This master's thesis explains parallels between poetry-writing and psychotherapy. An important connexion between these elements may be grounded, recognised and used in practise in poetry therapy, while this research focuses on poetry and psychotherapy separately, additionally including the element of sharing one's own poetry publicly, as it is made possible on an increasingly widespread social media platform, Instagram. The empirical part contains data gathered through interviews conducted with ten poets, who publish and share their own work with other people on the Instagram social media platform. The nature of this research is qualitative, using the grounded theory method. The results show that poets experience poetry-writing as a form of self-help in times of distress, as a medium to express their thoughts and emotions, and as a way to process and make sense of everyday events. Poetry-writing brings about numerous changes, comparable to the expected effects of psychotherapy. From poets’ point of view, sharing poetry (anonymously) means sharing their own experience and provides them with the opportunity to receive feedback from others. The results of this research, supported by existing studies and literature in this field, may be of assistance to poets to better understand themselves and their artistic creation, to therapists as an incentive to use poetry within therapy, and as an inspiration to individuals searching for ways to (self-)express and care for their own mental health.
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