Offload writing

I have often encouraged clients to use this process to manage unwanted thoughts and feelings, and I have found it useful to do myself.

Writing is always available

Writing is something that can be done at any time and in any place, and is there when there are no support people available. It is quiet, cheap and portable and can help us to offload thoughts and emotions so that we can identify why we are feeling as we are, and what we might need to do as a result.

Overcoming barriers to writing

Past bad experiences with writing, like having someone read our private diary or having our written work criticised at school, may make us think that writing is not for us. Offload writing, however, is different to this as there are no rules about spelling and grammar or composition, and we are only writing for ourselves. We need to forget everything we have been told about writing.

How to do it

Take just one piece of paper that is about one quarter of the size of an A4 sheet and use only this sheet, writing over the top of things already written (again and again if needed). This way we will not be tempted to re-read what we have already written (re-filling our minds) and no-one else will be able to read it either.

We need to choose a time and place where we won’t be interrupted for about half an hour – having a time limit make help us to feel more comfortable, but we can take as long as we want to. It is a good idea to continue for as long as we need to, just putting our thoughts and feelings down on paper as they come. Continue until there is a shift in thoughts or feelings. We can just write words alone and any words we like – full sentences are not needed.

When feeling stuck, just write this for a while – and this usually frees us up to write more.

What to do afterwards

We will end up with a piece of unintelligible scribble that is easy to tear up and throw away, as we tell ourselves that we are now letting go of these thoughts and feelings.

If the process has given us new insights that are worth recording, we can do this now in a journal.

Then we need to follow this activity with doing something comforting and/ or enjoyable for ourselves.