Writing and Healing

Writing your true story heals both physically and emotionally. Expressive writing, writing true feelings integrated with events, improves the immune system and has a positive effect on diseases such as chronic fatigue syndrome, arthritis, and asthma.

Disclosure and confession play a role in relieving stress and promoting health. As an ancient church sacrament, confession ritualizes the unburdening of shame and guilt, which enables the person to move forward in a positive way. In the confessional, the person finds words to say the unsayable—halting sentences woven with threads of shame and guilt, grief and regret. Confessional words pierce through the darkness, opening out into the light of hope and forgiveness. Through confession and unburdening, forgiveness begins. We must learn to forgive ourselves before we can accept forgiveness from others.

Psychotherapy has been called the modern day confessional. Mimicking the priest in a darkened, closed confessional, Freud positioned himself in the shadows of a dimly lit room, a sacred, private space in which clients could reveal secrets and hidden truths. His treatment rule was that they were to speak freely about whatever arose in their minds. This was a revolutionary, even dangerous, idea in Victorian times, when repression and suppression of thoughts and desires were the order of the day. In therapy, as in the confessional, feelings, worries, and the secrets of the soul are whispered and formed into words.

James Pennebaker, a psychologist at the University of Texas, wondered if writing would offer the same relief as spoken disclosures. For a decade, he and his colleagues investigated writing in various settings and with a large range of populations, including prisoners and crime victims, arthritis and chronic-pain sufferers, new mothers, and people with various physical illnesses, across different social classes and demographics. They found that it is indeed healing to translate experiences into words, to put events and feelings into perspective through written language.

During the experiments, the control group wrote lists or plans for the day. The expressive writing group received the following directions:

For the next four days, I would like 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. (Pennebaker and Seagal 1999, 1244)
Both groups wrote for fifteen minutes on each of the four days of the study.

Even though Pennebaker is a psychologist, the intensity and depth of the trauma expressed in the subjects’ stories impressed and surprised him (1990). Middle- and upper-middle-class students wrote about tragic and traumatic events, such as depression, rape, suicide attempts, child sexual and physical abuse, drug use, and family violence. Participants often expressed powerful emotions associated with these stories, and even cried, but almost all of them were willing to participate in the study again. Consistently it has been found that writing a deeply true emotional story has a positive effect on health.

In Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, Pennebaker (1990) discusses how writing about emotional events that had previously been kept secret promotes the release of stress and the integration of a more complete understanding of events. He concludes that simple catharsis, or explosive release of emotions, is not enough. Feelings and thoughts and a new understanding need to be integrated with what happened to create a new perspective.

Pennebaker compares the effects of writing to psychotherapy, where emotional disclosure and the release of inhibition are part of the healing process. Psychologists from as far back as Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) posit that repression and suppression of emotion contribute to stress and emotional and physical imbalance.

In a primitive fight-or-flight system, powerful chemicals surge through the body to protect the organism against perceived threat during stress. When the stressor has passed, the body may retain the pattern of tension and vigilance, especially if there has been ongoing or severe trauma. When stress is released, the immune system responds in a positive direction, toward balance and ultimate health.

Stephen Lepore and Joshua Smyth (2002) present a new generation of writing studies. An article by Smyth et al. (1999) about the effects of expressive writing on arthritis and asthma made a rousing splash in the writing and psychological community. Lepore and Smyth (2002) present other recent studies in which researchers investigated the necessity of writing about painful subjects. Writing about trauma and negative emotions causes emotional pain and distress for a short period, though both mood and physical health improve after some time has passed. The researchers questioned whether writing about positive emotions and other topics could also produce a health benefit. The results showed that writing about positive emotions and a positive future, and writing about a best possible future self all led to improvement in physical health.

The personality of the writer may affect the outcome of different kinds of writing. For instance, if a person tends to withhold emotionally, writing about negative experiences will likely have a positive effect on that person’s health. If a person focuses strongly on negative feelings, writing about a positive experience or a happier life event may have a beneficial effect. There is no single “right” way to use writing as a healing tool. The research about the healing aspects of writing continues to guide us as writers and offers greater choices of how we might use writing as a healing tool. Here is what one of my students, Clare Cooper Marcus, wrote about her experience:

I’m lucky—writing comes easily to me. Between the ages of five and eleven, I attended a small, country school run by five eccentric women who insisted that we all write at least one essay a week. It was assumed that we all could write, and we did.

Fifty years later, my body and emotions thrown into turmoil by a diagnosis of breast cancer, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to record my feelings in a journal. I wrote while sitting, wracked with anxiety, in the hospital waiting room. I wrote about my fear of death, of pain, of not-knowing. I wrote sitting up in bed after my mastectomy, I wrote in the hospital garden, drinking in nurturance from the hundred-year-old Valley Oak tree, the squirrels running up its rotted trunk. I was writing myself into hope.

Writing was for me a form of Zen practice. It helped me stay in the present moment, aware of each feeling and insight arising, then falling away like leaves drifting by on a stream of consciousness. Writing at such a time was an exercise in mindfulness. Although I also spoke my feelings out loud, to friends, to a therapist, to members of a support group, it was writing that enabled me to go deeper, to give my soul a voice. I believe it was writing as much as medical treatment that enabled me to heal.

Healing Words

Pennebaker studied how the use of specific language affected outcome (Pennebaker and Seagal 1999). He found that a greater number of positive words (happy, good, laugh) along with a moderate number of negative words (angry, hurt, ugly) predicted health improvements. Cognitive or thinking words (because, reason, effect) and words of self-reflection (I understand, realize, know) created the most resolution.

So if you want your writing to be healing, pay attention to the emotional content of your words. Keep writing until you have causally linked events and feelings. Your first efforts may be filled with negative or unintegrated emotions and confusion. Write an emotionally difficult story several times in different ways. After a while you may find yourself writing from a positive perspective—such as what you learned from the event, or how a negative experience made you change your life in a positive way—thereby continuing the process of self-understanding and healing.
Writing true, emotionally integrated stories

• Makes thoughts and events more concrete

• Leads to greater self-knowledge

• Releases emotional constriction and stress

• Strengthens the immune system

• Leads to short-term changes in the autonomic nervous system

• Provides a template for the writer’s future story

 

Trauma at Home

As I mentioned earlier, when Pennebaker asked people to write about painful experiences, many of the stories that emerged related to traumas resulting from events in the outside world—acts of nature, car accidents, rape by a stranger, war. Many others had to do with trauma and abuse at home—intense stories of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse; alcoholism; battering; date rape—abuse and trauma inflicted within what is supposed to be a safe place, at home, within the fabric of family and friends. This kind of injury is all the more insidious because the victims, particularly when they are children, often do not realize that what is happening is wrong. It is simply the way Mommy and Daddy act; this is the way it is. Even mature adults feel that nothing can be done about the depression, the sense of life not being what it should be. A person in this situation learns to feel and think that change is not possible and that life has few options. This conditioning has been called learned helplessness, an unfortunate term that has been used derogatorily in reference to women. It is not helplessness that is learned but a pattern of fear and immobilization resulting from the reaction of body and brain to trauma. This complex physiological and psychological reaction to trauma renders the person unable to make changes or to take appropriate action.

Whether a trauma occurs at home or out in the world, it has a lasting effect on the body and psyche. Some therapies address the physiological effects—the body remembers as well as the mind—while other therapies focus on the mental or emotional scars that affect people throughout their lives. Such hidden wounds can lead to destructive repeating of the trauma, which Freud called repetition compulsion. In addition, trauma victims may develop various kinds of phobias that can cause them to severely restrict their life and activities out of fear.

In my work, I have seen people with both kinds of traumas—the in-the-world kind caused by an event such as an automobile accident or earthquake and the kind caused by long-term abuse and neglect. Both can result in depression, work problems, anger, and unstable relationships.

According to Judith Herman, author of Trauma and Recovery, “Traumatic events produce profound and lasting changes in physiological arousal, emotion, cognition, and memory. Traumatized people feel and act as though their nervous systems have been disconnected from the present”(1992, 34–35). This means that the effects of the trauma follow the person throughout life, causing problems such as a strong startle reaction, sensitivity to loud noises, fears, phobias, nightmares, and depression.

In the last few years a great deal of research has been done on the physiology and chemistry of the brain in relation to trauma and emotion. This research is complex, but what is important to know is that trauma can affect people without their realizing it. For instance, people who have been traumatized may have recurring dreams or tell stories that sound to the listener as if a terrible event is being replayed, as if a phonograph needle is stuck in the groove of the trauma. It is known from studying the brains of traumatized people that traumatic memories are stored differently from regular memories and that they are harder to get rid of or resolve.

Writing, along with other treatments, is a way to reprocess these memories. We need witnesses to our trauma, including our selves. Writing helps sort out what happened, when, and why, and gives us a way to think of ourselves not only as victims but also as people who have talents, passion, and much to offer the world. It is possible to heal trauma and live a fuller, more expressive, and freer life.

All humans live through painful experiences. Sometimes we have written about or processed these memories and put them in perspective, and sometimes we have not. When you start writing your family stories and the stories of your life, you may unearth upsetting memories and discover unresolved issues from the past. You may have hesitated to write your memoir because you think there might be ghosts in the closet. Let sleeping dogs lie, you say. Let the past stay the past, and move on. But you’ve tried that, decades have passed, and the old ghosts still whisper in your ear.

Writing your stories is an opportunity to put these old ghosts to rest. If need be, you can approach certain memories and issues indirectly rather than confront them head on. Pennebaker told his subjects that if a topic was too painful, they should write about something else.

Take care of yourself. Be your own best friend.

Exercises:

1. Write with full expression the things you have not said that need to be said. Write without stopping for fifteen minutes. Afterward, you can tear it up or put it away.
2. Write in the present tense, from the child’s point of view of living at home. Parents. Siblings. Birth. Death. Friends. Grandparents. Gardens. Thrills.
3. If this is too intense, switch to third person—tell the story about this other person who suffered using “he” or “she” instead of “I”.
4. Write about the best day of your life, and what made you happy.
5. Who were the witnesses in your life who helped you have hope, who saw you, who gave you nurturance—such as aunts, uncles, neighbors, friends, teachers, ministers.
6. Write a history of each of part of your body. Write from the point of view of that part—e.g. “I am your heart. I beat constantly, keep you alive.…etc.”
7. How do you know your spiritual self—where, how, when have you sensed this part of yourself.
8. Write from the adult survivor point of view now—your strengths, successes, lessons.
9. Write about the wisdom of the generations—what do you hold from your foremothers and fathers? What is their legacy?
10. What is your legacy? What seeds have you planted on the planet that will endure

http://www.memoriesandmemoirs.com/

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