Writing to Heal
“Simply speaking the truth heals” ~ Dr Rachel Naomi Remen
For nearly 20 years, Dr. James W. Pennebaker has been giving people an assignment: write down your deepest feelings about an emotional upheaval in your life for 15 or 20 minutes a day for four consecutive days.
Dr Pennebaker, a professor in the Department of Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin, is a pioneer in the study of using expressive writing as a route to healing. His research has shown that short-term focused writing can have a beneficial health effect on our emotional healing and even our immune systems.
Our minds are designed to try to understand things that happen to us. When a traumatic event occurs or we undergo a major life transition, our minds have to work overtime to try to process the experience.
As Dr Pennebaker explains:
Emotional upheavals touch every part of our lives. You don’t just lose a job, you don’t just get divorced. These things affect all aspects of who we are—our financial situation, our relationships with others, our views of ourselves, our issues of life and death. Writing helps us focus and organize the experience.
When we give words to our experience, we are able to understand and process it better.
The Writing To Heal Exercise
Interestingly, Dr Pennebaker is not convinced that people should write about traumatic experiences for more than a couple of weeks.
You risk getting into a sort of navel gazing or cycle of self-pity.But standing back every now and then and evaluating where you are in life is really important.
This raises a number of questions for some of us who are long term bloggers! But perhaps it is the reason why may of us who have been blogging for a few years have changed direction or diversified in our posts – there’s only so many times you can repeat your story, before it’s time to move on.
Here is Dr Pennebaker’s writing to heal instructions and some tips for performing the exercise.
Perhaps you’d like to try it for a few days either privately or on your blog? Do let me know what the experience was like for you.
Images & notes sourced from The University of Texas at Austin feature story on Dr Pennebaker’s work.
This comes at a moment when I think I could use some intensive emotional outpouring via writing, so thanks for the idea. I was ‘talking it out’ with my husband, but perhaps journaling woudl be a good second layer. Perfect timing for this post, thanks Marie 🙂 ~Catherine
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I know just what you mean Catherine. I am in need of some emotional healing right now too, and I was thinking of following this advice to the letter. Let’s meet back here in a week’s time and see how we get on with the experiment?
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I find writing healing even if it is to get it out of my system and put it in the trash. Happy Day 🙂
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Great tips; Healing comes in so many forms. xo
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Though, I have let go of a lot of unnecessary baggage, I know all has not been fully discarded. I will try writing for healing. Thank u for sharing.
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I have many unpublished posts hidden in the background. Mostly because I am writing to get it out there somewhere, but it may not be something I am really ready to share. I tend to find that it really does lift my spirits to get it out, rather than having it swirl around in my head unwritten.
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dear Marie,
I write every day – letters to Hugh, letters to grief, and my “writing for my life” segments when needing my fingers to tippy type out the things in my brain and my heart that make me feel I am stuck and going out of my mind. I write my comments, but sometimes have to “go quiet” for awhile, and it’s very hard to forgive myself for not contributing, for not being able to get outside of my own damned self. but after writing stream of consciousness blather, it begins to form an identifiable pattern, and if I make myself keep going the words just flow and they show me what it is that I simply have not been able to articulate. ahhh, such blessed relief, and finally clarity, and then that feeling of healing. I think I am beginning to feel a shift of insight and the actions that will need some prodding to help me move forward. hmmm, that prodding…should be interesting to see what results emerge…thank you so much for sharing about Dr. Pennebaker’s work.
much love, and I hope you, too, are able to write and heal from what you have been going through lately,
Karen xxxooo
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Karen, I am glad to hear you write in this way. I hope you find comfort and healing in doing so. It bears repeating that your words left in the form of comments on so many of our blogs are a soothing balm for our troubled souls x
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Hey! I used to write my feelings and turmoil. It would help me figure out my priorities as well as privide relief. The family members would liok up my diary and read, then comment on it later. No matter where I would hide, somehow they would know. Hence I stopped writing. After reading this I must start writing again. Thanks a lot for this.
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