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The pen’s power to heal
Writing is a powerful tool to express one’s inner thoughts and feelings. It is often said that when the going gets tough, jotting down thoughts and feelings on a piece of paper or on a computer can sort of stream the troubles out of the mind. This is not merely a personal suggestion, but a foolproof scientific idea.
For nearly 20 years, Dr James W. Pennebaker has been asking his patients to write about their past traumatic experiences for about 15 to 20 minutes for four consecutive days. He claims that through this exercise, the immune systems of some of his patients became far stronger. At times, this technique even helped transform their entire lives.
Pennebaker, a professor in the department of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and author of books like Opening up and Writing to heal, is a pioneer in the study of using emotionally expressive writing as a road to healing. He has conducted a thorough research for several years on this particular technique and has concluded that writing with adequate concentration about the emotionally tumultuous experiences of life can significantly increase the person’s tendency to cope with such experiences in an altogether new way. These experiences may range from terminal illness, violence, and even the stress that the college freshmen face.
Pennebaker is of the opinion that when people are given the opportunity to write about emotional upheavals, their health improves and the number of visits to doctors reduce significantly. They also experience changes in their immune function.
If they are first-year college students, their grades tend to go up — altogether a beneficial experience for them.
In his early work, Pennebaker proved that people who tend to keep secrets to themselves are more prone to various health problems. If these secrets are shared with others, then an improvement in health can be expected. Fortunately, one does not necessarily have to tell some other person about their secrets. Writing them out is a satisfying substitute.
“Emotional upheavals touch every part of our lives,” Pennebaker explains. “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 organise the experience.”
Here is how this technique works. Our minds are designed to process any emotionally painful event that occurs to us. It may work in excess to its normal functioning to process such things. This process may result in sleepless nights, inability to concentrate on work or studies, and may alienate us from the rest of the world. When we translate this web of thoughts into language we are adapting ourselves to live with these experiences or events. This enables us to first identify what exactly our problem is and then finding solutions for it. People often realise that their working memory, and more specifically their ability to deal with multiple things at the same time, improves.
In personal writing you do not have care for grammatical errors or handwriting, since you will not be presenting it to anyone. You do not have to go back and change any sentence that you think does not correctly reflect your emotions. After all, you are writing about yourself and for yourself only. Whatever comes straight out of your mind is very much a part of mental well-being, so try to write continuously. Sit at a quite place with ample light after you have done with majority of your day’s work. After you are done writing randomly try making a story out of the linked events.
People who are able to construct a story this way benefit a great deal. There is also ample evidence that people with the ability to change their perspectives during the course of writing have a far better chance of getting healed emotionally. The shift in the use of pronouns by an individual reflects the shift in his or her perspective. As Pennebaker puts it, “…. So one day they may be talking about how they feel and how they see it, but the next day they may talk about what’s going on with others, whether it’s their family or a perpetrator or someone else. Being able to switch back and forth is a very powerful indicator of how they progress.”
Confession and expression of any traumatic or emotionally taxing experience has proved to be healing almost universally; from the indigenous native American cultures to the eastern beliefs. But this technique should be used cautiously. The trauma should not be written about too soon after it has occurred. Also, if the theme seems like its too hard for one to handle at the moment, then people should wait for the right moment when they feel mentally stable and ready to tackle the issue. The effects of such writing can range from subtle to dramatic.
A woman who had lost her husband in a fatal car accident came to Pennebaker to get help because she thought writing about her loss would heal her. Before taking on the writing exercise she had started living the way she used to before, attending her graduate school. But by the last day of the writing she said her whole life was transformed. Within two months she dropped out of her college and moved back to her hometown. This writing experience made her realise that she was doing something that she no longer desired and was just negotiating with her life. It was a dramatic change in the course of her life. For many it seemed like a failure but for her it wasn’t.
In his book, Writing to heal, Pennebaker says, “People who engage in expressive writing report feeling happier and less negative than before writing. Similarly, reports of depressive symptoms and general anxiety tend to drop in the weeks and months after writing about emotional upheavals.”
The writer is a freelancer contributor
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