How To Write Powerful Personal Essays Without Making Yourself Feel Unsafe

If you want to use your personal story in your business without it affecting your mental health, learn to use space and editing to help you

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I started writing and blogging a very long time ago, something not exactly evident on Medium with my huge gap in attendance. Part of the reason behind this was the time I took out for myself as I recovered from a deeply significant and painful traumatic experience in my life.

I was sharing my mental health journey before it was the done thing, way back as far as 2015, if not earlier; I only recall 2015 because my manager had asked me to stop posting my life experience on my personal (private!) social media page because I nationally represented one of the biggest fitness companies in the UK at the time.

Imagine the backlash if that were to happen now!

Anyway, moving on…

When I was doing this, however, I was doing it raw; unfiltered and deep within an emotional flashback — a term coined by the author of Complex PTSD — From. Surviving to Thriving, Pete Walker. It was a voice which came straight from my hurt inner child. Because of this, I would experience the flash of guilt, shame and dread; similar to hangover dread; feeling like I’d shared something I really shouldn’t of.

It wasn’t the done thing. Though I wouldn’t do the same now, I also wouldn’t undo anything I’ve had to learn the hard way — it brought me this far.

Trauma and mental health weren’t trending on social media and all over the place like it is now.

Even now, where mental health and trauma have almost become buzzwords; it’s still become a bit of a minefield because to share your traumatic experience does have to come with due care and caution in order for you to feel safe in doing so.

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After taking significant time out of sharing my own story and learning how to write and edit, I find I can now share a powerful story without it feeling and being so personal.

Some of my experiences now feel like they happened lifetimes ago and I am an almost entirely different person to who I was when I experienced them. This allows me to depersonalise responses from others, something which is nearly impossible when you’re still in the trenches and working through whatever you’re going through.

Quite often, I’d receive messages from people inspired by or touched by my posts on LinkedIn and they would remark how they wish they could be as brave as me and do the same.

My thought on this was similar to Brené Brown’s where she reflects that true vulnerability is sharing your story with someone who has earned your trust and not by sharing it with the world — if that’s not something you want or feel safe to do.

It’s just not necessary — you owe no one your story, your healing, your journey or your vulnerability — it is yours and yours alone.

In a similar vein — in her book Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert writes of how she shares her writing for her benefit and not for that of others — if it touches the lives of others; and provides a sense of kinship and relief to others, it is a beautiful added benefit. But our writing, especially of our own story, has to be for us.

Even now, I have to harness a process allowing me to be able to share powerful personal stories without feeling safe and unexposed. It’s simply not worth putting myself in a position where my writing could negatively affect my mental, emotional and physical health.

Whilst it’s become common practice to share deeply personal stories to create a connection and visibility for your business; where some coaches and influencers are even teaching and encouraging you to do so. It requires a level of discernment and deep honesty with yourself as to whether it’s really worth it especially if it could impact your mental health and sense of safety to the point of making yourself ill.

This is the process I use to work through my personal essays to be ready for sharing in publishing which I will share with you here.

Letting It Bleed

Similar to the advice given when you write an angry letter in the heat of the moment — it is absolutely a great time to get writing. Your emotions are at the highest, and you’re probably going to get really creative and colourful here; it will most certainly be raw and unfiltered — and for the love of all things Holy, please don’t hit send publish when you’re done.

This is what I used to do.

I’d pour my heart out, along with all my most tender feelings and insecurities and more often than not, I’d write something I’d later regret or just feel incredibly exposed for having been so brutally and openly honest. It was a powerful reading and quite often what needs to be said can come with a bit of a shock factor. However, it can lead to shame; sometimes to being argued with, attacked or oftentimes worse — being completely ignored.

Cue the shame cloud that hangs for days.

It’s just not worth it.

Use this first foray as time for free-flowing, unfiltered first-draft writing. I’ll hedge a bet in saying most of this writing won’t ever see the light of day. It won’t be useless, regardless, as it will serve as soothing and self-healing verbal processing for whatever it is you’re feeling or going through. This kind of writing allows you to let go of powerful emotions, feelings and experiences that left to bubble under the surface could explode out as emotional leaking elsewhere.

Letting It Rest

Once you’ve let it bleed, you need to let it rest. You probably also need to let yourself rest here too. Quite often when you’re writing from the softest parts of your soul it’s evoking mighty energy and emotions you need to rest from.

It’s not the kind of writing you set to editing right away. At the very least give it a day. Tune into your body and your intuition; it’ll tell you when you’re ready. Sometimes within a couple of days, I’m ready to prune back what I’ve written, other times it’s weeks or months. The book I wrote in 2021 has had a couple of revisions and on the last look, I decided there were some lessons needing to mature and steep before I’d be happy to share them.

You have plenty of time to share your story, if and when you want to; whilst you wait, it’s the time to write other pieces of writing which are uniquely captivating — without touching your nerves.

Edit One

The first edit is where I’m dipping in to see what gets to stay and what gets to go. I’m often tearing out huge chunks of the writing which come from the wounded part of myself which speaks in projection or is primed ready to shock. It’s also where I’ll pad out the parts of the story which feel safe enough to share and require some backstory, explaining or researched backing. I’ll write it and backtrack to retrieve the research — I normally know where I’ve learned the concepts but I just won’t get the writing done if I lead research first.

After the first edit, depending on how sensitive it is, I’ll leave it for another period of time. It’s also a step I’ve personally repeated one to 3 times; leaving the piece of writing either wildly condensed or whimsically longer when it paints a beautiful picture.

Edit Two

The second edit is where I make it commercially readable and appropriate for whatever publication I’m planning to share it with. At this time I’m feeling for the tone of the piece and making sure it’s written well enough to be well received. As well as the vitals like checking the grammar, punctuation and formatting to give it the best chance of being accepted over rejected.

It’s important at this stage to also check in with yourself how you feel about the possibility and likelihood of facing, sometimes multiple, rejections of your piece of writing and whether or not you can separate yourself from your story.

It’s not wrong, or bad, or a sign of weakness if you can’t — when it’s a deeply personal story it can feel like you’re sharing a piece of your heart.

With some bigger publications you can expect to meet higher expectations and often, much longer wait times — be prepared to wait and again, to recognise if you’ll start to get the fear if you do have to wait.

Some of my most popular and heartfelt written pieces faced a few rejections before they were published and then well received. Some published pieces landed like pancakes and that was ok — where, a few years ago the same eventuality would have knocked my confidence and I would feel hurt and ashamed.

Trusted Feedback

This is an optional step. Sometimes I do it, other times I don’t. The further through my personal growth journey I’ve travelled, the less I seek out external validation for whether it’s going to be something I should put out or not.

In part because through experience, I’ve come to understand it from various outlooks. I have a pretty good idea of what is appropriate and what’s not and on a personal level I know what challenges my sense of safety.

In the early days, it can be potent to have a trusted friend or mentor check out your writing before you send it out — or another way could be to initially publish your pieces in a gated community like a small Facebook group or self-run membership or newsletter while you find your feet.

Keeping It Cherished or Setting It Free

Once you’ve run the steps you should find you’ve decided whether or not you want to set your personal essay out into the wild. Whether it’s right after the Let It Bleed stage or any of the edits.

In itself, it’s a really great way of cultivating a relationship with yourself in a state of active self-awareness. You begin to learn how to listen out for and understand different emotions and how they feel in your body in relation to your work. When you can do this, you set yourself up to be able to transfer what you’ve learned about yourself into all of the other areas of your life.

Only you can decide if using your personal experience is something you’d like to share, listen to your body and how it responds and reacts whenever you write, go to share or have shared and take note of what goes on for you and what happens afterwards and you can make much more clear and informed decisions on how to use your writing over time. If you don’t feel safe to share now, you might later; or you might feel safe to now and go through a period of time later where it doesn’t. At any one time you get to choose, the main thing is that you feel safe — because you deserve it.

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