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Pennebaker speculates that writing about their trauma dissipated their anger about it, which made them more appealing to interviewers.
• It also appears that expressive writing can also boost working memory, or the ability to think about complex tasks. Several studies by Dr. Pennebaker and others have shown that students make better grades the semester following a writing study. “If we are worrying about things, including emotional upheavals in our past, we have less working memory. Expressive writing frees working memory, thus allowing us to deal with more complicated issues in our lives,” writes Dr. Pennebaker in Writing to Heal.
Several hundred studies of many groups of people who did expressive writing about traumas and other significant life events have demonstrated in a robust way the same significant, beneficial results. These results have held true since Pennebaker’s first studies of expressive writing in the 1980s. As a result, it has become widely accepted that expressive writing—using writing to disclose your emotions—can be healthy for many different groups of people. Top
• It also appears that expressive writing can also boost working memory, or the ability to think about complex tasks. Several studies by Dr. Pennebaker and others have shown that students make better grades the semester following a writing study. “If we are worrying about things, including emotional upheavals in our past, we have less working memory. Expressive writing frees working memory, thus allowing us to deal with more complicated issues in our lives,” writes Dr. Pennebaker in Writing to Heal.
Several hundred studies of many groups of people who did expressive writing about traumas and other significant life events have demonstrated in a robust way the same significant, beneficial results. These results have held true since Pennebaker’s first studies of expressive writing in the 1980s. As a result, it has become widely accepted that expressive writing—using writing to disclose your emotions—can be healthy for many different groups of people. Top
No one really knows for sure yet why writing this way is so beneficial. But Dr. Pennebaker has an idea: Basically, inhibiting or holding in our emotions puts stress on our bodies, while confronting emotions by expressing them releases the stress. If you actively inhibit or restrain your emotions, especially about painful experiences, you have to exert effort not to think about or feel them. This takes a lot of energy your body could be using for something more helpful.
Furthermore, if we want to understand something or find meaning in it, the first thing we must do is describe it. Putting difficult emotional experiences into words gives them context and puts them in a kind of container so we can more easily and safely deal with them. Instead of having them swirl around uncontrollably in our hearts and minds, writing about them lets us put them in the container of the page. Now they are more manageable, and we can then be more comfortable with putting them aside and reworking them if necessary.
And the most interesting part of all this is that we don’t have to reveal our secrets to anyone else. By simply writing them down for our eyes only, we confront them and get them out of our systems. We don’t have to save our writing either, to have this effect—although it’s wonderful if it is saved because it’s a record of a life. But we never have to show it to another person or even re-read it ourselves. Simply divulging our thoughts and emotions is what creates this sense of resolution—even if the trauma written about remains unresolved. This writing process makes us more resilient—better able to deal with the hardships of life—even to thrive in spite of them. Top
Furthermore, if we want to understand something or find meaning in it, the first thing we must do is describe it. Putting difficult emotional experiences into words gives them context and puts them in a kind of container so we can more easily and safely deal with them. Instead of having them swirl around uncontrollably in our hearts and minds, writing about them lets us put them in the container of the page. Now they are more manageable, and we can then be more comfortable with putting them aside and reworking them if necessary.
And the most interesting part of all this is that we don’t have to reveal our secrets to anyone else. By simply writing them down for our eyes only, we confront them and get them out of our systems. We don’t have to save our writing either, to have this effect—although it’s wonderful if it is saved because it’s a record of a life. But we never have to show it to another person or even re-read it ourselves. Simply divulging our thoughts and emotions is what creates this sense of resolution—even if the trauma written about remains unresolved. This writing process makes us more resilient—better able to deal with the hardships of life—even to thrive in spite of them. Top
