Hastings Book Festival Workshop – The Therapeutic Power of Writing

This interactive workshop will explore a range of ideas about the therapeutic benefits of writing. Whether you journal, write creatively, enjoy blogging or are more interested in non-fiction, the aim is to discover how you can get more out of your writing and how your writing can get more out of you.  The workshop will include:

• The neuroscience on why writing and storytelling are good for wellbeing and, in particular, for relieving anxiety. 
• Learning from the great writers about the therapeutic power of writing.
• The use of writing in psychotherapy.
• Overcoming writers block.
• Therapeutic writing practices such as journalling, morning pages and unwriting the past.

This workshop will include a number of exercises to warm up your writing muscles and experiment with new techniques, so please bring a pen and notebook with you.

The session will be delivered by psychotherapists Helen Gilbert, and Kerry Evans. 

Helen has run writing groups in London and Brighton with people overcoming addiction, people who are estranged from family and others who just enjoy the creative power of the page. She has published in a short story anthology and written about her work with family estrangement in Love, Sex and Psychotherapy.

Kerry is CEO of Hastings Therapy Centre which is the “younger sibling” of the Brighton Therapy Centre, a charity and social enterprise providing mainstream and low-cost counselling and psychotherapy to local people. Kerry uses writing as a tool in therapy and also in her own creative practice, for which she has won the Sussex Writers Award and been shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. Over the years she has delivered a number of workshops on writing and wellbeing.