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says what happened. In my portable journal, I noted ‘Indigo makes me angry they can’t pay attention outside their narrow focus!’ Writing that down was a cathartic explosion. Just writing the word ‘angry’ reduced its hold on me. I returned to the note later that evening to write up the description because the experience felt significant enough to pursue.

Writing cannot be prescribed, although teachers may try and impose some academic order on your writing. Writing is deeply personal. What you write should not be written to suit others, although there are some useful tips to help the writer.

      1 Pay attention to everything that seems to impinge upon the experience, no matter how tangential it is. Do not discard anything. It may emerge as significant.

      2 Write as spontaneously as possible. In reflective practise workshops, I ask people to write a story about a recent experience for 20 minutes without taking the pen off the paper. It needn’t be about clinical practice. To facilitate spontaneous expression, I assert ‘write without taking the pen off the paper’. Spontaneity is a helpful instruction because it encourages the writer not to overthink the description but let it flow as if it is the body that is writing rather than the mind. When we lift the pen, we pause and think and get stuck. Manjusvara (2005, p. 37) notes: ‘as the hand begins to overtake the brain it is amazing how often there emerges a coherent statement of what I had previously been struggling to say’.

      3 Draw on all your senses. What did things look like, smell like, sound like, even taste like? What did I sense? Paying attention to detail – the colour of the walls, what noises permeated the situation? What time of day? Such things may seem immaterial at the time of writing, but on reflection, may gain significance. The more detail, the better.

      4 Prepare yourself that you are going to pay attention to your experiences and write your journal. This will prompt you to pay more attention to what is unfolding moment to moment.

      5 Give free rein to your imagination. Writing should be approached with a playful and creative spirit. IT is YOU! In writing, you are writing yourself, your body, nurturing your precious and unique self. In writing, you change yourself on a subliminal level. As Ferruci (1982, p. 42) says, ‘it is like cutting a new pathway in a jungle’.

      6 Capture ‘talk’ that took place during the experience using actual words as recalled. This increases the sense of drama and subjectivity.

      7 Ask yourselves questions. These will highlight points that can be picked up later on reflection. You do not have to answer the questions in the description.

      8 Considering all the tips listed above, it doesn’t matter what you write and if you write just a few words. As you later reflect, other aspects of the experience will become apparent when exploring the reflective cues (Chapter 4).

Journal Entry 1

      In the reflection workshop, the practitioners write furiously for the allotted 20 minutes. Afterwards, many say they were surprised by what they have written. They note how their writing went off on tangents to the extent that some of them did not write about what they had intended to or hadn’t yet come to the specific point. They all seemed to enjoy this creative form of writing, even though some of them say it first seemed alien and difficult to start. Revealing the storied self. Putting together the pieces of self, of life itself. It is a creative and restorative act. Tufnell and Crickmay (2004, p. 41) note how:

      Creating is a way of listening and of trying to speak more personally from within the various worlds we inhabit. It is a way of discovering our own stories, refreshing and reawakening our language and giving form to the way we feel.

I advocate people write about the experience soon after it happens. My own edict is to write within 24 hours of the experience. Although I have no hard evidence to support this, practitioners say this is useful advice. Of course, I don’t always achieve this edict. Sometimes a week or even a month goes past, and I haven’t written about the experience for whatever reason. I can still recall it clearly and yet I wonder if my recall has become more distorted through time. It might suit some people to write at a later time when the immediacy of the experience has settled. Writing too soon after a situation may not be enough time for the emotional mud to settle and for things to become clearer. Sylvia Plath (1975, p. 147) writes in one letter to her mother:

      The thing about writing is not to talk, but to do it; no matter how bad or even mediocre it is, the process and production is the thing, not the sitting and theorizing about how one should write ideally, or how one could write if one really wanted to or had the time.

      Plath’s words are a reminder about not getting caught up in technique.

Journal Entry 2

      One student asks, ‘How do I write?’

      I respond, ‘Just do it. Let if come and flow as naturally as water flowing in a stream’.

      ‘Give me a clue’ the student asks.

      ‘Were you at work yesterday?’ I respond

      ‘Yes’

      ‘Think of one patient you nursed?’

      ‘Well a couple of days ago I thought about one patient who was sad’

      ‘Ok so now write a story about that’.

      He wrote: ‘Mr Smith is 46. He sits in his chair by the bed. He seems sad. I am frustrated that I do not have enough time to spend with him and the moments I have made time I‘m not sure how to help him which makes me want to stay away from him. So I feel caught in a dilemma’.

      Later I ask, ‘How was that?’

      ‘It has opened a real work of cans to reflect on’.

Triggers

      When practitioners commence writing, they are likely to focus on situations that, for whatever reason, have caused anxiety and become lodged in the mind accompanied by uncomfortable feelings such as anger, guilt, sadness, frustration, and resentment (Boyd and Fales 1983). These emotions create a sense of drama in mind. It may be triggered by what the practitioner has written before, as if what is written is a continuation of previous experiences. This is likely as the practitioner becomes more experienced in reflection and begins to see patterns emerging through reflection. In other words, writing becomes more reflective than simply descriptive over time.

      The student mentioned in Journal entry 2 was at a loss at what to write about, as if he had discounted his experiences as significant. It was his anxiety at not knowing how to respond to a sad man that caught his attention. It follows that the practitioner may naturally reflect either consciously or subconsciously to defend against this anxiety. They may distort, rationalise, project or even deny the situation that caused these feelings. Chodron (2000, p. 12) helps us view negative feelings more positively as an opportunity for learning and growth. She writes:

Generally speaking, we regard discomfort in any form as bad news. But for practitioners or spiritual warriors – people who have a certain hunger to know what is true – feelings like disappointment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.

      Hence she advocates practitioners face up to their anxiety to see anxiety as an opportunity for learning. In a similar vein, Paramananda (2001, p. 58) writes:

      Whenever we begin to feel frustrated in what we are doing, we should slow down and pay closer attention to it. Frustration takes us away from ourselves; we become alienated from our experience. When we feel this beginning to happen we need to pay more attention to our experience.

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