How creative writing has become my most effective therapy.

I started writing when I came back from India. It made sense for me to go there for differents reasons. 1) I wanted to learn hindustani classical music. 2) I wanted to see the country that originated spiritual lingo like karma, prana, yoga, nirvana, et caetera. 3) I also wanted to see for my own eyes if all the legends about this infamously chaotic country were true and compare them to what I saw in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 4) I also love indian food and had been meditating daily for almost two years by that point. So yes it made sense to go there. So when a friend of mine told me he was there while I was having a boreout at my job, I was in India two weeks later.

Look… Why should I care about this story? You’re supposed to write about writing.

I know, I know, wait for it. So the important thing to realize is that in my life story, I went to India a little bit late, especially for the whole spiritual/wellbeing part. I was already meditating everyday, I’d had a few mystical/revelatory experiences, I had accepted a lot of the darkness that I had in me, I made peace with a lot of my past, so to be honest: I wasn’t searching for anything. Yes, I was in search of some musical teachers. But I wasn’t in search of some guru. I was simply curious about the country. Now, did I meet some gurus? Yes. Did I learn stuff about myself and the world? Yes. Did it deepen my inner wellbeing in some way? Yes! But I wasn’t looking for those things, they just came to me. I got to meet the Dalaï Lama, live in spiritual communes, go to a hindu festival that happens once every twelve years, play flute with some musical legends, ride a motorcycle in the himalayas (was my first ridinga motorcycle), meet…

*Yawn* Very Impressive. *Yawn* I’d still like to know what the link is with writing?

Wait a second, I’m getting there. So what I mean is that I had a great trip, but I wasn’t looking for some kind of spiritual/absolute truths. I was like let’s see what the fuss is about India. BUT, I did meet a lot of foreigners who were looking for exactly that. While talking with them, I noticed something: I was actually repeating, repeating and repeating some “truths” discovered in my own journey. The kind of truths that those seekers hadn’t discovered yet. I also noticed that it actually helped them figure some stuff out. Now let’s be clear, not everybody was open to what I was saying. Some people were saying that things can’t be as simple as relaxing your breathing. Or that some obscure guru wrote some line in some book that I should really know if I want to be enlightened or something. Or that absolute love is…

*Yawn* Look, I don’t have the time for your life story. Writing and therapy! Go!

OK OK. I just meant to say that probably the most important decision in my life was taken in India and here it was: “I’m just going to write a spiritual book that I can shove in the face of those seekers, because those kind of ‘spiritual’ conversations bore the hell out of me”. Yes, this was the exact thought which launched me into writing. When I came back in Brussels, the first thing I did is look for writing workshops, found them and I’ve been writing ever since.

Great, very interesting. And the therapy part please?

Yes, of course. So while writing, I noticed that sometimes the words would take over. That the sentences come into the mind and you can’t write fast enough to catch them all. The weirdest thing was that those texts, were usually the best ones. The kind of texts that needed no editing at all. It was like those texts came from some other place and used me to get onto the paper and into real life. I would notice something else: I would be writing about a mercenary in a dystopian future trying to find meaning in the actions he’s doing for his employers and when the text was finished, I would see how this text fully mirrored my real life job. Now here is the fun part, not only would it mirror real life, it would actually go further. These automatic/unconscious/trance-induced texts would say something deep the situation. Something that I hadn’t noticed about the real life situation it was mirroring.

Wait a minute, what are you saying here?

OK wait for it, are you sitting comfortably on your chair right now? I think you should sit down. I noticed that these finished texts were actually sorting stuff out in my mind about topics that would obsess me. I had discovered a way of dealing with inner turmoils. No need for a therapist, no need for meditation, ho’oponopono, shadow work, mantra’s, zen koans or whatever, I would just connect with the the turmoil and let it come out on a page and whenever the text was finally finished, The turmoil would be sorted out in a deeper part of me.

*Takes notepad and pen* Wait, but how does this work exactly?

I don’t know. The only thing I do know is this: I have to trust the process and finish the text. If I don’t finish the text, the turmoil stays. When I mean trust the process, some texts are finished after 50 words. Others can be waaaaaaaaay longer. And I have no way of knowing in advance which texts will be long or short. This can be difficult, because the strategy of writing a long text and short one are very different. I wrote 4 full books in about three years now and probably about 50 short stories (this second number is going up. I’m writing one short story a week for my podcast now).

4 books? Without knowing that you were writing long books?

Yeah, I know. Take the first one, le monde de Sylvie. I started it because I couldn’t connect with the team I was working with as a consultant. I felt so alienated on so many levels that I wrote a story about a 40 year old woman alienated from society because of her mental illness. Or when I couldn’t understand how people stayed hunkered down in their beliefs and wrote Utopie 2.0, a book about a futuristic sect giving you a paradise tailored exactly for you. You know, like algorythms of social networks providing you links based on your own biases so you keep clicking and generating ad revenue for big tech companies who…

So like… Did writing those help you?

Yes, a lot. Le monde de Sylvie helped me realize that everybody is different and it’s okay as long as people don’t impose worldviews on one another. Intégrations ratées (the one about the dystopian mercenary) made me realize that society is what it is and created by the choices we do as humans. Utopie 2.0 taught me that if any type of awakening can or should happen, it can only happen on an individual level and that human nature is coded in us with all its flaws and beauties. Hors temps taught me to see the beauty in simplest things, that we don’t need social networks, entertainment or anything else to enjoy life. Just the magic of being alive can be enough. La brume, a short story, taught me the importance learning to accept that perfect information is impossible to get and that the art of living is being able to make decisions based on imperfect information to…

*Yawn* Very interesting *Yawn* but what can I do about all this?

• Start writing about the stuff that obsesses/irritates/frustrates/frightens you.
• Take a workshop and support your local writers.
• Read more.
• Share your writings with you closed ones.
• Trust your unconscious, it is a part of you. It wants the best for you, even though it can be stupid in its own way
• If you’re a therapist, integrate automatic writing into your practice.
• Start seeing life as a metaphor for your inner transformation.
• Inversely start seeing your inner workings as a reflection of life.

Writing has been an amazing adventure for me and I believe it can be for anyone. If you liked this article, like it. If you’d like to comment, comment. If you’d like follow-up information, contact me. Enjoy life.