Writing stories keeps you calm!

I have been working for the last 18 months with No Panic (Sutton and Merton branch). No Panic is a self-help group for those who suffer anxiety, panic attacks and phobias, it offers support and help, enabling sufferers to live more positively. The group has transformed peoples’ lives.

 I was invited to work with the group through Daniela Paolucci and Apples and Snakes as part of Sutton’s Olympic celebrations. Sutton took an unusual approach to their celebrations – basing them on a 12th century Persian poem – The Conference of the Birds. This is a complex metaphorical, spiritual text and I was rather daunted! I soon found that The Conference of Birds might be a medieval poem, but its themes resonated strongly with the lives and experiences of No Panic. The group wrote poems, stories, fragments, about: difficult journeys; facing fears; courage; being transformed; arrival; coming home. The group went on, to their utter amazement and delight, to perform their work at Sutton Theatre. 

One of the members, Lawrence Ashenden said, “I felt I had discovered something new about myself”. The emphasis of my sessions was on the creative act of writing and creating stories and poems, on making art, rather than therapy. But this very act had a profound effect. The whole group felt that creative writing had helped their anxiety, allowing them to trust their imaginations, and give them freer reign. The performances increased their self-esteem and enhanced their lives. Daniela managed to get some extra funding, and produced a book of their poems.

Going Back  by Lawrence Ashenden

As I journey back I am dreaming of my birthplace.
The sounds and the smells
I have lived there
loved and cried there.
And look forward at the end of the day to be wrapped up
by those who love me and have missed me.
Where there is calm, joy and laughter
and where I want to be.
I’m going back to a new beginning,
to be positive and confident,
knowing that I have found a new mission.
I have missed the loving faces
and warmth and secure glow of my home.
No longer will I ever take all this for granted
Realizing, knowing the life I went to find on my journey
that all the time I had these jewels at home.
That whatever I need or feel I must have
are nothing to those I have in my loving abode.

 When we had finished the project I asked the group what they would like to do next, and they said, ‘write a book about how not to panic’. Apples and Snakes believed in my work, and have managed to find funds to allow me to continue working with No Panic. We are now working on their book, exploring: facts and fictions; poetry and short stories; factual and  imaginative writing; personal stories and historical writing. The group are writing about what it is like to suffer anxiety and panic attacks, bravely telling their own stories, writing about attitudes towards mental health, and noting down their suggestions for what sufferers can do to help themselves.

As Without – As Within by Steve Francis

 Having stepped into the watery surface of the mirror
he saw in an instant what could be,
but its need was to step back into where he’d been before.

And in doing so found that he was holding in both hands
a small air balloon –
which had ‘Hope’ on one side ‘Rest’ on the other:
and smiled at it as he let it go,
drifting into that otherness.

 An aerial view of the restlessness at ground level
could be seen as harmonious from on high
and this was transmitted to mind
as though broadcasted on a T.V. screen.

There was comfort in its contents and stilled negativity –
yet a sense of nonchalance
as he stood barefooted on that grassy hill,
waiting patiently for a new beginning.

Whenever – wherever – whatever
that beginning was,
reflected in the past – looking into some future:
like Janus knowing where he’d come from,
knowing the direction he was going into.