Session Info:
Psychological research has shown that expressive writing – in particular writing about yourself – can enhance your mood, improve your physical health, lift your grades and even boost your memory. Writing helps us focus and organize our thoughts around emotional upheavals and health setbacks.
As part of a Doctorate in Creative Writing, author and broadcaster Sian Prior wrote a book called Shy: A Memoir (Text Publishing, 2014) in which she explored the distress she had experienced dealing with chronic social anxiety, and the grief she felt following the traumatic end of a long-term relationship. The experience of putting these feelings into words had profoundly therapeutic effects. Her second book, Childless: a story of freedom and longing (short-listed for The Age Book of the Year 2022) involved a similar process of using writing for emotional healing. She is passionate about sharing the knowledge she has gained during this cathartic process.
Sian has been running Writing for Wellbeing (also called Writing as Therapy) workshops for eight years, both online and in person, for libraries, community groups and for The School of Life.
Her aim is to encourage participants to develop regular life-writing practices to help them cope with the emotional and physical challenges they will inevitably confront in their lives. No previous writing experience is required.
For more information: https://www.sianprior.com/writing-as-therapy-courses
Topics:
- The therapeutic benefits of expressive writing
- Finding the ‘story’ behind your ‘situation’
- Developing emotional literacy
- ‘Good Things’ journals and ‘Hope’ journals
- Writing as catharsis
- Writing the ‘dialogical self’
Option One
- Duration: 120 minutes (Introduction to Writing for Wellbeing workshop)
- Requirements: Whiteboard and whiteboard markers.
- Cost: $600 (any additional travel costs to be negotiated)
Option Two
- Duration: Four x 120 minute workshops (Four-part Writing for Wellbeing workshop series)
- Requirements: Whiteboard and whiteboard markers.
- Cost: $2,400 (any additional travel costs to be negotiated)
Bookings: https://www.sianprior.com/contact
[Posted on behalf of Sian Prior]