The Second Draft
A closed narrative therapy cohort
Rewrite the story you have been carrying.
A six-week journey for five people. Life coaching meets group writing therapy. We take one thread you have been carrying. An identity. An incident. A story about yourself that is ready for its next draft.
Send a request, not a booking. I read it personally before questions and a short call.
Watch this video to understand what The Second Draft actually is.
From people who have written with me
Feedback from my journalling workshops, not from The Second Draft.
Before you request an invite
Do I pay when I apply?
No. I read your request, send questions, and arrange a short call. If it is a match, you receive an invite and a payment link.
How much time is involved?
Four live group sessions of 90 minutes and two private 45-minute sessions over six weeks, with weekly writing exercises.
What you get
- Four live group sessions of 90 minutes, all five together.
- Two private 45-minute one-on-one sessions with me.
- That is six sessions of deep work. Two of them private.
- A private WhatsApp circle for the five, for the six weeks.
- Prompts and writing exercises each week, made for your thread.
The six-week arc
Week 1
Name it.
Map the story and step outside it.
Week 2
Re-author the incident.
Find the moments it leaves out.
Week 3
Identity work.
Question who you think you are.
Week 4
Re-author forward.
Write the next chapter.
Week 5
Private session one.
One-on-one with Harshit. Go deep on your thread.
Week 6
Private session two.
One-on-one with Harshit. Close the chapter, write what is next.
The story behind it
Most of us are not stuck because life is hard. We are stuck because we keep telling the same story about it. The same incident. The same identity. The same line we say about ourselves at parties.
I started running closed cohorts because the one-hour Friday circle was not enough for the deeper threads. Some stories need more than a session. They need a room. A small, returning one.
The Second Draft is that room. Five people. Six weeks. One thread each. We do not fix the thread. We sit with it long enough to see it from the outside. Then we rewrite the part that was waiting to be rewritten.
From the research
This is a forty-year body of work.
People who wrote about a difficult experience for fifteen minutes a day, for four days, showed measurable drops in stress, fewer doctor visits, and better immune function months later.
The act of putting hard things into language changes the body. We use this in week one.
Their narrative therapy work showed that people who learned to externalise a problem ("the anxiety", not "my anxiety") could relate to it differently, and act differently.
This is the backbone of week two. We move the thread outside you.
His life-story identity research found that adults who could narrate their hardest chapters as redemption stories, rather than contamination stories, reported higher wellbeing decades later.
Week three is about which kind of story you are currently telling about yourself.
Frank showed that people recovering from illness and rupture do not heal by going back. They heal by becoming the teller of a new story, not the subject of the old one.
Week four is exactly this move. From subject of the old story to author of the next one.
Harshit Bhatia
Who leads it
The room is small on purpose.
I am a writing therapist and narrative practitioner. I work with overthinkers who want a clearer head and a more honest relationship with their own story. I keep the cohort at five because the work needs to be heard, not performed.
- · MSc, Middlesex University. Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes.
- · University of Oxford. Introduction to Counselling, summer programme.
- · Trained at Metanoia Institute, London. Presented at Lapidus International.
- · Five years of running closed writing groups, online and in person.
From people who have written with me
"From the start he made it very clear that he was not there to judge me in any shape or form. It felt like a very safe space to be open and to be myself, and to write from my heart. The workshop enabled me to become more self aware, and alter my perspective in relation to a couple of aspects of my life."
"You have a warm manner and clear spoken voice which ensures you reach your audience and keep them engaged. Numerous interesting observations came from participants."
"Every session with Harshit is a rollercoaster of emotions. I often find myself making better decisions just by having had that one honest hour."
How to request your seat
This is invite only. You cannot just pay.
- You send a request below. This is not a booking.
- I read it personally. If it looks like a fit, I send you a few questions.
- You answer them. Take your time. This part is already the work.
- A short call with me, about fifteen minutes, to see if it is the right room and the right time.
- If it is a match, you get your invite and the link to secure your seat. Five seats only.