writingtherapy

Photo by Donald Kinney

Phyllis Klein, LCSW
Psychotherapy and Women 415-273-1036

...and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard...
Audre Lorde, Litany for Survival

Therapeutic Writing: An 8-week group starting in early 2008, focused on writing for those healing from grief, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, or trauma. We will use poetry, writing prompts, and group discussion as catalysts for the creative healing process. No previous writing experience needed. Two separate groups in two locations: downtown San Francisco and Palo Alto.

Poetry & Meditation: Connecting the Mind, Body, and Spirit through reflection and creativity. A one day workshop co-led by me and Shaila Catherine, Founder of Insight Meditation South Bay.

Next date and time To Be Announced

This workshop will help you take a break from life's stress and focus inward. No meditation or writing/poetry experience is needed and all levels of meditators and writers are welcome. We will foster a safe atmosphere to create and share. CE Credits available for therapists.

For more information about these upcoming events contact me at 415-273-1036 or gethelp@womenintherapy.com for more information.

Poetry Therapy, Writing to Heal
 A brief description of how writing can heal and two poem excerpts to illustrate how poems can deliver their messages of healing.

Writing provides a way to cope with physical and emotional pain, a method of connecting with others directly and indirectly, a container for experience and emotions that may feel unbearable in the moment. Creativity of any kind is healing, I believe, because it links us spiritually and emotionally with ourselves and others. Think about reading a poem or essay that moves you, maybe even runs a chill of beauty down your spine, or an “ah” of recognition, that means “Yes, I have also felt this way and when I read this I know I am not alone.” It could be that you are entering into a deep “relationship” with the author who, in speaking her voice, helps you understand yourself. When you write your own words or poems, you are connecting with yourself in this way, and when others hear or read your words, you are giving them the same opportunity to empathetically respond to you.
In poetry therapy we write from our hearts. There is no emphasis on craft or skill, this writing is the kind that springs from another place than the mind alone, and would not want to be stifled. Poetry has been viewed as the carrier of a message from the unconscious to the conscious mind. Sometimes what you write from your heart could contain an important surprise or a seed of great healing. Even just one image can be a powerful soothing balm. For a woman who had just put her cat to sleep, the last line of her friend’s poem was that kind of image (written to the cat about the owner): “her hand will always be upon your back.”
When you write something down, it moves from inside to a safe place contained on a page. You create something that can feel just the way the poet Mary Oliver does when says she was “hurrying through her soul”.
In another poem, The Buddha’s last instruction Mary Oliver says:
...And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I’m not needed
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value...

In this excerpt from Rumi’s poem Where Everything is Music, the poet tells about how poems heal us.

...Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out...

translated by Coleman Barks

Eating Disorders & Pregnancy