Anthony Nims

Maddie Roepe

Writing 2

07 December 2023

WP 2.2: Mental Health and Composition

In my 3 years of studying the field of psychology at this institution, I have found myself

hopelessly encapsulated with how the brain works, and why it does the things it does. One of

these corners of study includes one of my favorite academic subjects, writing. I have always

been curious about how the two mesh, as writing was always one of my favorite subjects in high

school, and psychology is my plan of action in this stage of life.

All research aside, I would be willing to argue that a fair amount of folk would view a

link between the study of writing and psychology, and how the two go hand in hand. I would

even venture to say that plenty of people have a tangible relationship between writing and

therapy. After all, we are all familiar with the concept of keeping a diary, and that right there is a

prime example of how the two can mesh. With that said, I chose to dive more into the scholastic

side of this subject, hoping to get a solid grasp on how and in which ways writing has a role in

the process of effective therapy and psychological dialogue. In the case of this essay I wanted to

join the conversation of trauma addressing and writing. Through this research, I found credible

information linking the study of writing with the concepts of effective therapy throughout

multiple genres of writing, including the instruction of writing within both the upper and lower

education levels, memoir writing and its close knit relationship to personal trauma, and
multimodal composition . Each of these sources explained different approaches not only to how

therapeutic responses can be embedded within writing, but even how writing can be embedded

within a therapeutic response, and how the presence of trauma can result in powerful writing.

A few of these sources contradict each other slightly, but offer similar approaches to the

subject of healing within writing. Catheryn Maloy suggested replacing narrative writing with

multimodal composition (2016), while Tara DaPra voiced her support for the memoir to address

trauma (2013). I feel that this contrast actually strengthens the conversation as a whole. It allows

for a diverse set of ideas, instead of four sources that make the exact same claim. The two also

don’t necessarily disprove each other, but rather offer two different possible approaches to a

common issue, and help to support my stance that there is tangible evidence of therapeutic

implementation within the composition of writing.

SECTION 2

It had only been a week since the accident, and at that point rolling out of bed had turned

into a chore comparable to repainting the house. As my alarm chimed for what felt like the 100th

time that morning, I planted my feet on the cold hardwood, and lifted up what felt like 400

pounds off of the mattress, shuffling toward the sink. I turned on the sink, splashed some icy

water on my face, and took a long look in front of me.

Jesus, I thought. I genuinely looked a decade older than my actual age, and the bags of

my eyes acted as an indicator that sleep had been a luxury in the last few days.
 In case you haven't quite put it together with what limited information I have given, in the

last week I had lost one of the most important people in my life. My uncle, taken from me at the

young age of 40, was hit and killed by a drunk driver over the past weekend, and needless to say

swallowing this pill has been, if anything, impossible thus far.

We were close. I remember him picking me up from school on Thursdays, and driving his

rusty old Ford down to the levee, where we would toss in our hooks and waste the afternoon

away until the sun began to kiss the mouth of the river. He would always pack two salami and

cheese sandwiches, and if my grades were good that week, a cold Pacifico for each of us. He

never, ever missed a Thursday fishing trip. In fact, that was the last thing we did before the

accident. To put it lightly, the last week had been hard. Not because I was sad, or angry, or upset.

Rather, because I was numb. It was as if I was conscious of the whirlwind going on in my head,

but articulating and expressing these feelings was a feeling all of its own

I stepped over to the desk I had set up by the corner window, overlooking the treeline and

the icy river outside. On it sat my beloved typewriter, my prized possession, albeit now

blanketed by an ever so thin layer of dust. By trade, I was a writer, dabbling in narratives, short

stories, and fantasies, mostly electing to write about great adventures and the outdoors. This

being the reason why I had purchased my cabin, as it offered ample surroundings to be used as

fuel for my writings. My uncle had always been extraordinarily supportive of my work, even

when the rest of my family had felt different. Sure, the bills had started to roll in steadily in the

last few years, but my uncle was probably the only reason I had kept writing when finances were
not quite as good, and I had only him to thank for where I was now. However, given the last

week, my motivation to write had been stifled, and thus my typewriter sat unused and dusty.

Today, though, I decided to plant myself in the old leather chair that sat in front of the

typewriter, and began to type away. Not about adventures. Not about the wilderness, or about

fantasies. But about my uncle.

In my time as a writer, I had naturally gained the acquaintance and occasional friendship

of other writers, through seminars, conventions, and sometimes by old fashioned chance. Some

of these folks were more specifically involved in writing study, a field that I had much respect

for, but by and large exceeded the scope of my understanding. This more or less included the

practice of writing on a “molecular” level, in which they would break down certain aspects of

writing in a much more scholarly manner. Like I said, far beyond the reach of my talents.

One of these friends, Rachel Spear, first sparked my interest in using my typewriter to

address my uncle’s death. Rachel was a scholar in the field of writing, and had in the last few

months been researching how college students dealt with trauma through their writing. I

remember her approaching me in the grocery store the day after the funeral. She was buying

carrots and I was stocking up on my bulk Campbell’s soup order. I remember her explaining her

take on the subject, as she told me in the store,”Trauma disrupts and alters one’s identity. Stories

arise not only in efforts to remember the past but also in hopes of creating meaning, putting

together the fragments, and reestablishing a sense of order to this psychological disorder.”(2023)

She went on to explain to me how trauma was a complex beast, and that remembering your
trauma was sometimes the hardest thing, that your brain likes to distort the truth in order to

protect you from yourself . But she believed that writing would help my scenario, and so I took

her word for it.

Another dear friend of mine stopped by the house just yesterday. Catheryn Maloy,

another writer I went to school with, offered me her condolences, and urged me to try to write

out my issues. She had also been studying the effects of multimodal composition to address

trauma. She suggested that I use a combination of sound, symbols, images, and writing to cope

with the pain I was going through. She added that I should maybe use these subjects in place of

creating a full blown narrative (2014). I looked out the window, and looked at the river, listened

to the sound of the water rushing over the rocks, and pictured my uncle casting out a line and

reeling in a record trout. The feeling that washed over me wasn’t necessarily happy or sad, but

comforting to be able to think of my uncle’s presence

As my fingers moved ferociously across the keys, I thought about what Rachel and

Catheryn had told me. My uncle’s passing had most definitely affected my identity, as I had been

away from my typewriter for what felt like an eternity before today. As I continued writing, I did

my best to focus on my most cherished memories of my uncle, to try to remember what I had felt

like before his passing. She was right; before today, I had found it hard to pick out memories of

the man that I knew, but getting it on to paper felt like the first real progress I had felt in a while.

She wasn’t the only one that had urged me to take another stab at writing during this

time. My good friends Tara Dapra and Wendy Bishop, both with whom I had attended my later

years of university, were also researchers in the field, and had been conducting studies similar to
the one that Rachel was. Wendy, a professor at an accredited university, shared to me her studies

on writing as a therapeutic practice within her own classrooms. She asserted that the teaching of

writing is inherently and in some ways accidentally therapeutic, and shared with me her

experiences with her students writing about topics such as their own suicidal thoughts, more

specifically in how these students used her writing class as an outlet to relieve pressure and

attach a voice to personal traumas that went unspoken. She brought up an important issue that

many students are already using their writings to express trauma, but most teachers do not have

the qualifications to respond (1993).

Tara held a different stance, sharing with me her own endeavors within studying the

genre of memoir and how it addresses personal trauma. Her research supported the idea that

personal memoir can act as an outlet to address trauma. She instead argued to me that good

writing should contain a therapeutic element, and that the two can benefit from one another,

claiming that good memoir writing contained a little bit of catharsis., and that creating a good

memoir involves “cannibalizing your own life”, allowing you to put your trauma to use and

create writing that is thought provoking (2013).

Her words,”cannibalizing your own life” really hit home as I continued to type. The

pages were beginning to stack up on the desk, and by now I really was cannibalizing my life in

this paper, talking about all the things I wish I had told my uncle while he was alive. It hurt,

writing all this out, but it was a good hurt. It felt as if I was finally letting go
 As my fingers flew over the keys, the familiar clack-clack cutting through the stillness of

the home, I couldn’t help but feel as if they were all on to something. Sure, the hurt was still

there, the wound still very much fresh, but now it wasn’t stuck inside. It felt as if I could breathe

for the first time in nearly a month. The breath was pain, and it was anguish, but it was breath

nonetheless, and it felt like for the first time in a long time that there would come a day I would

be fine.
 Works Cited

Bishop, Wendy. “Writing Is/And Therapy?: Raising Questions about Writing Classrooms and

Writing Program Administration.” Journal of Advanced Composition, vol. 13, no. 2, 1993, pp.

503–16. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20865930. Accessed 7 Dec. 2023.

DaPra, Tara. “Writing Memoir and Writing for Therapy: An Inquiry on the Functions of

Reflection.” Creative nonfiction 48 (2013): 60–64. Print.

Molloy, Cathryn. “Multimodal Composing as Healing: Toward a New Model for Writing as

Healing Courses.” Composition Studies, vol. 44, no. 2, 2016, pp. 134–52. JSTOR,

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24859533. Accessed 12 Dec. 2023.

Spear, Rachel N. ; “Let Me Tell You a Story”: On Teaching Trauma Narratives, Writing, and

Healing. Pedagogy 1 January 2014; 14 (1): 53–79. Doi:

https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2348911