Writing a Book? Going to Therapy Might Help With It

This article originally appeared on VICE Belgium.

After signing a publishing contract, I worked hard for a good year until March 2023 to write a long essay on food in the prison system. It’s a subject that’s worthy of public interest, but it’s also one that is deeply depressing in what it reveals we allow to be inflicted onto others.

The writing process lived up to my expectations; there were headaches, worries, tears, sleeplessness and doubts. But now, a few months since the book was published, my brain seems to have forgotten all that suffering – to the point that I’m already considering my next topic and the prospect of doing it all over again. I guess it's probably a bit like giving birth to your second child, now equipped with the knowledge of the pain and exhaustion caused by the first – although it’s worth stating that I write that as someone who doesn’t have or ever want children.

But there was one thing I hadn’t anticipated at all: how much writing a book would challenge my mental health. Years ago, I sought professional help for an anxiety and depressive disorder I’d experienced since childhood. Without diving too much into the details, let’s just say I had cancer as a child and the experience taught me that that the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran was spot on when he wrote, "We lose everything by being born”. This, together with other childhood experiences and the ongoing political climate in France, became an endless source of daily angst.

The therapeutic journey I set off on to deal with that lasted years, and it did me good. One day, I decided it was time to free up my therapist’s busy schedule to accommodate some other long-standing neurotic patient and stopped my sessions. But after a year of working on my book manuscript, my mental health nosedived all over again, so much so that I decided to call my old psychiatrist and restart our meetings for an indefinite amount of time.

The thing is: Writing a book is mostly about being alone in front of your computer, surrounded by books and trapped inside your mind. That’s especially true if you’ve chosen a topic that revolves around fun stories such as a 17-year-old starving to death because a guard who hated him refused to feed him, or what last meals were chosen by death row inmates accused of horrifying and truly haunting crimes. (I know, I know – I could have gone for a much easier, enjoyable and marketable subject, but no regrets.)

Another major way writing a book affects your life is how much it limits social activities. There’s a whole lot of work to do and very little money coming in – an open invite for the anxious brain to overthink everything. ‘Why did I agree to do this?’; ‘I'll never make it’; ‘I should have finished this part the day before yesterday’; ‘I'm incompetent, and now everyone will know’; ‘My friends will forget about me’; ‘Is this source correct?’; ‘Even my partner's cat thinks I'm stupid.’ All the classics!

Setting boundaries between work and daily life becomes increasingly difficult. My areas of research kept popping up while I watched movies and TV shows (even The Simpsons; in fact, especially The Simpsons). Every time I saw a prison vehicle on the street – a common occurrence, as I live near a prison – I’d spiral into thoughts about the chapter I had to finish as soon as possible.

Basically, writing makes you vulnerable. Even though I never totally unravelled like Jack Torrance in The Shining, I probably did lose touch with reality a bit here and there. “Writing isn’t about making money,” as its author Stephen King once said, “In the end it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay?”

Sometimes, it helps me to think that King, too, probably overthought things, given all the stuff he feared: sudden madness, flying, death, the number 13, darkness, the monster under the bed, and being unable to write (another phobia he passed on to Torrance). Maybe that explains why he disciplined himself into writing 1,500 words every morning, except on birthdays, national holidays, and Christmas.

Author and editor Capucine Delattre, 23, imposed the same rule on herself. “I was writing every day, without fail, for a minimum of two hours,” she tells me. Her first novel, Les Déviantes (The Deviants), came out in 2020 when she was only 20 years old.

But in the months following the book’s publication, Delattre experienced "periods of pure anxiety" about her abilities. “I concluded that my first novel was a pure accident, and that I was a total failure who should stop writing,” she says. "My second text was rejected; so was the third. I switched publishing houses once, then twice. The text was accepted, and then it wasn’t. Then a third publishing house – once again, false hopes. Doubts. A fresh start. And finally, I found the right idea."

Over the years, Delattre transitioned to a less rigid writing process, only opening the document where she puts all her work once or twice a week. But that approach also quickly became a source of anxiety. Delattre says she wondered: “Am I losing my thing? Am I falling short of that famous discipline that was admired in me? Am I heading for disaster?”

Delattre says therapy helped her overcome these difficulties. “I had completely overlooked the fact that my relationship with creativity could also be the subject of discussions, advice, and exercises offered by a therapist,” she says. “Working with him allowed me to build a much healthier relationship with writing and my own creativity. To let desire prevail over fear, and to no longer see writing as a constraint, but a joy.”

Of course, this is easier said than done, Delattre adds. This type of inner work is incredibly personal and dependent on the individual. For her, it was a necessary step in continuing her life as a writer. Eventually, she arrived at a more balanced understanding of her work. “Even though my discipline was an undeniable factor in my literary education,” she says, “it was also a form of asceticism that was really unsustainable in a fulfilling adult life with social activities, relaxation, spontaneity, and self-compassion.”

For her second book, Un Monde Plus Sale Que Moi (A World Dirtier than Me), Delattre investigated her own traumatic experiences, which she had deeply buried. While writing it, therapy helped her “focus on the present by realising how it was shaped by the past, rather than just dissecting the past over and over while neglecting the present”.

Marie is a novelist who asked to remain anonymous for our chat so that she could speak about these personal issues more freely. She decided to start therapy before even approaching her new project. “I've already written some of it in my head, but I haven't committed to a publishing house yet, I'm not ready," she says. Having already published an essay a few years ago, she knows how demanding the work can be. “Even though I was emotionally detached from that text, I came close to burnout,” she recalls. "But I know that a novel will require a different kind of energy, and if I don’t address certain questions beforehand, I won't be able to write this book.”

The plot of her novel is heavily inspired by her personal life, specifically her relationship with her mother and her own desire for motherhood. She has started secretly recording her therapy sessions to have material for her future novel, something she admits to be ethically questionable but very convenient. “It's one of the few places where I have no filter, and my therapist takes me to areas I may not necessarily want to explore,” she says. “I find it interesting for my research.”

In short, if you are looking to write a book, therapy could be a secret tool that helps you over the edge. “Writing is not an activity separate from the world,” Delattre concludes. “We are profoundly ourselves when we write, deeply immersed in life. Writing mixes the past, the future, what is resolved and what is not; what is urgent tomorrow and what we've regretted for the past eight months. It stirs doubts and fears, and connects unrelated, strange and absurd things. It turns our brains into big cauldrons where many things are happening all at once. We are so alone when we write, and that’s why I think therapy can be so beneficial for the writing process.”