Stream of Conscious Writing

Has anyone ever did stream of consciousness writing? My T has suggested it several times, and has set me a piece of homework.. But i don't really get it, i'm good at writing but i'm not good at just letting go and writing exactly what comes into my mind... i don't like the things that come up.

I've done it alone before and i seemed to really regress to a very young place and i hate what i've written, i don't think i want to do this homework.

I've done it in the past and found it disturbing. I'm also a writer, so that wasn't the issue. I can nearly always find words, but I usually find writing to be a strength, a reassuring pastime, and that type of writing made me feel more agitated instead of less, so I just use other techniques to reach my goals instead.

What did you find disturbing about it?

Hmmm, well, sigh, I remember it being like you said, regressive, a bit disjointed, disturbing. I was dealing with abuse in a very intense environment at the time and.... struggling.

My stream of consciousness writing reflected that and sort of... mirrored my struggle when I didn't need a mirror, I needed some reassurance and soothing. It was like having a coffee when you can't sleep, you know? Nothing wrong with coffee maybe, but not always a good idea.

It actually still bothers me to think about my writing at that time: it is something I have brought up with my current therapist maybe three times now, not just stream of consciousness, but all my journals, a wound I need to heal, to have been so.... jarred by life.

Yeah i agree that it just stirs things up in a bad way. I don't know why my t is so keen on me doing it. I've told her i don't like what comes up. I've made my mind up, i'm not doing it.

It's the only kind of writing I actually know how to do. It's very therapeutic, though I doubt my T would wanna read my stuff. I already talk his ear off in session.

That's interesting that you find it therapeutic. How do you do it winenot? What is it that makes it therapeutic for you?

I find pleasure from "real" writing. I take pride in my craft and have worked at it most of my life. Stream of consciousness stuff is inevitably very far below my capabilities.

I've occasionally have done stream of consciousness in writers' workshops. Its only function might be is plowing ground for a real project. Even then we usually did focused, automatic writing in response to a topic or specific meditation.

In contrast my real, carefully crafted writing offers me many truths.

Stream of consciousness would depress me because it it doesn't say anything and would assign me to be dull and stupid.

I can only do it in the second person. It is then useful for me to go back and edit and distill down to as close to the bare essence as I can.

my journal writing is totally stream of consciousness. i write whatever is on my mind & heart. it is very therapeutic because i just get all the negative stuff out. i would not want anyone to read it and i rarely go back and reread it myself. if there is something important i might mark it so i can find it flipping through my journal. in the artist way book julia cameron talks about doing morning pages where you write 3 pages every morning first thing to sort of clear your mind of whatever is burdening you.

asia, i see your blog similar to stream of consciousness writing where you are just writing about your feelings about what has been happening in therapy. that is how it appears to me anyway. do you feel a sense of relief after you write your blog posts?

also, maybe there is a difference in that stream of consciousness writing works better for more personal writing rather than anything professional. it's interesting that those who have commented not liking it consider themselves writers whereas i definitely do not consider myself a writer. i find writing papers, etc. hard & tortuous but i do always learn a ton from it. journaling and blogposts are more stream of consciousness for me and so much easier and freer.

The blog posts are more processing my thoughts and documenting my sessions. It's more organising my thoughts into some semblance of order. It is helpful for me.

But what my T seems to want is more just letting words spill out, it doesn't even have to be sentences or make sense or even be in any order.. i'm supposed to just write words as they come in my mind. But when i do that i dissociate or regress and i hate the things i write. I don't want to do that. I think she expects it to be a therapeutic thing for me but it just isn't.

at the risk of sounding stupid-what is stream of consciousness writing please? ♥

I do it sometimes....I used to do it years ago but stopped for some reason. Then my T suggested it. I write poetry that way and find that afterward, I gain much insight. Especially over time when I see a pattern emerge or notice something that ends up being paramount in my process. Yeah, it's often disturbing but then again, those are things I'm actually experiencing all the time subconsciously so I see it as a way to get in touch with those things and try to bring them out in the open.

**I also approach my artwork the same way. I try to draw out of what I'm feeling and it ends up being very abstract that way. Color is a big part of it. I find it helps me express how I feel, although then I get in touch with some rather difficult things sometimes. Then I just put it away for awhile. It helps to pace myself.

I *think* it's basically sitting down and letting your hand write. Not thinking about what to write, not stopping to use punctuation or continuous prose, it might be jibberish or random words all over the page the idea is that is comes from your sub-conscious or something.

thank you for helping us understand ♥

oh, that is probably more unstructured than i was thinking. i would be interested to hear what your T says it is. writing random words would be bizarre but interesting to try. i think having it be a little more structure would be okay though. i was thinking of something more like virginia woolf's writings. since i don't capitalize i guess i am half-way there already. i do like invisible butterfly's poetry idea. oh, maybe there are two elements that can be unstructured and it doesn't have to be both at the same time? one being the thoughts or feelings and the other the writing style. i just thought it meant generally a free flow of ideas and words. there may be a more technical definition though.

I write every day - throughout the day - I have a box full of spiral notebooks that I've filled up since I started therapy over 2 years ago!! It's a mixture of stuff - morning pages (a la julia cameron), poetry, journaling, dream work, letters to T I've never sent, other workings-out.... I love going back and looking at the early-in-therapy notebooks and re-reading them to see how incredibly far I have come since then.

The type of writing that has helped me the most is more like a dialogue. I write from the point of view of whatever part of me is distressed and then I actually respond to it with empathy and go back and forth like a dialogue. Like an example would be:

Me1: I can't take it anymore!
Me2: It sounds like you're feeling fed up.
Me1: It bugs me so much when X person won't even listen to me!
Me2: So you're needing to be heard more?
Me1: Yeah, I wish they would at least acknowledge what I say!
etc....

For me this somehow contains and processes the feelings which keeps me from spiraling into an overly emotional state.

This is most similar to what I meant talking about my experiences w/stream of consciousness writing, more like a free-association state.

I do a lot of other writing around my feelings, processing therapy, and then also creative and professional writing, but the type I referred to initially in response to the OP was the most unstructured, primal, non-narrative, raw, upsetting type. I am a big fan of writing, but again.... I didn't need anything to further stir me up, I was already quite stirred up enough.

My T has asked me to "let my inner world to speak" by writing for 30 min per day - I hate the phrase "inner world"and letting "it" speak is even worse but I always do my homework, so since few days I sit in front of my computer and write something for 30 min - I never prepare any topic, usually I start like: "okay so it's time for a homework I guess I should write something but I have no idea what, I just do not have a single information in my brain right now... Oh, maybe about this?" And then I write few sentences about something and then I switch the topic etc... I do not know what I would write about before starting writing, and after, usually I even do not remember well what I have actually written... For me it's like a boring homework - I am supposed to do it so I do it but I do not spend more time on thinking about it than these 30 minutes...

Sometimes during the day I have the "story" to write but usually when the time for writing comes, I forget about it It annoys me a bit but probably it means that it was not so important and I always can write about it the next day if I remember...

Asia, does your T think you censor yourself emotionally? Or do you feel like you do? I'm just wondering if she wants to encourage the regression a bit? I did a lot of writing, especially in the first couple of years of therapy, but not stream of consciousness writing. For me the need was to contain emotions, rather than access them, so that would have felt awful. The more considered style of writing helped because it both expressed and contained my feelings.

I've done/do it. Excellent way to reach the unconscious.

What is the goal of her having you do this? If it is just a processing tool, then I would let her know it doesn't work for you, that you don't like it, and ask for other ideas.

If the goal is to discover/uncover something sub-consious material to work with in session, then it may be notable- the things you are writing about that cause you distress- to share in therapy.

Personally, I use journal writing as a tool, and often just write whatever is on my mind. Sometimes I will go back and re-read what I wrote, this is helpful insomuch as it is proof I have gotten through difficult times in my life, and as a tool to process difficult situations/emotions.

Also, I will say that the more frequently you write like this (first thing in the morning works great), the easier it is to just let go and not think too much/judge what you are writing. That's neat you write a blog, I'd be interested in checking it out but didn't see it on your profile anywhere.

Best of luck to you with this

hmmm i don't know, i think i do censor myself emotionally because when i cry i just stop right in the middle of it, something in me just cuts off, and she's always telling my just to let it all go. But i physically can't. And i know i am censoring myself with this issue, i won't "go there" with my sub-concious because when i've done it before it was dark and awful and i have no idea why. None of what i wrote makes sense to me. I'm scared of it.

Thinking on it... i don't let my anger out in therapy either, i can recognise feeling anger but can't process it if that makes sense.

I think i like to write in a way that contains my emotions, that's probably why i blog about my therapy. So to get all out of control with this stream of conscious writing just isn't appealing.

I think she wants me to do it, just so i let all this stuff out, to uncover the sub-conscious stuff. I think i'm not ready to do it. I'm ok with telling her no. But it's something that she's brought up quite often.

I will pm you my blog address.