The Spiral of Increasing Self-Awareness

Creative Writing for Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse

Abstract

A growing number of studies on the effects of expressive writing demonstrate an improvement in the long-term physical health of participating writers. However, the findings for psychological and emotional health benefits are not as robust or consistent. With reference to the transformation-through-writing model, I take an autoethnographic approach to explore how creative writing supported an increasing level of self-awareness about my own experience of childhood sexual abuse. I attribute the positive effect writing had on my psychological and emotional health to a combination of concepts discussed in the literature on expressive writing, namely emotional catharsis and cognitive processing. From this analysis, I suggest that creative writing may be an effective healing model for adult survivors of childhood trauma if the expressive writing paradigm is adjusted to align with individual stages of healing, recognize the individual’s culture and coping style, and provide sufficient time for the individual to heal through writing.