Writing Institute, founded in 2008. It has trained and certified facilitators and practitioners, therapists, writers, educators, and more from around the world.
“I felt so divinely inspired,” Adams said. “The practice of intuitive writing allows us to read our own minds, which is enormously useful for people who want to know themselves with certainty and seek tools to soothe themselves when they are in distress. Not only does this allow us to see what we know; it allows us to find out what we don’t.
“I knew that if I stayed focused on making this work and my vision more accessible, I would make the healing art and science of journal writing accessible to all who desire self-directed change. This is my mission.”
Therapeutic roots
Structured therapeutic writing as a deliberate practice began to take shape in the 1960s and 1970s through the work of Ira Progoff, while the later term “expressive writing” and its experimental paradigm were launched by James Pennebaker in the mid-1980s.
Parallel to these developments, poetry therapy emerged as a distinct, historically grounded practice that uses reading, writing, and performing poetry to foster emotional processing, identity work, and interpersonal connection within a therapeutic frame.
Because it is a relatively new field, facilitators/practitioners in the therapeutic expressive writing fields – which include journal writing and poetry therapy – add to its development through their own work.
Avigail Antman, a poet editing her fourth book, creative writing teacher, and facilitator of expressive writing for autistic youths and victims of sexual assault, is the creator of the National Library of Israel’s Ararat Program – Resilience of Spirit. The program she created with a friend, also a psychologist, was aimed at doctors and mental health professionals treating victims and families of victims of the October 7 attack, individuals displaced by the war, and those evacuated as a result of it.
In six five-hour sessions, Antman and her partner Ayellet Cohen Wieder introduced participants to the calming spaces of the new library building, shared inspirational texts and items from its collections, and led them in therapeutic reading and writing exercises.
“I see how people are eager to express themselves through writing. Once the competitive area is neutralized, writing is approachable to all. This kind of effortless writing gives people the ability to release what they carry inside. I believe this is the only way to be healthy,” she said.
Therapeutic, expressive writing, also called intuitive writing, has been proven to improve health and quieten anxiety.
Pennebaker has held empirical tests to prove that putting painful or emotionally charged experiences into words can help people make sense of traumatic experiences, reduce psychological distress, and, in some cases, support physical health. His work suggests that while writing does not erase the trauma or hardship, it creates a structure for understanding experience, which may make difficult emotions more manageable over time.
As an author and longtime journalist myself, I have used journal and poetry writing to deal with difficult events in my own life – and I came into this profession believing fully in the healing power of writing. This method allows people to write however they want, without worrying about grades or what others will say.
It is different from creative writing in several ways. First, your writing is yours and yours only. If you are in a group setting, you share it only if you want to. The writing is followed by a reflection session in which you read what you wrote and try to make sense of what it might be telling you.■
“I believe that writing is an account of the powers of extrication.”
– John Cheever, The Journals.
“I am the only one who can tell the story of my own life and say what it means.”
– Dorothy Allison, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure.
Gwen Ackerman, MA, CJF, is the author of the 2017 novel Goddess of Battle.