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Updated on 28th January 2021
On this webpage you will find substantial extracts from my popular book entitled, ‘How to Write a New Life for Yourself’.
Please feel free to browse these pages for for free; and I hope you enjoy the content of this book.
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How to write a new life for yourself
Self-counselling using a personal journal
Narrative therapy as a DIY process
By Dr Jim Byrne, Doctor of Counselling
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Perhaps you want to find a way to get out of the life you have been living for a long time – and perhaps you think counselling would help, but you cannot afford it. Or you are apprehensive about putting yourself in the hands of a professional helper. Then, perhaps ‘writing therapy’ would be a good solution for you.
Engaging in self-therapy, by writing about your personal problems, your life difficulties, and traumatic experiences from your past, is a well-established practice, and there are a couple of different schools of thought on the subject.
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I have personally done a lot of self-therapy through the medium of writing, and indeed I have written a new life for myself. Sometimes, I have combined writing with face-to-face counselling, but mostly I have stuck to a self-directed system of self-therapy, by writing in my journal on a fairly frequent basis – daily if possible, but often as little as twice or three times each week.
The big question is this: How should you structure your self-therapy on the written page? And I have now written a book which contains lots of ideas, lots of exercise, and models of how to do this invaluable self-therapy work.
To get your copy, in paperback or eBook format, please click the Amazon link that serves your geographical area:
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| Amazon.com | |
| Amazon Canada | |
| Amazon Germany | |
| Amazon France | |
| Amazon Japan | |
| Flycrates |
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See below for more…
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How I wrote a new life for myself – to overcome a rotten childhood
By Dr Jim Byrne,
Today, in 2020, I am in my twenty-second year of successful professional practice as a Doctor of Counselling. I have helped more than 1,000 people with all kinds of problems, using various approaches to counselling, coaching and psychotherapy.
However, I was born into a highly dysfunctional and deprived family, and caught in a cross-cultural migration.
My ‘emotional IQ’ (or EQ) was originally extremely low, at least in the *social-connection* domain, though it must have been more than adequate in the *personal-survival* domain. (My academic IQ was high).
But my probable destiny was (potentially) to live a short, unrewarding, brutish existence, based on isolation and loneliness.
How did I escape? I wrote a new life for myself.
What does that mean?
Initially, it did not involve *any* physical writing; that came later, when I was in my thirties. Initially it involved:
# Watching others to try to make sense of life.
# Deciding to move away from my family of origin, when I was thirteen years old; though I did not get away until I was eighteen.
# Trying out new forms of living arrangements and work arrangements; and quickly moving on from anything that did not work. Never contemplating moving backwards!
# Searching, seeking, moving ever onwards.
# Meeting new people; watching them; soaking up information.
# Being very patient, and very persistent! Deferring gratification for safer, better times!
# Exploring psychoanalysis, person-centred counselling, transactional analysis, rational therapy; attachment theory; affect regulation theory; and many other systems of counselling and therapy.
# Attempting to write about my life, when I was 22 years old and in analysis;
# and again when I was 34 years old,
# and exploring therapies created by Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls and Eric Berne;
And then in my forties:
# beginning to write my Story of Origins;
# then my Story of Relationship (especially with my mother);
# and then an autobiography of the first eighteen years of my life;
# and then a fictionalized autobiography of the first forty years of my life.
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To get your copy, in paperback or eBook format, please click the Amazon link that serves your geographical area:
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| Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk |
| Amazon Canada | Amazon Australia |
| Amazon Germany | Amazon Italy |
| Amazon India | Amazon France |
| Amazon Spain | Amazon Japan |
| Buying from Singapore | Flycrates |
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That writing work, combined with writing a journal many days of most weeks, for many years, gave me:
# New insights into where I came from; who I ‘am’; and where I am trying to get to.
# New insights into problem solving and decision-making.
# A greater capacity to process my emotions, instead of ‘jumping over them’.
# It also improved my physical health and my emotional well-being.
# And it gave me a wonderful life in which I am fulfilled and productive, happy and healthy, and glad I took responsibility for the journey!
# And, as a bonus, it made me so creative I’ve been able to write many books and to create a unique business, based on a completely original form of counselling and psychotherapy.
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Recently, I wrote up most of the writing processes that I have used during those years, into a new book on how *you* can write a new life for yourself.
If I can do it, so also can you!
Please read the page of information about my new book, which is posted below.
Sincerely, Jim
Dr Jim Byrne, Doctor of Counselling
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To get your copy, in paperback or eBook format, please click the Amazon link that serves your geographical area:
~~~
| Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk |
| Amazon Canada | Amazon Australia |
| Amazon Germany | Amazon Italy |
| Amazon India | Amazon France |
| Amazon Spain | Amazon Japan |
| Buying from Singapore | Flycrates |
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…End of first page.
For more detailed information about this book, including substantial extracts, please click this link: Write a New Life, Page 2.***
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