More Than Journaling: How Reflective Writing Helps us Make Sense of Experience
My approach to reflective writing combines journaling, creative and expressive writing, reflective practice and coaching. It can help you make sense of experience and gain greater insight, clarity and understanding.
Some years ago, before the pandemic, I attended the International Culture, Health and Wellbeing Conference in Bristol. As always, the best part for me was chatting with peers between sessions. I’ve always valued those moments of genuine connection that conferences make possible.
But that year, the mood was different. Several colleagues confided that they were planning to leave the sector. The work, they said, had become too much: too demanding, too emotionally draining. The joy and creativity that had once fuelled them had been replaced by exhaustion and disillusionment.
Their words stopped me in my tracks. When had this rich, creative, meaningful work become detrimental to the health of those delivering it? Then I realised: this wasn’t just about them. It was about me too. I was exhausted.
That moment was a turning point. It nudged me to reinvest in my own creativity. After years of thinking about it, I finally signed up for a master’s in creative writing. It also prompted a deeper question: how could I find a more sustainable, nourishing way of working while still making a difference?
Over the next few years, as I began to wind down my arts and health consultancy, Willis Newson, I felt drawn to share what I’d learned. I retrained as a coach and action learning set facilitator and began running reflective writing workshops — creating the kinds of supportive spaces I had long needed myself.
How it all started
I began writing a journal when I went away to boarding school, aged nine. I remember it gave me a safe, soothing and expansive space at a time when life felt unsafe, unsettling and confining.
To this day, I use my journal in much the same way: as somewhere to be with myself, to explore what’s happening, to untangle thoughts and feelings. To calm my nervous system and create space to think, feel and dream.
I write about my day, my week, something I saw on the bus, what my garden sounds like, what my heart feels like. I free-write. I make lists and mind-maps. I draw, doodle and scribble. I write fragments, poems and fairy stories…
“In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.”
Over the years, I’ve learned that writing can also become a more intentional process of reflection. A way of not only expressing experience, but also of exploring, making sense of, and learning from it.
My unique approach
My own writing practice, and my approach to facilitating writing workshops, has been shaped by an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes, and by my training and experience as a coach and reflective practice facilitator.
From these different strands, I have developed an approach that I call reflective writing. This draws on journaling, therapeutic and expressive writing, as well as creative writing, coaching and reflective practice.
When I’m leading a workshop, we might begin by gathering up what’s here: writing freely, completing a sentence stem, or mind mapping thoughts and ideas.
Reading back, I often invite people to zoom in and become curious and more intentional. We might ask: What’s here for me? What am I noticing? Perhaps a phrase, image or metaphor stands out, or seems to carry particular energy.
I then offer creative prompts and invitations to help people zoom out and write from different perspectives so that they can see things more clearly.
We then finish by shaping or distilling our words, so that we capture and hold onto what is of value, whether that is a thought, feeling, insight, idea or intention.
This process allows the writing to move between expression and reflection, imagination and analysis, feeling and thinking.
Benefits of reflective writing
Release, containment and calm
When thoughts and feelings stay swirling around inside us, it can be easy to become caught up in overthinking, overwhelm or anxiety. Putting words on the page can provide release, containment and calm.
The reflective writing process helps us slow down enough to notice and express what’s happening. Creating some distance from our thoughts and feelings can give us perspective, enabling us to see more clearly.
Sometimes the value lies simply in noticing, witnessing, or wondering – finding the right question can be more important than reaching for an answer.
“It’s been a really great opportunity to untangle everything in my head and make some sense of things.”
Seeing patterns and possibilities
Reflective writing also invites us to go further. To stay with what we’ve written for a little longer and become curious about it.
We might notice patterns, themes and contradictions. Question the stories we’re telling ourselves and explore different perspectives. Recognise what matters, begin to see new possibilities and make more conscious choices.
This kind of structured reflection sits at the heart of my work as a coach and facilitator of reflective practice and reflective writing.
“I felt I could be myself and write without feeling like I was trying to be a writer, and expressing myself in the moment… also allowed me to reflect.”
Accessing other ways of knowing
Writing helps us to make sense of experience: to understand not only what happened, but what this means to us.
Sometimes an image or metaphor surfaces unexpectedly, carrying meaning we recognise before we fully can articulate and understand it.
A walled garden.
A tightly closed bud.
Outstretched arms holding a huge vessel.
This can lead to insights that we might not reach by asking direct questions.
Creative approaches - writing from the body, asemic writing, blackout poetry, fairy tales, dialogue writing and so on - invite other ways of knowing: imaginative, intuitive, sensory and embodied, alongside rational thought.
“These sessions feel like an act of creative rebellion - to take time to play on a Monday. They affect my risk taking and creative thinking for the rest of the week. I’ve really noticed a difference since attending.”
Knowing ourselves better
What I value most about reflective writing - and what keeps me coming back to the page - is the relationship it helps me develop with myself.
The more we pay attention to our own experience, the more we begin to recognise patterns. We notice what energises us and what depletes us, what we value, what we need, what we avoid and what we long for.
The writing process might help us find answers or discover new questions. And, sometimes, those questions open doors we didn’t even know were there. We may also become more comfortable with our contradictions and complexities.
For me, the value of reflective writing lies in how it helps us develop a deeper relationship with ourselves and our experience, so that we can respond to life with greater awareness, imagination, choice and self-trust.
“The series has given me a discipline to be still and to write. The sessions allow me to be more positive than I might be on my own, they have given me ideas and new ways to work and I’ve been surprised by what I have written and how much it has helped me tackle life’s challenges and problems and to embrace the positive and find new ways of experiencing old problems.”
Experience it for yourself
Drop into a free Reflective Co-Writing Hour to explore reflective writing in community.
