Quote:
Originally Posted by LostOnTheTrail
Hi, all.
I've searched the forum, and couldn't find anything on this topic.
If you've used unsent letters within your therapy experience, have you then shared them with your therapist?
I have a break coming up imminently in my work with R. She's taking a couple of weeks' leave over the summer holidays. I'm thinking about using some of that time to write an unsent letter to Steve, and then taking it to session at some point when we resume...or maybe saving it until we return to in person work, hopefully in a few weeks. (I would appreciate restraint in comments about this...we have a loose timeline, but of course, it may all change.)
The complicating factor is that I don't really have words for the impact of this experience yet. I've faced a lot of grief, but this was a bombshell.
I would be very interested to read about your experiences of using unsent letters in the therapeutic space.
Thanks,
Lost
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yes I have wrote what you call unsent letters. out here in NY its actually a therapy technique for people who are victims of sexual abuse. many survivors dont have the opportunity to literally confront their abusers. writing letters that you dont send is a way for victims to confront their abusers with out actually having to deal with confronting in person.
my first letter was wrote when I was a child in the system for my protection. my parents and social services were prosecuting my abusers. I was placed outside of that town and area where the abusers were, during the process. I was in that feeling powerless, low self esteem place of mind. my therapist came in one day carrying a box. inside the box was crayons, markers, pens, pencils, paper of all kinds. she said today we are going to write a letter to your abusers, we wont be sending it and they wont see it, you get to make and write ...........anything.......... you want to, to show them how you feel.
At first I was scared, I think half the appointment time was used up with me just staring at that box before I finally picked up a marker, drew a male figure then ripped that paper well cant describe it here but imagine dismembering a paper in strategic ways. then I took another paper and wrote a list of words, not so nice and not so clean. then I took another piece of paper and wrote a letter. this went on and one, our time ran out but my therapist didnt stop me. I stopped only when all the paper and so on was depleted.
as an adult I still do this. I remember the first book I worked in as an adult survivor of child sexual abuse... the courage to heal by laura davis and ellen bass wrote in the 1980's, had this writing activity so again I did this therapy technique with my therapist.
there are many books out there for people with PTSD from abuse that have this activity in them.
that began my life of doing this therapy technique of writing what you call unsent letters. I still do this today. they are a big part of my journaling. how that happened was I got tired of having all these individual letters in a box. so I got a notebook and write them in there, then I got tired of having a bunch of spiral bound notebooks around my home full of unsent letters. so then I just started doing my unsent letter writing in my journal on my computer files. to date if I added them all up there would probably be well over 5000 unsent letters.
do I share them with my therapist yes sometimes I do.