This week we’re chatting with Jodie Cariss, therapist and founder of high street therapy service Self Space. 

This month, Self Space launches its Open Letters project, a growing library of hundreds of letters submitted by individuals across the country exploring their mental health to tackle stigma and break down unhelpful stereotypes. So it’ll come as little surprise to hear that Cariss’s One Good Thing is all about the written word. Let’s get into it. 

Hey, Jodie! If you could recommend One Good Thing that we can all do for our mental wellbeing, what would it be?

Write a letter. Letter writing is a powerful tool for promoting good mental health. Its roots in therapy go back decades and it’s been used in many therapeutic contexts, including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), arts therapies and psychodynamic therapy.

Why is letter writing so powerful?

Letter writing helps us by providing an outlet for our emotions. Often, when we are struggling with difficult emotions or experiences, it can be hard to articulate them in the moment. Writing a letter allows us to slow down, reflect on our experiences and put our emotions into words. Out the head, onto the page. This process can be cathartic and can help us gain new insights into our experiences.

From a Jungian perspective, letter writing can be seen as a way of engaging with the unconscious. Jung believed that the psyche was made up of both conscious and unconscious elements, and that the unconscious played a powerful role in shaping our experiences and behaviours. In Jungian therapy, the goal is often to bring unconscious material to the surface and integrate it into conscious awareness. Letter writing can be a powerful tool for doing this. When we write a letter, we are engaging in an act of self-expression that may bypass our conscious defences and allow unconscious material to emerge.

Interesting. So, what benefits could we see from doing your One Good Thing?

When we write a letter to ourselves, we can practise treating ourselves with more kindness and empathy. This can be especially important for people who struggle with self-criticism, self-blame or have a loud inner shitty committee. In writing we may also use metaphors, symbols and other forms of imagery that are rich in meaning.

These can be interpreted and explored in therapy or reflected on afterwards if you are doing this at home, providing further insights into your inner world. From a neuroscience perspective, there is evidence to suggest that expressive writing (such as writing a letter) can have a range of benefits for our mental and physical health. Research has shown that expressive writing can reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, improve immune function and even help people recover more quickly from physical injuries.

Are there any challenges to letter writing? How can we navigate them?

Letter writing can feel like a ‘big deal’. We’ve become so able to immediately connect digitally with people, quickly and often without it needing to offer much of ourselves in the text. We can connect quickly and on a surface level with people so much more readily via WhatsApp and Instagram that we can find letter writing puts us in contact with a more reflective part of ourselves. This might feel more like hard work – more vulnerable or more intimate – so we might even try to avoid it. 

It’s a powerful moment to be with yourself when writing if you are simply exploring what’s coming up but also to give time and energy to the person you are writing to if you are sending the letter onwards.

Why did you start using letter writing with your clients?

It helps to put distance between ourselves and what we are going through or perhaps the other person, especially when we are dealing with complex situations or events from our past. Letters, even those written and never sent, can be a powerful tool to reflect, open up and reframe things. Letter writing can really help us bring ourselves to the table in a way that feels less exposing than speaking. Letters can also be edited and rewritten or returned to over and over again. They can also be read out loud to one another, to ourselves or in a group. 

Deeply personal and often connected to unsaid things, letter writing can be very therapeutic and is something we bring into our work with clients and in campaigns like the Open Letters Project. The contents of those letters is what connects us all, and they’re an incredibly powerful tool for empathy and tackling stigma and loneliness. 

And how has letter writing helped you, on a personal level?

Letter writing is something I do for my children. I have written a letter to them each year, and I keep them in a box to give them when they are older. It gives me space to reflect and really hold them in my mind. My nan used to write to me each week, sticking pound coins on the letters, I kept them all and when I see them she is immediately in the room with me, her energy in her handwriting and I can feel the love radiate off the paper. Powerful stuff! 

Main image: Unsplash; Stylist