Episode 71: When Pain Meets the Pen: Writing as Medicine with Elisa Friedlander
What if the most powerful thing you could do in the middle of chronic pain wasn't to fight it, fix it, or push through it, but simply to write about it?
In this episode of the Writing with Purpose podcast, I'm joined by Elisa Friedlander, licensed psychotherapist, Certified Journal Therapist, and writing workshop facilitator. Elisa helps people transform their relationship with chronic pain and illness through the written word. Her work has appeared in outlets including HuffPost, Wordgathering, and The Mighty, reaching thousands who live with chronic conditions. She is on the faculty of the Therapeutic Writing Institute, where she teaches her original Pain Meets Pen™ curriculum and other courses. Through her business, Ink To Insight, LLC, Elisa regularly facilitates Poetry Journalling with the general population and Pain Meets Pen™ workshops that explore how therapeutic writing can quiet chronic pain. Elisa is currently working on a book centred on this topic.
Along with her professional expertise, Elisa’s personal journey with chronic pain, complex spinal surgeries, and multiple medical diagnoses, including complex regional pain syndrome, has shaped her approaches to teaching and workshop facilitation. In this conversation, we explore how writing became her medicine, how she uses dream journalling to process fear her waking mind tries to quell, and why the journal is the one place we can be entirely unfiltered. We talk about Elisa's bathtub writing practice, the healing power of nature, and the profound insight she reached through journalling: that pain could take many things from her life, but it would never take her essence.
In This Episode
- How Elisa's experience of failed spinal surgeries and a complex regional pain syndrome diagnosis led her to develop Pain Meets Pen™,
- The practice of illegible writing
- How dream journalling helped Elisa recognise and process health fears
- Why the journal creates distance and closeness at the same time
- The role of nature, including an oak tree visible from Elisa's writing window
- Elisa's bathtub writing practice!
Practical Wisdom
Elisa shares practical approaches for anyone exploring writing as a healing practice, including:
- Illegible writing: write freely, then write over your words repeatedly
- Dream journalling as a form of body listening
- Guided imagery before writing
- Nature as a writing prompt source
- Writing from the body's perspective
Connect with Elisa
Please connect with Elisa and explore her journalling and therapeutic writing workshops and newsletter:
Upcoming workshops:
Also Mentioned in This Podcast
- The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
- Mary Oliver
- Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature
- The Therapeutic Writing Institute
Podcast Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Therapeutic Writing and Chronic Pain
09:03 The Impact of Childhood Literature on Resilience
23:34 Navigating Chronic Pain and Identity
30:43 The Role of Writing in Healing
39:06 Workshops and Community Engagement
01:05:32 Final Thoughts on Writing as a Healing Practice
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