Writing people like vs. writing people remember

Most writers only use one of three techniques that make writing stick

Jun 30, 2026

Last week, I made a promise to you.

That in today’s newsletter I’d write about a weird, creative way to think about writing well.

So here it is: writing is therapy (literally).

But not only in the “I journal about my daddy issues to try and figure out why I’m attracted to curvy brunettes in leather jackets who will stomp on my heart before spitting on it” kind of way. (Although, yeah, obviously.)

The best writing shares the same mechanisms that therapists have been using since long before I was born in 1994. And I’m not just talking about talk therapy. Therapeutic modalities you’d never connect to writing map to it in ways you wouldn’t expect.

So I mapped three of the most impactful ones. Much of the writing I see on Substack only pulls from one, sometimes two. If you start using all three, you won’t just be writing better. You’ll be writing at a deeper level of human nature. The level where people actually remember what you wrote next week.

Which of these 3 are you already using?

Mechanism 1: Change their mind

This is where 90% of social media content lives.

You take a belief the reader holds: “I’m not disciplined enough.” And reframe it: “You don’t lack discipline. You’re just misaligned.” (Then pretend like you don’t write with AI.)

Readers like. They share it with their mom’s mom. It might even go viral. But two days later the reader is back to wrestling with their laziness because the reframe only reached their thinking, not their felt experience.

Therapists call this cognitive restructuring. If you’ve ever feverishly vented during talk therapy, you’ve experienced it. Useful. But shallow when it comes to real change.

I’ve read on social media hundreds of times that I need to regulate my nervous system, wind down before bed, and create a feeling of safety. I’d nod. Tell myself I believed it. I genuinely thought I had internalized it. Then I’d eat pizza, drink Coke Zero, and watch high octane anime until 3am. Heart rate up. Blood tingling. Wondering why I felt on edge and couldn’t sleep. Not noticing the gap between what I believed and what I was doing. Next thing you know, I have a bleeding ulcer forcing me to take stress management seriously.

A reframe that only reaches the mind has a shelf life of about forty-eight hours.

(The reason has less to do with your words and more to do with the reader’s nervous system.)

Mechanism 2: Write to their body, not just their mind

Every belief has an emotional charge underneath it. Every single one. And if you can figure out what that emotion is, you’ll write things people actually feel, not just agree with.

The belief “I’ll never be able to make this work” has real emotional weight. A felt heaviness that pulls your gaze towards the floor. No amount of clever reframing can touch that feeling on its own.

The intellectual and the emotional are tightly tangled.

Not internalizing this cost me years. Years of writing weekly newsletters that no one seemed to care about. After enough of those mornings, you stop blaming the algorithm and start blaming yourself. You start to think you’re pretty shit at this.

But around December of last year, I tried blending these two forces. Starting with this article about how to earn decent income if you lack discipline. Instead of just writing what I thought, I wrote about the stuff that actually frustrated me as a creative with ADHD. The response was different from my past articles. It felt more real. People replying with things like “this is me” instead of the usual cringe AI comments.

This reminds me of somatic therapy, where the body has to be involved for the emotional pattern to actually shift. It’s not enough to just talk about shame, guilt, or fear. You have to feel them moving.

I’m not performing somatic miracles with my newsletters. That would be god’s work. But the principle transfers.

Appeal to the heart. Then to the head.

Just don’t forget to layer in this last one...

Mechanism 3: Exposure, exposure, exposure

The last therapeutic writing mechanism, and arguably the most important:

Exposure (exposha if you’re Australian).

The gradual weakening of resistance through repeated contact with your worldview. Say the same sh*t, from enough angles, until it penetrates your reader’s mental military defenses.

For years, I rejected any spiritual writing. If a post mentioned energy, vibration, or raising consciousness, my thumb was already past it. Felt woo-woo. Not for me.

But after four years of bumping into spiritual ideas from people like Aubrey Marcus, Nick Huno, and Ascendor, I stopped outright rejecting them.

Now some of my friends, like Jack Moses, write pretty spiritual stuff. And I actually enjoy reading it. Not because some debate bro argued me into it. Because the ideas became familiar enough that my guard came down. (Or I’ve done one too many cups of Ayahuasca. But who can say?)

Don’t expect new readers to be open to your ideas the first time they see you on the timeline. Don’t expect them to like your worldview the first time they read you. Don’t expect them to ‘get you’ after a few pieces.

One post rarely changes anyone. But the fiftieth post, where the reader has encountered your worldview from fifty different angles, starts to dissolve that resistance. Not because you argued better. Because the idea became familiar. And familiar stops triggering the threat response.

This is why consistency matters more than any single well-written post. You’re not just staying top of mind. You’re running a slow, written exposure therapy protocol on your reader’s nervous system. Every time you publish, you’re asking their defenses to stand down, one inch at a time.

Help them think more optimistically. Write to their deeper self. Then show up enough times that their defenses stop treating you like a threat to ignore.

It’s the content strategy I’m betting on. It creates familiarity that feels like trust.

The original list of therapy techniques for this article was 5. I cut it down to 3. What techniques do you think I cut, and how do you think they apply to writing?

Until next time,

—Taylin

PS. Did you like the visual GIFs in this piece? Reply and let me know. I may keep doing it.