I use emails frequently in my therapy. I also have had a lot of medical trauma, and found it very useful when facing a serious illness awhile back to send on writeups of what I was going through. I needed to feel like I had a place to share the entire experience, and it was a really valuable part of my therapy. Sometimes we talked about what I’d written, sometimes we didn’t. But it really helped me to share in a much more extensive way than I would have been able to do if I was limited to our sessions every week.

Writing is also one of the things I do for a living, and I also believe in the power of the written word to convey experience in a different way to conversation. I think if your therapist is open to it could add a new dimension to your work together. For me it’s been important to be able to articulate what I have endured, and to have my therapist as a sounding board for that. He has been a very present companion to me in my suffering, and I think the written communication has really facilitated that.