Writing for Managing Anxiety

A chance to take a break from academic writing and just let your imagination take you wherever it needs to go!

This postgraduate workshop is led by Christina Christou, a wellbeing practioner and workshop facilitator with a CIC wellbeing organisation called Spring to Life. Christina is undertaking a PhD at the UoB where she will be researching the effectiveness of story in therapy.

She'll be leading a number of writing exercises to enhance wellbeing, and sharing some simple writing practises that can be implemented into daily life.

In therapy Christina uses many different tools to help her clients manage anxiety, including mindfulness, psycho-education, and talk therapy. What has been especially useful for many clients is expressive writing and writing/art activities that help the client express what is sometimes difficult to say. Christina is interested in the story telling aspect of writing, where the person can write in the third person. In this way it is sometimes helpful for people to express emotions or situations, as in anxiety, writing about it as if it is someone else.

This workshop allows free reign of your imagination to take a given story stem about a hypothetical character who is feeling anxious and to allow the writing to tell the story.

You can write in prose, poem , based on real life or make believe, add diagrams, use colour etc

There will be an opportunity to share but this is not compulsory. There will not be any literary critique of the writing.

Importantly, no prior experience of story writing is necessary - just enjoy the process of story writing.

This event is funded by the University Graduate School's PGT Community Fund. More information about the fund, which is open to PGT students at the University of Birmingham throughout the academic year, is available here