P-1165 - Therapeutic Letters - Changing the Emotional Schemas Using Writing Letters to Significant Caregivers

Abstract

The letter writing is a psychoterapeutic strategy, which can help to the patients to cope with the relationship to the significant people from their childhood.

Method

The purpose of writing letters is to experience and to understand their own feelings, to cope with strong emotional experiences, which are related to the injuries in the childhood. We present specific examples of the letters from our patients in last 15 years of our experience, when this technique is mainly used in patients with personality disorders, affective and anxiety disorders.

Results

The letter-writing process is carried out in a safe atmosphere of the therapeutic relationship, where the patients can learn to deal with these emotions. Then the result is a profound change in beliefs about themselves and others. The basic types of therapeutic letters are these four: not censured letter, emphatic letter from the “other side”, the letter to the “inner child” of the significant person and the letter “visit-card”. In not censured letter the patients primarily reflect the negative feelings that hurt them in childhood. The emphatic letter from the “other side” is the ideal answer the patients would have wanted to get away from the significant person; patients formulate the particular wishes and expectations, which meet in a fictional response (encouraging self-confidence, assurance of love, respect). The “visit-card” letter is the censured letter in “adult to adult” mode, written with respect for oneself and significant person, directed towards reconciliation.

Supported

By IGA MZ CR NT 11047-4/2010.