[18] WRITING CURE: NARRATIVE AS A THERAPY IN PREETI SHENOY’S LIFE IS WHAT YOU MAKE IT

ARTICLE INFO- Date of Submission: March 17, 2024, Revised: March 30, 2024, Accepted: April 12, 2024, https://doi.org/10.56815/ijmrr.v3i1.2024.185-198

Abstract

In writing cure, narrative is positioned at the forefront of therapy, which assists individuals in restructuring psychic pain, trauma, and fragmented identities. Writing is not only a mode of expression; but a process of activity, which allows individuals to talk about their distress, confront repressed feelings, thoughts or outbursts. Therapeutic function of narrative is based on its ability to transform overwhelming affect into symbolism, invasive memories into communicable form, and give a chronological structure within which the self can find coherence. This method is consistent with more general conceptions of narrative as a self-healing technology in which the representable and the unspeakable are mediated through storytelling.

Preeti Shenoy’s Life is What You Make It portrays this dynamic by placing the lived experience of Bipolar disorder within a confessional, self-reflexive narrative style. The novel’s oscillating structure, which is characterised by uncertainty, extreme emotion, and recurrence of traumatic episodes, reflects psychological ruptures of the disorder while also serving as an area of integration. This paper will examine how the narrator uses writing to externalise volatile emotions, relive destabilising experiences, and create a voice which is capable of capturing her own suffering. The paper also aims to analyse the therapeutic gesture of the text and observe how the text serves as a site where writing itself acts as a treatment, promoting meaning-making, self-restoration, and agency in the wake of psychological anguish.