More than 20 years ago, in a world, where therapists and pharmaceuticals competed for the title of Chief Comfort Giver, a groundbreaking discovery has been made, that was even reported about and picked up by Stanford professor and neuroscientist Andrew Huberman. It appears that the mere and humble act of writing for as little as 15 minutes about your emotional experiences has remarkable health benefits! Move over, Freud and let us put our noses into James W Pennebaker’s “Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process” and check out the Pennebaker paradigm.
The publication dives into a number of studies that look into the therapeutic wonders of pouring your heart out on paper, or in other words, writing about your deepest thoughts, emotions or traumatic experiences. It suggests that the only prescription we need to deal with those pesky stress inducing thoughts and memories of past events is a dose of ink and honesty.
As if that wasn’t simple enough the whole thing requires as little as 15 to 30 minutes per session and you only need to repeat the exercise on 3 to 5 consecutive days. Do you need a lifelong commitment to reap those benefits or have to share your writing? About as much as proper spelling and grammar, which means not all. The only rule is honesty and keep scribbling until the timer buzzes, which has been tried on, and picture this, participants ranging from innocent children to hardened maximum-security prisoners. It’s like a DIY therapy session without the awkward silences and the incessant nodding from a therapist.
Let’s take a look at the health improvements that supposedly follow this writing extravaganza. To make it short, the writing paradigm is a powerhouse. Apparently, pouring your heart out reduces the need for physician visits, boosts immune function (move over, Vitamin C!), and even makes your heart rate go from “I can’t deal with this” to a zen-like state. If only the cure for world peace was that easy!
And as tree-hugging, humpty hippy dumpting that sounds, there’s a science to the method. The article explores two broad models to explain the effects of the writing paradigm: inhibition and cognitive processes. Inhibition, the idea that keeping silent about your trauma is bad for your health, sounds like something straight out of a sci-fi movie where emotions are bottled up in futuristic canisters. However, the jury is still out on whether disclosing reduces inhibition or if it’s just the sheer joy of finally gossiping about your personal melodrama.
On the other hand, the cognitive changes associated with writing are where it gets truly fascinating. It turns out, it’s not just about expressing trauma; you need to translate it into words. According to a linguistic analysis the use of positive (happy, smiling, love), causal (because, reason) and insight (understand, realize) and moderate number of negative (sad, angry) words lead to better health improvements. So, if you’re going to vent, make it a Shakespearean tragedy, not a farce.
The implications for treatments are mind-boggling. Psychotherapy, move over; writing is here to take your spotlight, or at at least assist you on the stage. The mere act of disclosing your problems might be the unsung hero in the story of mental health. Can writing be a substitute for medication? Can a well-constructed narrative about your deepest fears replace an hour on the therapist’s couch? Probably not (fully), but it could spark the first step towards improvement, support the process of healing and be its own kind of literary revolution!
In conclusion, this article leaves us questioning if the pen is truly mightier than the therapist’s couch or the pharmaceutical cabinet. Maybe the next medical prescription will be a notepad and a fancy pen. Until then, let the healing ink flow!
Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological science, 8(3), 162-166.
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