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Get a new life in 2024
Extract from “How to Write a New Life for Yourself”: By Dr Jim Byrne
Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, 2018-2023
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Chapter 1: Introduction
Reflecting on your thoughts, feelings and experiences, in a journal or diary, proves to be very effective in bringing about positive changes. According to Perry (2012), reporting on a particular research project:
“Diarists reported better moods and fewer moments of distress than non-diarists. Those, in the same study, who kept a journal following trauma or bereavement, also reported fewer flashbacks, nightmares and unexpected difficult memories.”
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The socialized and narrativized nature of human life
It was Plato who argued that “The unexamined life is not worth living”. However, we believe that this statement needs to be modified as follows: If your life is not working for you, then you may need to examine why it is going wrong.
But if your life is working for you, and you are not being immoral or criminal in your lifestyle, then by all means stay asleep! It will do you no harm, as that is actually the normal human condition!
We humans are largely non-conscious creatures of habit, who are shaped by our early socialization; and this has an up-side and a down-side.
The up-side is that this is the way we socialize our children, and make them moral citizens – if we are ourselves moral. And this is also the way we cohere as communities of belief.
The down-side, in general, is this: If you come from a bad family, (from any social stratum) who failed to socialize you into being pro-social, moral, and productive, then you will live a miserable, destructive life.
And more to the point in our present context: If your family of origin was not emotionally intelligent, and you have not had any remedial experiences, then you will lack the emotional intelligence to have a happy, socially connected life.
Our system of emotive-cognitive therapy, described in this book, is called Emotive-Cognitive Embodied Narrative Therapy (E-CENT). It promotes the idea that the disclosure (or revelation) of emotionally difficult material is central to the curative effects of therapeutic writing.
Our insight is that the process of getting in touch with previously undigested emotional experiences has the effect of ‘completing them’; or finishing them off; making sense of them; reinterpreting them; allowing them to be; and thus integrating them into the person’s (or writer’s) set of stable, functional mental ‘schemas’ (or maps of the world) [1].
However, before this can happen, there is often the difficult problem of integrating two conflicting schemas – or two narratives or maps into one – or displacing a negative, dominant narrative with a new, alternative and liberating one. Jordaan and Nolte (2010) summarize this process very neatly when they say: “(Narrative therapy) is the re-establishment of personal agency (or self-management and control) from the oppression of external problems and the dominant stories of larger systems (…). Therapy occurs when the dominant narrative is effectively challenged by an alternative narrative; if the dominant narrative is not challenged and dealt with accordingly, there can be no therapy”.
Another way of seeing this process is to say this: a therapeutic effect is achieved when the writer is able to re-interpret, or re-frame, a previously difficult feeling, thought, experience; and to create a more self-supporting or empowering meaning for the feeling, or thought, or experience.
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The power of writing therapy
In this book, we set out to show you how you can quickly and easily process your current psychological problems, and improve your emotional intelligence, and creativity, by writing about your current and historic difficulties. (Chapter 8 contains a detailed introduction to the subject of how to understand and manage your emotions).
This approach to writing about your emotional difficulties in order to resolve them has a long and noble tradition. Many nineteenth century poets were seeking to heal broken hearts or resolve personal dissatisfactions by the use of their poetry-writing activities; and many novels are clearly forms of catharsis (or release of pent up emotions) by the author.
But not all writing is equally helpful, therapeutically speaking. If the writing is too negative; or too pessimistic; or simply makes the reader feel raw and vulnerable, then it is not going to have a positive effect. Later we will show you how to tackle therapeutic writing, (within the two main disciplines of writing therapy – [the scientific and the humanistic]), in order to make it maximally effective. But the main clue is this: the writer has to be seeking the meaning of their experiences, and attempting to discover a revised way to understand that meaning; in order for improved emotional functioning (and indeed better physical health) to result.
It is not only okay to feel painful emotions, but necessary to digest our old, denied emotional pains, in order for them to be defused and rendered inactive. But instead of indulging them, what we have to do is to name them; understand their source and significance; and to re-frame them, so they show up differently, with a new significance or meaning. (See Chapters 5 and 6).
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Some problems cannot be written out of existence
However, not every problem can be helped by writing therapy, and it is important to know when to seek face-to-face help from a counsellor, a psychotherapist, a nutritional therapist, a lifestyle coach, a health coach or medical practitioner, a personal trainer, and so on.
So, just in case our intention is misunderstood, we want to clarify the nature of human disturbance, and the various factors which can contribute to psychological distress. It is not all caused by narratives and stories. In the process, we will be clarifying that writing therapy can be highly effective at resolving those problems which can be resolved by writing new interpretations and understandings; but that it will not help with problems which require that you exercise your body; get a good night’s sleep; eat the right kinds of foods; and/or refrain from eating junk food; and so on.
In our system of emotive-cognitive counselling and therapy[1], we are careful to map the various elements that go into creating human disturbance. These are summarized in our Holistic SOR model (shown on next page), as follows: This model helps us to focus upon the fact that each human being is a socialized-body-mind in an environment (which is physical and social), and that there are many factors that go into shaping our emotional and behavioural experiences, apart from our beliefs and thoughts.
Let us review the original, simple Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model of neo-behaviourism:
There are three elements to the original, simple S-O-R model:
Firstly: A stimulus (S), or incoming signal is picked up by a person.
Secondly: This stimulus is processed by the person (or Organism [O]): and:
Thirdly: That person outputs a Response (R) which is emotional and/or behavioural.
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The factors contributing to emotional disturbance or emotional well-being
Obviously, anything that improves or worsens the health and well-being of the organism, (O), will also affect the nature of the response, (R), which is produced in reaction to a given stimulus (S). To be more precise: the holistic SOR model states that a person feels and reacts, at point ‘R’ (Response), to a (negative or positive) stimulus at point ‘S’ (Stimulus), on the basis of the current state of their social-body-mind (or their whole Organism). Important variables include the following:
How well rested are they (including by sleep)?
How high or low is their blood-sugar level (which is related to diet and nutrition)?
How well connected are they to significant others (which is a measure of social support)?
How damaged were they by traumatic experiences earlier in their life?
How much conflict do they have at home or at work?
What other pressures are bearing down upon them (for examples: from their socio-economic circumstances; physical health; home/ housing; work/ income; security/ insecurity; etc.)
And how emotionally intelligent are they? (Emotional intelligence is, of course, learned, and can be re-learned!)
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The Holistic-SOR model
Within the Holistic-SOR model (as shown below), in the middle column, what we are aiming to do is to construct a balance sheet (in our heads) of the pressures bearing down on the client (or person), and the coping resources that they have for dealing with those pressures.
Table 1.1: The Holistic SOR model of E-CENT origin
Now, if we look at the middle column in the figure above, we can begin to identify those ‘elements of the organism’ which can, at least theoretically, be changed by writing therapy.
Let us then work through the list of elements that affect the output, or response, and organise it in descending order of how helpful writing therapy can be in relations to each element:
Point 1. Element (3) – in the middle column above – is about Recent personal history. This can be reviewed, in general terms, and reframed. But you will benefit enormously from studying our approach to re-framing which is contained in Chapters 5 and 6.
Point 2. Element (2) is about Family history and this can definitely be reviewed, and re-framed. But attachment style is best resolved in a relationship with an attachment therapist. (“That which was created in relationship can only be reformed in relationship!”)
Point 3. Element (5) above is about Narratives, stories, frames and other storied elements – (which may be over-arousing [as in anger-inducing], under-arousing [as in depressive responses], or affect regulating [meaning producing appropriate levels of emotion arousal]) – are the most obvious targets of writing therapy work. But it would help if you read Chapter 8: Understanding and Managing Human Emotions, below.
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End of extract. (You have just finished reading the first half of Chapter 1 of How to Write a New Life for Yourself, by Dr Jim Byrne…
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For an extract from Chapter 2, please click this link: Extract from Chapter 2.***
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Footnote and Endnote
Footnote [1] I have previously defined ‘schemas’ as ‘packets of information’; or maps and models that allow us to know how to perceive and act within specific types of contexts; such as eating in a restaurant as opposed to a quick visit to a ‘greasy spoon’ café. Or how to speak in the presence of a respected female as opposed to ‘mucking around with the boys.’
Endnote [1] Our system of coaching, counselling and psychotherapy deals with emotions (or feelings and affects); cognitions (or attention, perception, language, and thinking); body-states (arising out of the quality and quantity of sleep, exercise and nutrition that is fed to your body); and the narratives that arise within you from the history of your body-brain-mind-environment-complexity. Because of the elements of our system, just listed, our system is called Emotive-Cognitive Embodied Narrative Therapy (E-CENT).
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