The Therapeutic Value of Expressive Writing: Science and Art
We write to communicate our thoughts and emotions to others.
Writing helps us connect with other people. At the same time, writing has this power and magic, to help us know ourselves better and connect with ourselves. Hundreds of scientific studies show how writing is beneficial for our physical and mental health. In this article, I invite you to learn more about the power of writing and the scientific explanations behind the scenes.
What is expressive writing? This particular way of writing is called “expressive writing”. James Pannebaker and Sandra Beall published the first scientific article on expressive writing in 1986.
A total of 48 students participated in the experiment. In this experiment, they were tasked with writing for four days, consecutively, for 15 minutes a day, about a certain topic. Half of them wrote about their most traumatic experience, and the other half about a superficial topic. Those tasked with writing about the traumatic event were encouraged to write in as personal a way as possible. In the case of participants in this group, a decrease in the number of medical visits was noted in the following six months.
From 1986 to the present, hundreds of studies on expressive writing have been published. About the results of these studies, about the efficiency and limits of the method, James Pannebaker, professor at the University of Texas, Austin and Joshua Smith, professor at the Pennsylvania State University, wrote in a book revised and republished in 2016: Opening up by writing it down: How expressive writing improves health and eases emotional pain.
How does expressive writing help us and how does it work? Expressive writing involves expressing emotions and thoughts related to a particular topic. If we try to run away from what we feel, expressive writing does the exact opposite of that — it invites us to sit with ourselves and have the courage to write about what we feel and think. On a physical and mental level, expressive writing has been shown to lead to, among other things:
- decrease in heart rate;
- improving the functioning of the immune system;
- increasing the quality of sleep;
- long-term stress reduction;
- the development of interpersonal relationships.
When we put words to a traumatic or stressful event, we come to understand, assimilate, and accept that even better. Writing and re-reading material can help us learn, find solutions to the problems we face, judge ourselves less, accept better what happened, be less self-critical, and have more compassion for ourselves. When we write for several days in a row about the same topic, we gradually end up changing our perspective.
Bibliography:
Pennebaker, J.W., & Beall, S.K. (1986). Confronting a traumatic event: towards an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of abnormal psychology, 95(3), 274–281.
Pennebaker, J.W., & Smyth, J.M. (2016). Opening up by writing it down: How expressive writing improves health and eases emotional pain. Guilford Publications.
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