Journaling for Health Part 1: Write for Your Health!

Journaling for Health Part 1 (of 5) : Write for Your Health!

We’re working on a project that will involve the audience’s use of an online journal.  The journal is being integrated into an interactive experience that’s designed to help its audience work through inner conflicts and break away from negative patterns.  I can’t say too much about the details (the project is still in the works), but the upshot is that I’ve been doing some research on the benefits of journaling, or what James W. Pennebaker calls ‘expressive writing.’  Pennebaker is the trailblazing scholar behind the discovery that writing expressively improves mental and physical health.

In 1989, Pennebaker performed a study involving undergraduate students who were asked to write for 20 minutes a day for four days in a row.  The control group was asked to write about trivial topics and to refrain from offering any emotional description.  The experimental group was asked to write about the most traumatic event in their lives and to do so with total emotional disclosure.  Here is a copy of the experimental group’s assignment:

For the next four days, I would like for you to write about your very deepest thoughts and feelings about the most traumatic experience of your entire life.  In your writing, I’d like you to really let go and explore your very deepest emotions and thoughts.  You might tie your topic to your relationships with others, including parents, lovers, friends, or relatives, to your past, your present, or your future, or to who you have been, who you would like to be, or who you are now.  You may write about the same general issues or experiences on all days of writing or on different traumas each day.  All of your writing will be completely confidential.

After the study, the students who wrote about “the most traumatic experience” of their lives visited their doctors at a greatly reduced rate compared to the control group (Pennebaker, 1989).

During the last twenty years, researchers have been exploring and expanding this research.  Newer studies have demonstrated that writing expressively about emotionally traumatic or stressful events strengthens immunity, decreases intrusive thoughts & depression, improves grades, and gains faster job placement for the unemployed (Graybeal, Sexton, & Pennebaker, 2002; Lepore, 1997; Spera, Morin, Buhrfeind, & Pennebaker, 1994; and Smyth, 1998).

It’s pretty amazing that writing for just 20 minutes a day for 4 days in a row has this kind of an impact.  Consistently, when measured after weeks and months, expressive writers markedly outpaced control groups in demonstrating better health and positive life changes. Wow.

References:

Graybeal, A; Sexton, J. D.; and Pennebaker, J. W. (2002).  The Role of Story-Making in Disclosure Writing: The Psychometrics of Narrative.  Psychology and Health (Vol. 17, No. 5, pp. 571-581).

Lepore, Stephen J. (1997).  Expressive Writing Moderates the Relation Between Intrusive Thoughts and Depressive Symptoms.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 73, No. 5. 1030-1037).

Pennebaker, J.W. (1989).  Confession, inhibition, and disease.  In L. Berkowitz (Ed.) Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 22, pp 211-244).

Smyth, J.M. (1998). Written Emotional Expression: Effect Sizes, Outcome Types, and Moderating Variables.  Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (Vol. 66, No. 1, 174-184).

Spera, S.P.; Morin, D.; Buhrfeind, E. D.; and Pennebaker, J.W. (1994). Expressive Writing and Coping with Job Loss.  Academy of Management Journal (Vol. 37, No. 3, 722-733).