How To Release Painful Emotions Through Letter Writing

Jungian scholar Dr. Ira Progoff, the creator of holistic depth psychology, developed an expressive writing technique. The program was developed over forty years ago, more than 200 workshop leaders have been trained and certified in his workshops and more than 175,000 people have participated.

Dr. Progoff passed away in 1997. His son John, now the executive director of Dialogue House, says that the practice of expressive writing"is a very helpful technique to get a perspective on your life; where it's been, where it's going. It gives you insight into yourself, hobbies, career, feelings about society, and other important aspects of your life. The process is very helpful in growth, health, and increasing self-esteem. It also helps those stuck in a rut to get out of it."

We have the capacity to define every experience, rather than allow the experience to define us. Structured writing exercises aren't for everyone. Some people prefer what Terry Vance, a psychologist in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, calls "letter therapy."

Many lived in a family and society that suppressed their expression of deep emotional feelings. As a result, they became secretive children, growing into secretive adults, masking our true feelings. "But masks harm, even deaden, the person underneath," says Vance. "Getting healthy requires becoming visible by taking off the masks and exposing the secrets--finding out who you are by discovering what you feel and think."

In a 1998 book Letters Home, Dr. Vance describes watching many people get "unstuck" from toxic relationships or conflicts by writing letters to others in their lives. Conversations can dissolve into screaming matches or crying fits, she says, but letter writing offers safety. Her book demonstrates how letter therapy can help us resolve conflicts, effect change, and recover from our relationship with our parents.

Communicating from the heart can help mend crippling conflicts and open up possibilities for intimacy and growth. Expressing feelings and thoughts can create change, even if the letter is never mailed. The simple act of writing a letter can help us confront our problems. Ultimately, this process yields insights that can change our lives.

Dr. Vance began assigning letter writing to her psychotherapy patients, over thirty years as a method of addressing past psychological and physical abuses, confronting family members, revealing long-held destructive secrets, facing various difficulties in their day-to-day lives, and gaining insight into their own thinking and behavior. Vance believes the methodology of this therapy can work for anyone: composing effective and empowering letters to heal and reconstruct relationships.

She says, "In a perfect world, we might have the opportunity to be in family therapy or in a similar situation where we are encouraged to confront the truth and are supported for being authentic with the people who are most important to us."

Many people, can put their feelings on paper, write a letter to parents, have a friend or spouse or sibling read the letter and give feedback, or put the letter away and reread it later with the enhanced perspective a little distance can give. Letter writing to manage important emotional issues is easier with the insight and support that therapy gives, writing an up-front letter does not usually necessitate being in psychotherapy. In cases of abuse, however, the guidance of a qualified therapist is essential.

Letter writing can help accomplish what family therapy or couples therapy often does. It can bring the significant people together and help the writer separate his or her contribution to the problem from the parents' or spouse's in a way that is documented and can be gone over and over in different states of mind. You don't have to send the letter. Just write to yourself in a journal.