Gillie Bolton

Reflective practice is essential for effective practice in medicine, healthcare, education, and therapy / counseling. It can enable practitioners to understand their disasters and successes and learn from them. This method enables deep critical yet sympathetic questioning and learning from colleagues, and transforms continuing professional development as well as initial training and education.

Practice can be intensely rewarding, yet deeply demanding. Clients, patients and colleagues receive the best energy and attention, but what of the practitioner? Writing exploratively and expressively, and discussing these writings, can offer time and space to reflect deeply and effectively, reaching parts other courses don?t. Trust and confidence in effective dynamic collegial communication is facilitated.

This method facilitates deep and effective reflection upon practice and related issues.

Gillie Bolton is an experienced consultant available to be commissioned to run courses.

Responses from Group Members

A personal response

One of the first things Gillie said which really resonated with me 'was that people will always write what they need to write'. I guess she meant that the activity of writing has so much therapeutic potential anyway that just putting pen to paper with the right intentions can be useful and cathartic. She encouraged us to just write, to disregard the 'inner critic' and let things flow without necessarily knowing where it would take us. She also stressed that we must choose our audience carefully both in terms of the level of understanding that we pitch the writing at (writing for a teenager would be very different from writing for other healthcare professionals, for example) and the disclosure that may be involved in inviting a third party to read it. She asked us to write a sentence about what weather conditions we could best be described as. This simple task proved unexpectedly meaningful in that most people choose mixed or transient states, such as my own description of 'misty' with some sun behind, waiting to come out'. I guess this was a useful way of getting us to think about how we were feeling and how to tune into the intrinsic creative potential within us all (as perhaps alluded to by the sun waiting to come out in mine and other people's examples).

We then did a 6 minute writing exercise. I honestly can't remember the brief, but as someone who is approaching a big birthday I have started to wonder where my life is going and ponder some of the choices made and lessons learned. I wrote some thoughts about these which were too personal to share (and we didn't have to share, which was good), but were certainly helpful to me. I think there is something about seeing life choices and dilemmas written down which condenses them into universal themes e.g. passion versus stability or the drive to inclusion versus the urge to stand alone. Having done this and summarised some fairly deep existential issues in 6 minutes flat I felt strangely free as if by naming them I had divested them of some of their power. We were then asked to write a letter to the 'most compassionate person we could imagine' stating what we needed (in life or in response to a particular dilemma). I chose to focus on issues of  family tensions and of past romantic disappointments / mistreatment. I wrote as follows:

Dear x,

If you were best able to help me you could explain why my parents set me up to fail in life, didn't want the best for me and are still threatened by any sign of my success. You could explain this in a way that allowed me to still love them. You would help them to talk to me (really talk) and facilitate an open dialogue of the kind we are never likely to have. You could bring in the men that rejected me, didn't appreciate me or were cruel. You could facilitate them to tell me how this behaviour fitted into their lives and came (perhaps) from their own unmet needs. What part of me was in those unhelpful interacions too? I need to know that in orde to truly learn from it. After this you'd hug me and hold  a we'd go for walks seeing the woods and the flowers and the streams. W'd eat good food and listen to music that was nurturing in some way. After ll this i'd know that you had always been there for me and would always be there for me. I'd know not to grieve that which felt curtailed (relationships, career goals, choics not taken) because I am now in a better place and the very best  yet  come.

We were then asked to write a reply from the compassionate source and I wrote as follows:

Reply from x,

Firstly let me say how pleased I am that you are thinking these things and locating these difficulties where they belong-outside of yourself. I have always thought of you as a shining star full of promise and potential. Don't let others zap it! We don't choose our family and in some ways you got a poor deal butits made you who you are. They didn't act any better because they couldn't be any better. They were young, feckless, dogmatic and damaged. They look back on some of it with something akin to regret but admitting that is a different thing. Pride is important to them and prevents the apology you often feel you need. Re; interactions with men: they weren't men, they were boys. They were attracted to you, but couldn't handle your warm, honest, open and genuine nature. It reflected back to them what they were not able to be-hence they became rejecting or dismissive. Again, some of them do regret their treatment of you. Others have blocked it out as they struggle to create their own narrative. Apologies may be a long time coming as immature, selfish people struggle with these more than people like you and this is something you need to know. There are a variety of ways to be sorry just as there are a variety of ways to be strong, but then you already know about that.

Having written these I felt like a load had been lifted from my mind. I walked out into the Penrith sunset (it was a beautiful day) and thought about how I could best use these techniques to help my clients. Many of the people I see struggle with issues of shame and self-criticism as well as unanswered questions about why other people treated them as they did or why certain things happened. I will strongly consider setting them this kind of task (if they agree it could be useful) to help harness their inner wisdom and forgiveness. I think this could prove a very powerful therapeutic intervention.

BY IS (Health Professional)

A personal response from a published story writer

My writing life began fifteen years ago in Gillie Bolton's reflective writing group for G.P's. I'd heard about the group on radio 4, and intrigued by the idea that writing might help with emotional pressures of General Practice, contacted Gillie to join. My first attempts at reflective writing were short, a few lines folded up small and dragged from my pocket to be read out with exquisite embarrassment. But with Gillie's encouragement, my confidence increased.

My pieces became longer and I began to enjoy sharing my writing.

One homework was to write in the voice of a patient we found difficult or perplexing. I found I became that person in my imagination, and could relate to their problems with greater insight and empathy. I looked forward to the meetings, and enjoyed the discussion and support generated by my colleagues' writing. I've always read fiction, and frustrated that real life stories are so messy and the outcomes often sad, decided I could make up 'better' ones! Prone to anecdote and exaggeration, my writing strayed further and further from the truth. I realised I was writing less for professional development; more for fun and to entertain my colleagues. I wrote short stories about imaginary characters, whose behaviour and destinies I could control. And because they were not based on patients, I was able to share my work outside our confidential group.

I continued to attend the group, which had become a supportive circle of friends. But I also worked hard at the craft of writing and began to submit my stories, with some success, to magazines and competitions. When I had enough stories for a collection I discarded one third, rewrote and edited the rest. Themes emerged, reflecting my preoccupations over the previous years and inevitably, my work as an inner city G.P. This year, my book 'Insignificant Gestures,' was published by Pewter Rose Press. Many of the stories are in the first person. The ability to inhabit a character's inner world through writing had its origins in Gillie's reflective exercises all those years ago.

'Insignificant Gestures': Twenty five stories about exile and belonging. Jo Cannon's first collection explores what it means to be an outsider. Sometimes surreal, always perceptive, the stories celebrate the unexpected interactions that alter lives.

Available at £8.99 from Pewter Rose Press   www.pewter-rose-press.com, Amazon UK, or Waterstones.

Jo Cannon