In 1986, James Pennebaker and Sandra Beall published the results of a study that examined the health consequences of writing about personal traumas. When they compared research subjects who were directed to write about past emotional traumas with those who wrote about neutral topics, they found that the test subjects were found to have better mental and physical health. Just writing about past traumas for fifteen minutes on four consecutive evenings resulted in better mental and physical health six months after the experimental writing sessions!
Using what is often now called “expressive writing,” numerous researchers have confirmed the reported improvement in research subjects’ mental health. They found improvement in patients diagnosed with anxiety and depression, improvements in insomnia, and decreases in chronic pain. While this kind of improvement was surprising, it was even more surprising to find objective measures of physical health also improving. The joint mobility of people with rheumatoid arthritis often improved, lung function in those with asthma usually increased, and the effectiveness of the body’s immune system was enhanced in most research subjects.
At first, how such improvements could result from something as simple as writing about past experiences was uncertain. However, a mechanism to explain these results began to emerge when research scientists began to use brain imaging devices to explore what was happening within the structure of the brain as their subjects were writing about their past traumas. It was found that expressive writing sessions produced a heightened activation of important brain areas compared to controls. Well known and previously described areas of the brain associated with improved health were demonstrated to be both activated and strengthened. These scientists also found that the degree to which these brain areas were activated correlated very closely with the degree of health benefits that resulted.
When you consider how easy these strategies are to use, the large number of benefits that result, and the absence of significant troublesome side effects, their potential value is obvious. If you are still hesitant to give this self-healing strategy a try and you are comfortable with reading scientific research reports, citations for some of the best research studies supporting it are listed in the references at the end of this article.
Next, I will provide two different approaches that you might choose from to begin using this strategy.
Suggestions for using writing about personal traumas as a self-healing strategy
One way to begin might be to obtain a book by James Pennebaker and john Evans entitled: Expressive Writing: Words That Heal. In this book, go to the third chapter of part 1 called: What are the Basic Writing Techniques? starting on page 31. Following and completing the directions in this chapter will likely take less than a week. If you read the rest of this book, you will find other ways to use this technique, but this chapter should be a good test for you to evaluate if writing about past traumas will improve your life.
Another way you can begin to use this strategy will not require that you obtain a book or use any other materials beyond what you will find in this article. This second alternative is based on a review article that nicely summarizes the research involving expressive writing that has been published over the forty-plus years since it was first described. The article, called: Maximizing Outcomes Associated with Expressive Writing, was written by Denise Sloan and Brian Marx. In this article, they also describe what they found during an extensive research program evaluating the use of expressive writing in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I have based the instructions that follow on the content of this article. My version of this strategy is not just intended for those diagnosed with PTSD, it should be useful for anyone with any history of past emotional trauma.
First, gather a pen and a stack of blank pages to write on, and find a secluded spot where you can write without interruption for at least 30 minutes. Next, recall the most emotionally traumatic event from your past (or series of related events) to focus on during your writing. As you write, ignore spelling, grammar, legibility, and similar concerns in favor of concentrating on your memories and thoughts about your trauma that you will be writing about. Do your best to recall and record as many details of the experience as possible, as well as what you remember you were thinking about at the time. While you are likely to find the emotions associated with your past trauma re-emerging, do not try to immerse yourself back into the experience. Instead, take a distance perspective and use the wisdom and understanding about life you have gained since the trauma occurred to gain a better perspective on what happened.
To be able to evaluate the usefulness of the expressive writing strategy, Sloan and Marx recommend that you do at least five weekly sessions of about thirty minutes or more, all focusing on the same event. When you first start using this strategy, you will probably feel somewhat uncomfortable for a while after your session, but this should fade away on its own, and revisiting the same event should provoke less discomfort as you proceed with more writing sessions on your topic.
Any benefits gained should be long term, and they should also add to the benefits of any other self-healing strategies you might use. When you consider the many health benefits that have been reported from the use of this strategy, the time investment is minimal in comparison, and there are no other costs involved.
References
This is the original research report by Pennebaker and Beall that was followed by hundreds of research studies confirming the initial observation and further increasing our understanding of this powerful therapeutic technique:
Pennebaker JW, Beall SK, Confronting a Traumatic Event: Toward and Understanding of Inhibition and Disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1986; 95:274-281
This article is particularly notable as it shows that just three twenty-minute sessions of expressive writing produced improvements in objective markers of inflammation for people with rheumatoid arthritis, and lung function for people with asthma, four months later:
Smyth LM, et al, Effects of Writing About Stressful Experiences on Symptom Reduction in Patients with Asthma or Rheumatoid arthritis. JAMA 1999; 281:1304-1309
Here are two review articles that summarize the results of hundreds of research reports showing that writing about past traumatic experiences often results in improved immune function, greater feelings of wellbeing, les anxiety and less depression:
Esterling BA, L’Abate L, et al, Empirical Foundations for Writing in Prevention and Psychotherapy: Mental and Physical Health Outcomes. Clin Psych Rev 1999; 19:79-86
Frattaroli J, Experimental Disclosure and Its Moderators: A Meta-Analysis. Psych Bul 2006; 132:823-865
Here are two of the best brain imaging research studies that demonstrate that expressive writing activates important brain areas that regulate emotion, that these activations produce enduring beneficial changes, and that the changes both correlate with and explain the health benefits that result from their use:
Beauregard M, et al, Neural Correlates of Conscious Self-Regulation of Emotion. Journal of Neuroscience 2001; 21:1-6
Ochsner KN, Ray RD, et al, For Better or for Worse: Neural Systems Supporting the Cognitive Down- and Up-Regulation of Negative Emotion. Neuroimage 2004; 23:483-499
This is a book by James Pennebaker and John Evans that contains instructions for using the first option for using expressive writing that I cited in the text of this article:
Pennebaker JW, Evans JF, Expressive Writing: Words that Heal. Idyll Arbor, Inc, 2014
This is a summary article by Denise Sloan and Brian Marx that I used to develop my recommendations for a second option for using expressive writing, also included in this article:
Sloan DM, Marx BP, Maximizing Outcomes Associated with Expressive Writing. Clin Psychol Sci Pract 2018;e12231
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