How to write a new life for yourself

Self-counselling using a personal journal

Narrative therapy as a DIY process

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne 2019

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.

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: 

Amazon.com	Amazon.co.uk	Amazon Canada
Amazon Australia	Flycrates	Amazon Germany
Amazon Italy	Amazon India	Amazon France
Amazon Spain	Buying from Singapore	Amazon Japan

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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 2019, I am in my twentieth 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: 

Amazon.com	Amazon.co.uk	Amazon Canada
Amazon Australia	Flycrates	Amazon Germany
Amazon Italy	Amazon India	Amazon France
Amazon Spain	Buying from Singapore	Amazon Japan

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For more, please click the following link: https://abc-bookstore.com/writing-therapy-exercises/

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