Write Off Your Worries

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By Betsy Dru Tecco

Hunter Darden of Statesville, North Carolina, was heartbroken over the sudden loss of her sister. The emotional upheaval was incredibly stressful. Some months later, by chance, a friend gave her a journal, a gift that turned out to be far more powerful than it originally appeared.

Hunter began to write about her sister and the deep sorrow she couldn't seem to shake. "The personal journaling helped me organize my thoughts and settle my rampant emotions," she says. "It was so therapeutic."

Hunter learned by experience what researchers have been studying for more than 20 years. Journal writing, or "expressive writing" as it's often called in the scientific community, has proven to be beneficial. It can help people deal with stressful events, says James W. Pennebaker, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and a leading authority on expressive writing. When we put troubles into words, "we're able to get past it. Once we move past it, we don't worry about it or obsess over it," he says.

Research shows that people who engage in expressive writing feel happier and less negative than before writing. Symptoms of anxiety and depression are reduced after writing about emotional upheavals. Other studies have documented improvements in physical health as well. In an experiment conducted on people with chronic illness, Joshua M. Smyth, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at Syracuse University and author of The Writing Cure, found that expressive writing improved lung functioning among asthma patients and lowered pain among arthritis sufferers. A few studies have shown that writing can enhance the immune system and lower blood pressure. Smyth cautions that while expressive writing may benefit some individuals, "it is not a magic bullet. It is not a substitute for other psychological or medical care, although it may be a useful supplemental activity."

As director of the Psychopathology and Emotion Laboratory at Temple University in Philadelphia, clinical psychologist Denise Sloan, Ph.D., has studied the effects expressive writing has had on trauma survivors. She found that people who wrote about their traumatic experience were sick less, made fewer doctor visits, and had higher levels of cortisol, a hormone that helps us cope with stress.

"Expressing emotions is the key to obtaining benefits," Sloan says. If you try to cope with a traumatic event by not talking or thinking about what happened, you'll fail. "People need to, in some way, allow themselves to feel the emotions they have surrounding the experience," she says.

Through his research, Pennebaker discovered that expressive writing is more effective when people organize their jumbled thoughts into a coherent story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. In his book Writing to Heal, he recommends including information on the setting, the characters, the event itself, the consequences, and the effect it's had on you. When his study participants did this, he saw that they were able to construct a "meaningful story, one that made sense to them."

The death of her sister actually led Hunter to write a fictionalized account of her turmoil. In her book Tapestry: A Story of the Healing of the Soul, Hunter included journal entries to show how "little by little, through the course of writing, you can find your answers."