Beyond Problem-Solving to Life-Building
Here’s a question that might surprise you: If it’s helpful to externalise problems, what about strengths? What about resilience, courage, hope, or competence?
Many people assume therapeutic writing focuses only on difficulties—excavating pain, processing trauma, naming struggles. And yes, that’s part of the work. But there’s another dimension that’s equally powerful: richly describing the positive aspects of your life.
Why Externalise Strengths?
You might think: “If something is positive, why not just let it be?” Here’s why externalising positive qualities is transformative:
When we simply say “I have good self-esteem” or “I’m strong,” these feel nice but remain somewhat abstract. They’re qualities we possess, but we don’t fully understand them.
When we externalise these qualities—when we explore their history, relationships, and meaning—they become more real, more accessible, and more useful in addressing life’s challenges.
From Abstract to Richly Described
Before externalising: “I’m resilient.”
After externalising through writing: “This resilience has a history. It was nurtured by my grandmother who showed me how to keep going through hardship. It was strengthened when I survived that difficult period three years ago. It connects to my value of honouring life’s challenges rather than running from them. It shows up as practical problem-solving, dark humour, and the ability to ask for help when needed. It’s linked to my capacity to see difficulty as temporary rather than permanent.”
See the difference? The second version provides so much more—history, relationships, values, specific skills, practical applications.
A Therapeutic Writing Practice
Exploring a Quality You Value
Choose something positive about yourself—a strength, skill, value, or quality. It might be compassion, creativity, persistence, sense of humour, or anything else.
Write About:
- Its History: When did you first notice this quality? Who helped cultivate it? What experiences strengthened it?
- Its Relationships: Who in your life knows this quality well? Who would be least surprised to hear about it? Who helped bring it into being?
- Its Meaning: What does this quality represent to you? What values or commitments is it connected to?
- Its Skills: What specific skills or knowledges make up this quality? How does it show up in practical ways?
- Its Future: How might this quality help you address current challenges? What does it make possible going forward?
Real Examples
“Competence” Externalised:
Instead of just feeling competent, someone wrote about how their competence was built through:
- Their mother’s patient teaching
- Successfully navigating previous challenges
- Learning to trust their judgment
- Developing research and planning skills
- The ability to ask good questions
- Knowing when to seek help
This richly described competence became a resource they could consciously draw upon.
“Hope” Externalised:
Rather than simply “being hopeful,” someone explored:
- How hope was gifted by their spiritual community
- Times hope had sustained them before
- The specific practices that kept hope alive (morning walks, connecting with certain friends, creating art)
- The difference between naive optimism and seasoned hope
- How hope linked to their value of possibility
Why This Matters for Healing
When you’re struggling, accessing your strengths can feel impossible. They seem to have vanished. But they haven’t—they’ve just been obscured by the problem’s dominance.
Richly describing your positive qualities through writing creates:
A Resource Map: Instead of vague “strengths,” you have specific skills, practices, and knowledge to draw upon
Connection to Others: You remember the people who contributed to these qualities and can reach out to them
Historical Perspective: You’ve survived difficulties before, and the evidence is written down
Practical Applications: You know exactly how these qualities show up and can be activated
Values Clarity: You understand what matters to you and why
Balancing Problem and Possibility
Therapeutic writing isn’t about toxic positivity—pretending problems don’t exist or forcing gratitude when you’re suffering. It’s about accurate representation.
Your life contains both struggles and strengths, difficulties and capabilities, pain and possibility. Externalising helps you richly describe both aspects so you have a fuller, more honest, more hopeful picture of your whole story.
Cultural Considerations
Some cultures emphasise humility and might feel uncomfortable explicitly claiming strengths. Others celebrate individual achievement. Some focus on collective qualities rather than individual ones. Your therapeutic writing can honour your cultural values while still helping you access and understand your positive qualities.
Moving Between Problem and Possibility
In practice, therapeutic writing often moves between:
- Exploring problems and their effects
- Identifying moments when the problem was less influential
- Examining what made those moments possible
- Richly describing the skills, knowledge, and support that contributed
- Connecting these to values and commitments
- Building alternative stories of capability alongside stories of struggle
This movement creates pathways from where you are to where you want to be.
In our next post, we’ll explore the relational and community aspects of externalising—how therapeutic writing can help you identify and strengthen your support network.