Writing yourself whole: Dan Simpson on the healing power of the journal

While a hallmark of the psychedelic experience is that it transcends language, sometimes it's only through the process of trying to articulate our story that we understand it. In this post, poet and workshop facilitator Dan Simpson shares the powerful role of writing in his journey of self-discovery. This month he’ll be hosting his course Writing the Journey to help others do the same.

By Dan Simpson

Writing was always a very public thing for me - and I don't mean ostentatiously setting up my laptop in a coffee shop, firing up a document with an extra large font, and faux-casually mentioning to the barista that I'm WORKING ON MY POEMS (though yes, reader: I have been that guy). I mean that I always wrote with an audience in mind.

Dan Simpson, Poet

A couple of years ago, I started journalling during a particularly difficult time in my life. I had some intuitive impulse to write out what was happening for me. In maintaining this practice, I found that it was helping me to understand the overwhelm of emotions in my head - and, unexpectedly, my body. Putting fingers to keyboard - creating space for physical and mental self-expression - let me truly hear what was going on inside, and translate that into words for myself.

Getting that distance between my inner monologue and my inner reader has been incredibly useful - even healing and transformative. I get to tap into my nebulous thoughts, give them shape on the page, and process it through reading. I can check-in on something in my head: does that actually resonate with me? Make sense? Feel true? In this way, I've come to understand myself so much more deeply, own my experience, and be more authentic with myself and others.

In a way, I'm still writing for an audience. It just happens to be an audience of one. Me.

Writing poetry still has its place in my life, of course. Looking back at stuff I've written over the years, there are crumbs of this practice in my public work. Coming at your life from the unexpected angles poetry offers us can yield beautiful insights. Journalling and poetry, creative and life writing, whatever we want to call it: expressing yourself in this way is revealing: and, once something is revealed, we have power to do something with it.

Psychedelic experiences have hugely helped me to heal and transform - and as part of the integration process, writing and journaling felt key. Putting the thematically wide-ranging, emotionally various, and complex reflections from a psychedelic journey into the relative simplicity of language helped me to draw concrete lessons from the experience - ones that I have carried with me into my everyday life. Language is a surface pattern for starting to understand the depths of the self - so let’s use it to effectively explore our lives and experiences.

I want to offer this practice to everyone, and so I devised Writing The Journey. Based on 10 years of facilitating and holding spaces, my 5-week course offers creative and journalling exercises designed to spark your creativity and self-reflection. The next one begins very soon, and I would love for you to join us - to write and share your own journey.

Writing the Journey: 5-week Online Course
Sunday 17 Oct - Sunday 14 November, 5.30pm - 7.15pm
Info and Tickets