Writing emotionally charged stories

You may find this therapeutic

Jul 08, 2022

Dear all

Earlier this week at a work event in Manchester, I was reminded of the power of emotionally charged memories to take us unawares. At the beginning of my creative writing workshops, I say, ‘you may find this writing therapeutic, but this is not a therapy group’. Regulars joke that although I warn them against it, they do in fact, find it therapeutic - both coming together as a group to share stories and writing itself. Writing helps my wellbeing, but I am not trained as a counsellor or therapist and so cannot hold space for people to process their emotions in that particular therapeutic way. But I do practice noticing my thoughts and feelings, listening to what needs to be said in writing and I pass on tips and techniques that I find helpful in the process.

I am standing in the main hall of the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, setting up for a community event. There are sofas, armchairs, cushions ready to create a public living room. Across the hall, people are setting up a yurt. The day and space is being set up to encourage conversations about problems in health and social care and how we can work together to come up with solutions. There will be various creative performances, installations and activities that evolve from the people and organisations attending.

A voice comes through the sound system from a man sitting on the stage rehearsing for his later performance. He begins to tell a story. I unpack bunting, stretch it out, look around to see where it can go. The words from the voice echo in my heart and I feel the tears rising. I am at work, I keep it in, busying myself with unpacking boxes, ‘where does this go?’ I ask the organiser. Anything to take my mind away from what he is saying. But some of the words enter anyway and settle like a weight on my sternum.

He is from a group called Made by Mortals and he is telling a composite story gathered from a group of young people, but it is as if he is telling my story. The story of boys struggling with mental health like my son, almost 18. He is telling it from the point of view of an overstretched CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) worker who is about to refer the boy to adult mental health services. This is not a direct quote but words the way I remember them: There is nothing they can do anyway, he is almost an adult…they can give him the tools but he has to support himself now…some say the mother has done too much…she has cooked and cleaned for him…but what choice did she have? The performance is immersive, the audience are invited to wear eye masks, and there is a violinist playing a musical interpretation of the story. It is powerful and emotive.

Therapeutic stories

I chose not to listen to the performance and took care of the latecomers on the front desk. But I also explained my reasons for doing this to a couple of colleagues, who shared their experiences with me. And this reminded me once more of the power of stories to connect people. I learned nothing new from the story told on stage. I knew this story intimately. But hearing it made me think again about my role as a writer. What more can I do to write and share these stories close to my heart?

Beginning with moments that feel emotional is a good place to start but sometimes it can feel overwhelming. I am not ready to share the story of mothering my teenagers, it is not yet a story anyhow. I am still in the middle:

When you are in the middle of a story, it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself, or to someone else. (Atwood 1996)

I trust that I will be ready to tell it when the time is right. It reminds me of a moment I had at the swimming pool in the winter on a dark evening. There weren’t many people in the pool. I was enjoying stretching out my body after a day hunched at the computer screen, when a group of boys, maybe four or five, maybe early teens, jumped into the empty fast lane and started messing about. Not causing any trouble but my reaction was visceral. The windows of the pool were black. The young lifeguard wasn’t paying much attention. I was thinking, what if something happened? Would they know what to do? I felt my stomach get tighter and a memory surfaced that I thought I’d long buried. I got out and changed quickly, keeping my tears in for the drive home and then hid away in my bedroom and sobbed.

I decided to try Pennebaker’s experiment in therapeutic writing (1997). The memory was a moment from my life which affected and included no one I knew, so it was easier to tell than those which overlap with people close to me.

The experiment is to write about an important emotional issue for 15-30 minutes every day for 3-5 days. The participants wrote their deepest thoughts and feelings without worrying about spelling or grammar and kept writing until the time was up. And then Pennebaker measured participants physical and mental health. He found that writing about upsetting experiences although painful to begin with produces long-term improvements in mood and wellbeing. A later experiment found it was important to write about events as well as feelings (rather than just events or just feelings) and to use details to describe the events.

If you’d like to try this, the 15-minute time limit is a good container but I would add the caveat that if tackling emotionally charged life events then think about what support you would need to put in place for yourself before you begin. This could be:

Sharing the story with a friend afterwards
Taking a walk, bath or other relaxing activity
Writing about a happier memory
Talking to a counsellor or other therapist.

I don’t often give myself four days to write about the same thing and this felt cathartic in itself. As I wrote each day, the story shaped in my mind and on paper. I couldn’t remember many details to begin with, just fragmentary impressions. As I wrote I remembered more, but I also filled in details I couldn’t reach and allowed myself to fill in the blanks, fictionalising it to make it more evocative to read. As I wrote, the emotional hold this moment had over me dissipated. And I think of it now in an entirely different, more detached way.

The Video Shop

It was the summer of 1993. It felt like forever since I’d been in a classroom or exam hall, but it must have been only a matter of weeks. I’d moved to Bounds Green in north London, to a flat down an bumpy track with the oldest monkey tree in the area in the shared garden. There were allotments opposite and I’d watch the families wheelbarrow bags of compost in their wellies, imagining this future for myself. I felt as if I lived in a secret, hidden, almost magical part of London.

Every Monday, I’d walk past unfurling bin bags and yellow incident boards to the newsagent for The Guardian. Then back home along the dusty track, up the communal stairs in the two storey whitewashed block of flats with black leaded windows. It always smelled faintly of coffee and smoke, with layers of previous tenants’ lives embedded into the worn, thin brown carpet. We shared the flat with a couple, one worked in a betting shop and the other was unemployed but hung out there most days. My boyfriend had an extra year as a student. I was unemployed too, biding my time, after any job but looking for a career that I’d been promised would begin just as soon as I’d graduated.

I’d boil the kettle for a mug of tea and slowly savour each page of news while holding off the moment when I’d turn to the jobs pages and find my dream job or at least one I felt qualified to apply for. I got an interview for the Home Office graduate scheme after writing an essay on prison reform based on my experience of watching Prisoner Cell Block H. In the interview, I remember floundering during a question about how to get kids to stop taking drugs, muttering something about education. 30 years later, I could talk about the complexities of social inequality and self-medicating mental illness, maybe even the perceived futility of the future in an unstable world, but I’d still sink if someone asked me that question again. I wonder what the other candidates said. I wonder which one of them was hired to their very first government cubicle.

In the end, my first job as a graduate didn’t emerge from the black and white but stared out at me from the newsagent’s window. ‘Wanted: Video rental shop assistant. Call this number.’ I liked films, went to the cinema often. Maybe this would be my first step to a job in the film industry. I bought a copy of Sight and Sound and wrote the number on the cover.

The video shop was on a strip on a council estate in Barnet. I can’t remember the other shops, but if I was to guess, I’d say a mini supermarket, post office, a chip shop, hairdresser and pet shop. There was probably an off licence too with bars on the windows and staff smoking outside, leaving cigarette butts to gather with leaves and road debris in the gutter, blocking the drains when the rain fell. The manager, Steve, was a body builder and had tattoos on his neck and arms and a shaved head. His girlfriend, Nadine, dropped by sometimes to sit on his lap. He said she liked his bulk. He said to me on my first day, ‘I bet you’ve got a pencil-necked boyfriend. Nadine did before she met me. She didn’t know what she was missing.’

I don’t remember spending hours and days with Steve. I remember us working together when we’d got a delivery of new films in, separating the big black VHS plastic blocks from the cases, tape shining from the spools. We’d file in cardboard sleeves on our shelves and make space for the cases on display, so customers could choose a film based on the cover. I remember the tinny smell of the new films and the feel of the smooth plastic cases before they got dusty, torn and sticky from moving back and forth between people’s bags, homes, VHS machines and our shop. I imagined people settling down as families or on their own, making an occasion of it, lounging on the sofa, bowls of crisps and peanuts piled on the coffee table. I remember the excitement of a new film coming out, one I’d been waiting for, had read about in the New Releases brochure. I remember rows and rows of Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston’s The Bodyguard, the bluish tones of the cover. But mostly I remember working alone.

I was allowed to watch any films that were rated U or PG in the shop on the two tiny televisions that were on display so customers could see and be inspired. They were raised up on platforms tilted so you could see if you inclined your head. They had flickering small screens, but were also bulky and heavy, with wires and aerials coming out of the back. I also used those televisions if a customer brought back a film, said it didn’t work and asked for a refund. I played it to test it out, to see what the problem was, to see if it justified a refund. I never argued with them if they wanted their money back, though sometimes I’d offer a free film.

I developed a routine for myself. I had the keys to the shop, so I’d open up, remembering the alarm code. Then put away any videos that had been dropped through the letterbox overnight. I’d make myself tea, put Disney’s Beauty and the Beast on and hoover the shop while singing along. There weren’t any customers that early in the morning. After that, I’d settle down with a true life drama, maybe an early Reese Witherspoon film, a family tragedy in which everyone eventually pulls through. If my shift stretched into the evening, I’d put Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure or Wayne’s World for company as I knew all the words and when the shop got busier with people, I wouldn’t lose my place in the story. I remember being scared in the evenings, of closing up at 10pm and catching the bus home alone with the takings to deposit into the bank the following morning.

I liked the customers. I’d ask them how they enjoyed their film, whether it was a good choice and if I should recommend it to others. I’d tell them what I thought too, if I’d seen it. There were regulars. The man who shiftily reached for films on the top shelf and placed them upside down on the counter, while I discretely found the cases. The woman whose children had left home and with no job she had time on her hands, so she was making her way through a back catalogue of classics, which I was helping her navigate. I imagined writing a novel about her developing friendship with a much younger video shop girl and her inner transformation through watching film, like something Françoise Sagan might have written.

It wasn’t evening when it happened. I remember the daylight, maybe the sun glinting off the shopfront glass so I couldn’t see them outside. The boys. I didn’t see them coming. But then, there they were. They didn’t file in one by one, but they didn’t all come in at the same time. Did they jostle through the single doorway, pushing each other out of the way? Did they shout, shriek, swear? I imagine it began when one of them asked me earlier in the day to borrow an 18 film and I refused. I asked him for permission from his parents. He said his brother said it was okay and he was over 18. I told him to ask his brother to come in and get the film. I would lend it to his brother.

And then, later.

'He’s my brother. Don’t you believe me?’ He elbows another boy in the ribs. They look about 12. Or maybe 9 or 10. Or maybe the speaking one is 10 and the one he’s calling his brother is about 12 or 13. I don’t know. Hair unwashed, crumpled t-shirts, biscuit smell. The look of long summer holidays. They stretch up on tip toes to reach their hands over the counter. A cheeky smile. I smile back.

‘He doesn’t look 18 to me.’

‘He is. I swear he is. He’s just short for his age. He’s got one of them diseases, so he can’t grow.’

‘Really?’

‘Give us film.’ They start to chant over and over and bang the empty cases on the counter.

‘Bring someone in who’s over 18 and I’ll give them the film.’

They do not stop. The boys do not stop and then they are joined by other boys who join in with the chant, ‘give us film. Give us film. Give us film.’ And I don’t know which one throws something first. But it is directed at me. It is a flyer or something screwed up into a ball and they throw it at me and I duck and they laugh and they chant and they throw more screwed up balls of paper and they run their hands along the shelves of empty plastic cases and the cases fall to the floor and they jump up and down and they laugh and they chant and they pick up the cases and throw them behind the counter and I can’t reach the panic button steve said there was a panic button but I can’t reach it I hide behind the wall and if I go to the panic button something will hit me and one of them is now standing on the counter doing the monkey dance hands to armpits and I want to reach the panic button which rings an alarm at the police station maybe if I crawl I can’t I can’t I can’t make it stop.

And I hear a voice, ‘what on earth is going on here?’ like a teacher voice. It is a man, tall, bald head, round glasses. Older than me. And he makes it stop. ‘I know your parents,’ he says. ‘Off you go home, the lot of you and leave this poor girl alone.’

And they leave and I am shaken, but I pretend I’m not as I pick up video cases from the floor and I say thank you and don’t worry, I’ll tidy up now. It’s fine.

Writing prompt

Close your eyes for a moment, settle, breathe deeply, and notice what comes to mind. Describe an image, sound or other impression that has arisen. Then, write alternate sentences beginning with I remember…I don’t remember.... For example, I remember my grandfather always ordered mint choc chip ice cream. I don’t remember the colour of his cardigan the day we sheltered from the storm under the rock licking our ice creams as the rain fell.

Writing emotionally charged stories

You may find this therapeutic

Therapeutic stories

The Video Shop

Writing prompt

Further reading

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