Re-Storying Lives Using Creative Writing: A Client-Oriented Approach to Overcoming the Health Impacts of Domestic and Family Violence

Abstract:Global studies show that survivors of traumatic experiences of abuse can suffer long-lasting effects and find themselves overwhelmed by challenges to their physical, emotional, and mental health. Some individuals internalize the mental health symptoms they are experiencing as an inherent part of their identity. While none of us can change the past, there is a way that survivors can change the way they view the past and the story they tell about it, which can help to transform this constructed identity. This is the narrative therapy framework for my creative life-writing process that helps survivors to take agency in fictionally re-storying their traumatic experiences without the underlying stigma involved in exposing real emotional and often hidden subject matter.