Search Sign in
Programme

Therapeutic Autobiography

Therapeutic Autobiography is the whole account of you and the substance, from the beginning to today, written by you in six chapters and in order. When the last chapter reaches today, you read the whole account aloud, once, to your clinician.

Therapeutic Autobiography follows Baseline, which measured where you stood on arrival. This is the story of you and the substance, written by the only person who was there for all of it. You write it in six chapters, in this order: Growing up, The first time, The build, What happened, The damage and Now. You have been telling this story for years in pieces: one version for the family, one for the doctor, one for two in the morning, arranged so they never have to meet. Written whole and in order, they meet.

You write in the first person, with ages, places and amounts, and you write what happened rather than what you have learned from it. Spelling and grammar do not matter. Two one-to-one sittings follow. In the first, you read the whole account aloud to your clinician. In the second, you both take a handful of passages apart to see what each has been protecting and what it cost. The account is not a disciplinary record, and it is not for your family. You leave with the first version of the whole story in one place.

The path

9 sessions · 3 parts · Baseline comes first

  1. Before you write

    The first session sets out what the account is: evidence, in your own hand, for your own case, not a confession or an essay. Your clinician hears what happened and how you tell it, and the telling is never held against you. The second covers how to write it: first person, in order, specific, events rather than lessons. Six guards get into everyone's telling: Denial, Minimising, Blaming, Justifying, Joking and Numbing. Do not fight them on the page or edit them out afterwards. Under the depth limit, the heaviest material gets one sentence per scene at most. Anything you cannot safely write gets one sentence marking the door, such as "Something happened in 1998 that I am not ready to write." Then tell your clinician the door exists.

    2 sessions

  2. The six chapters

    Each chapter gets one session, in this order. Growing up: the house, what was praised, punished or never spoken about, and who you were at ten and at fifteen. The first time: the first drink or the first use (whichever yours was), where, who with, how old you were and what it did for you. The build: how occasional became regular, and regular became needed; the rules you made and the date each one broke. What happened: the events in order, with dates where you can. The damage: what each of the four accounts (trust, health, time and self-respect) has paid. Now: where the pattern stands this month, in the present tense, with no promises.

    6 sessions

  3. The reading, and what happens after

    When the last chapter reaches today, you tell your clinician, and two one-to-one sittings follow. In the first, you read the whole account aloud, start to finish, before anything is discussed, and your clinician listens and takes notes. In the second, you and your clinician go back to a handful of passages and take them apart together to see what each one has been protecting and what it cost in the four accounts. The account is not shared outside the people named in the Privacy Policy. The limits of confidentiality explained to you at the start apply to it exactly as they apply to anything you say in a session, and it comes back to you.

    1 session

How it works

One session at a time

Write in sittings of thirty to forty-five minutes, one chapter at a time, in order. Do not write the account in one night, or at one in the morning. Most accounts run between ten and twenty sides, and there is no prize for either end. If the writing raises the urge to drink or use, or raises old distress, stop writing and use your grounding practice. Tell your clinician the same day. Do not push through alone, and do not write your way into a crisis to prove anything. The account will wait.

Each session opens in your own private area of this site. You read it, then write your answers there, and the clinician who reads your work replies. Nothing is timed.

What is held, and for how long

What you write is private. It is not used to train anything, not sold, and not shared with anyone who does not need to know, and never without your specific consent except where the law requires it, as the Privacy Policy sets out. It is kept for three years after your last contact with the practice, and you can ask for a copy or its deletion at any point.