How Expressive Writing Can Improve Your Emotional and Physical Health

Human beings have been expressing themselves through the written word as far back as B.C. 5500. Today, people of all cultures write for many different reasons; they send texts and emails, write novels, research and write theses, jot down notes, record life stories and send postcards. But how many people have learned to use writing as a form of treatment for their health?

Over the past two decades, there has been a dramatic shift in the way the medical community views treatment and health management. Alternative forms of treatment that in decades past were viewed as ineffective or taboo are now being advocated as an effective way to help patients deal with and recover from different ailments.

The medical world has gone from a one size fits all approach to something that is tailored more specifically to the patient. With more personalized medicine, individuals can affect their own treatment through things like expressive writing.

Researchers have seen how expressive writing has caused both physical and psychological health benefits for individuals who have experienced a stressful, traumatic, or emotional event. These events could include things like automobile accidents, the sudden onset of a serious or life-threatening illness, and dramatic changes in a person’s relationship with their friends and family, such as the loss of a loved one in death.

In 1986, Pennebaker, J. W. & Beall, S. K published a study on the health effects of expressive writing. In this study, college students were invited to spend 15 minutes a day for four consecutive days writing about traumatic or upsetting experiences they had in their lives. A control group was also invited to write about superficial topics. Four months after the writing experiment was done, both groups were evaluated by a physician and both groups were invited to make a self report physical exam.

The individuals who spent 15 minutes a day writing about traumatic or upsetting events experienced an improvement in their health. They had less visits to the doctor and had fewer days away from school because of illness. As a result, the authors of the study concluded that “writing about earlier traumatic experience was associated with short-term increases in psychological arousal and long-term decreases in health problems.”

Stanford University Studies

The research done by Pennebaker, J. W. & Beall, S. K in 1986 has been followed up with additional studies that had more evidence supporting the benefits of expressive writing. For example, a study published by George M. Walton of Yale University along with Jeffrey L. Cohen from the University of Colorado at Boulder published a study that invited African-American students who are having a difficult time adjusting to college to create an essay about some of the challenges they face attending and adjusting to college. The study found that the students who partook in the project received better grades in the following months than the control group.

Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute Studies

In this study, life coaches asked their clients to write down the goals that they have had in life, and then they told them to write down why they have not achieved their goals. Once the clients wrote down their goals and the reasons for not achieving them, they were then asked to reread the story and reflect on what they wrote and prepare a more honest assessment.

One participant wrote that her goal was to lose weight, and then she wrote several excuses as to why she has not been able to accomplish the goal. After reflecting on what she wrote, she was able to come to the honest conclusion that the reason she was not attaining her weight loss goals was not because she couldn’t, but instead because she simply did not like to exercise. As a result of her expressive writing, she saw positive changes she could make in her life and in her priorities in order to achieve goals that would make her physically healthier and improve her mental health as well.

Health Conditions That Benefit from Expressive Writing Programs

In both objective and self diagnosed medical examinations of patients, researchers are finding that expressive writing programs have helped patients recover faster from illnesses that include:

•       Asthma
•       Rheumatoid Arthritis
•       Pain and Physical Health Associated with Cancer
•       Immune Response in HIV Infection
•       Minimizing Pain Intensity for Women with Chronic Pelvic Pain
•       Sleep Onset Latency and Poor Sleepers

Helping Cancer Patients Change the Way They Think about Their Disease

Being diagnosed with cancer is a life-changing experience. A report that was documented in the journal The Oncologist entitled ‘Implementing an Expressive Writing Study in a Cancer Clinic’ stated that expressive writing allowed patients to view their cancer in a different way. It also helped them to improve the quality of their life. The researchers showed that even after a single 20 minute writing exercise, patients were helped to change their thought process about their illness. This in turn improved their mental and emotional health and in some cases was instrumental in giving them the strength they needed to improve their physical health as well.

An article published in 2005 in the journal Advances in Psychiatric Treatment showed that the benefits of expressive writing are not just short-term, but instead they provide long-term results. Expressive writing can improve a person’s mood, improve their well-being, decrease depressive symptoms, minimize stress levels, lower blood pressure, improve both liver and lung function, and can also decrease the amount of time a person spends in the hospital.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing