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And today, journaling is also a proven, evidence-based therapeutic method for healing, self-empowerment, and self-directed change, among other things. You can certainly keep a journal if you’re in therapy, but you can also keep one if you’re not. In fact, keeping a journal in itself is like having a therapist—and it’s much cheaper.
And, just in case you’re thinking you don’t have time to journal, journaling doesn’t have to take an hour or a half-hour a day. It can be done in as little as five minutes. Top
And, just in case you’re thinking you don’t have time to journal, journaling doesn’t have to take an hour or a half-hour a day. It can be done in as little as five minutes. Top
You might call Dr. James Pennebaker the grand-daddy of journaling research. He’s a research psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin. In the 1970s and ’80s, he began investigating people’s reactions to traumatic experiences, such as natural disasters, sudden deaths of spouses, sexual traumas, physical abuse, and the Holocaust. He discovered something very significant: People who had experienced a trauma and kept it secret had a higher risk for major and minor illnesses than those who opened up. This led him to believe that keeping trauma a secret is a health risk. (See his Writing to Heal for details.)
Then Dr. Pennebaker began to wonder if people who wrote about their traumas would have the same results as people who talked about them. Would they also have fewer health issues? Many studies since have demonstrated that indeed they do.
Here is the pattern of most of his writing studies: In the beginning, he recruited college students, since he was at University of Texas. He divided the participants into groups. One group would write about their painful experience and include their deepest feelings about it. Dr. Pennebaker called this “expressive writing.” Then the control group would write about something innocuous, like how they spent their day. Sometimes he included a third group who would write about their trauma in a reporting way, without going into their feelings.
All the participants would write for four days, usually consecutively, but over no longer than a week. Each of these times, they wrote for 20 minutes at a time. That’s all—no more than 80 minutes on a trauma or painful experience. All the writing was done anonymously, to encourage more honesty and openness. In some of the studies, the writing was read by the researchers, but in other studies, no one but the writers saw the writings.
What were the results of these tests? In every study, those who wrote about the trauma or stressful event and included their feelings had more beneficial outcomes than the other groups. For instance, over the next several months, they had fewer visits to the university health clinic. Also, they had had their blood drawn both before and after some of the tests to check their immune system markers. People who wrote about their feelings had stronger immune systems after the writing— even several months later. Let me repeat that: Several months after taking only 80 minutes to write down their feelings about a painful experience, their immune systems still were stronger than they had been before the writing.
• A now-famous study of expressive writing was conducted in the mid-90s, and then reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April 1999. It was titled “Effects of Writing About Stressful Experiences on Symptom Reduction in Patients With Asthma or Rheumatoid Arthritis.” This time, researchers recruited people with these conditions. They were given physical exams that checked the severity of their disease both before the writing and afterward. The expressive-writing group wrote about the most stressful event of their lives for three days, for 20 minutes at a time—a total of an hour. The control group wrote about emotionally neutral topics. Four months later, nearly 50 percent of the expressive-writing group showed “clinically significant” improvement in their condition! Only a quarter of the control group did. As the study conclusion said, “These gains were beyond those attributable to the standard medical care that all participants were receiving.”
In an editorial in that same edition of JAMA, there was this comment about the study: “Were the authors to have provided similar outcome evidence about a new drug, it likely would be in widespread use within a short time.”
• Studies of people with cancer, for instance, showed that they benefited from just a single session of expressive writing, in that the writing changed how they thought and felt about their illness. It also had a positive impact on the quality of their lives.
• Dr. Pennebaker conducted a very interesting study of a group of middle-aged men who were all laid off without notice after years of service to a high-tech company. They were understandably furious about what had happened to them, and Dr. Pennebaker calls them “the most angry, hostile, unpleasant bunch I’ve ever worked with.” In the study, some of these men were asked to write about their deepest thoughts and emotions about losing their jobs; the others wrote about how they were using their time while they were out of work.
Eight months after the study ended, all the men had been to the same number of job interviews. Yet 52 percent of the emotional writing group had new jobs, compared to 20 percent of the time-management writers. Dr.
Then Dr. Pennebaker began to wonder if people who wrote about their traumas would have the same results as people who talked about them. Would they also have fewer health issues? Many studies since have demonstrated that indeed they do.
Here is the pattern of most of his writing studies: In the beginning, he recruited college students, since he was at University of Texas. He divided the participants into groups. One group would write about their painful experience and include their deepest feelings about it. Dr. Pennebaker called this “expressive writing.” Then the control group would write about something innocuous, like how they spent their day. Sometimes he included a third group who would write about their trauma in a reporting way, without going into their feelings.
All the participants would write for four days, usually consecutively, but over no longer than a week. Each of these times, they wrote for 20 minutes at a time. That’s all—no more than 80 minutes on a trauma or painful experience. All the writing was done anonymously, to encourage more honesty and openness. In some of the studies, the writing was read by the researchers, but in other studies, no one but the writers saw the writings.
What were the results of these tests? In every study, those who wrote about the trauma or stressful event and included their feelings had more beneficial outcomes than the other groups. For instance, over the next several months, they had fewer visits to the university health clinic. Also, they had had their blood drawn both before and after some of the tests to check their immune system markers. People who wrote about their feelings had stronger immune systems after the writing— even several months later. Let me repeat that: Several months after taking only 80 minutes to write down their feelings about a painful experience, their immune systems still were stronger than they had been before the writing.
• A now-famous study of expressive writing was conducted in the mid-90s, and then reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April 1999. It was titled “Effects of Writing About Stressful Experiences on Symptom Reduction in Patients With Asthma or Rheumatoid Arthritis.” This time, researchers recruited people with these conditions. They were given physical exams that checked the severity of their disease both before the writing and afterward. The expressive-writing group wrote about the most stressful event of their lives for three days, for 20 minutes at a time—a total of an hour. The control group wrote about emotionally neutral topics. Four months later, nearly 50 percent of the expressive-writing group showed “clinically significant” improvement in their condition! Only a quarter of the control group did. As the study conclusion said, “These gains were beyond those attributable to the standard medical care that all participants were receiving.”
In an editorial in that same edition of JAMA, there was this comment about the study: “Were the authors to have provided similar outcome evidence about a new drug, it likely would be in widespread use within a short time.”
• Studies of people with cancer, for instance, showed that they benefited from just a single session of expressive writing, in that the writing changed how they thought and felt about their illness. It also had a positive impact on the quality of their lives.
• Dr. Pennebaker conducted a very interesting study of a group of middle-aged men who were all laid off without notice after years of service to a high-tech company. They were understandably furious about what had happened to them, and Dr. Pennebaker calls them “the most angry, hostile, unpleasant bunch I’ve ever worked with.” In the study, some of these men were asked to write about their deepest thoughts and emotions about losing their jobs; the others wrote about how they were using their time while they were out of work.
Eight months after the study ended, all the men had been to the same number of job interviews. Yet 52 percent of the emotional writing group had new jobs, compared to 20 percent of the time-management writers. Dr.
