Pennebaker Essay on the Healing Properties of Writing

Summary of Essay

When individuals are asked to write or talk about personally upsetting experiences, significant improvements in physical health are found.

Analyses of subjects’ writing about traumas indicate that those whose health improves most tend to use a higher proportion of negative emotion words than positive emotion words.

Independent of verbal emotion expression, the increasing use of insight, causal, and associated cognitive words over several days of writing is linked to health improvement. That is, the construction of a coherent story together with the expression of negative emotions work together in therapeutic writing.

Evidence of these processes are also seen in specific links between word production and immediate autonomic nervous system activity. Implications for therapy and for considering the mind and body as fluid, dynamic systems are discussed.

Excerpt from the Essay

"It is widely acknowledged in our culture that putting upsetting experiences into words can be healthy. Research from several domains indicates that talking with friends, confiding in a therapist, praying, and even writing out one’s thoughts and feelings can all be beneficial. The purpose of this paper is to explore why writing and talking about personal experiences can promote psychological and physical health. Specifically, to what degree are the words that we choose linked to our physical and psychological health?"

Pennebaker's Summary of Implications

Emotions and cognitive work

Across studies, both emotional and cognitive factors independently predict improvements in health. Ironically, these findings suggest that many of the classic battles between catharsis or emotion-based therapies and the more recent cognitive movements are unnecessary. That is, both catharsis and insight appear to be at work, but in different ways.

Some narratives are better than others

Holding a coherent narrative to explain a traumatic or upsetting experience may not always be healthy at the beginning of therapeutic writing sessions. Movement towards the development of a narrative is far more predictive of health than having a coherent story per se. The construction of a story rather than having a constructed story, then, may be the desired endpoint of writing and, by extension, some therapy.

No pain, no gain

Openly expressing negative emotions results in increases in skin conductance levels (SCL)--an
autonomic index linked to behavioral inhibition. The expression of positive emotions is linked to a letting-go or form of relaxation. In the short run, confronting upsetting experiences may be psychologically painful and physiologically arousing. In the long run, however, the act of psychologically confronting emotionally upsetting events is associated with improved physical and psychological health.

The ability to guide one’s own therapeutic writing

Writing itself is a powerful therapeutic technique. Without instructions or feedback, subjects in Pennebaker's studies naturally evolve common writing styles that promote physical and psychological health. It may be possible to train people to write in certain ways in order to boost the effectiveness of writing. In a pilot study, 14 students were asked to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings each day for two weeks. On two days, students were given a list of word categories (negative emotions, insight words, causation words) that they should actively attempt to use in their writing. Although the students noted that their writings were least personal on those days (and also were most difficult to do), they also noted that those writing days were the most valuable and meaningful for them.

The mind and body as fluid, dynamic systems

The body expresses itself linguistically and biologically at the same time. In discussions with voice and movement coaches in the theater, Pennebaker says it is clear that people can talk and/or stand in either natural or unnatural ways. When people portray characters that are pompous or arrogant, there are corresponding affectations in language structure, voice tenor, posture, and, he suspects, autonomic and endocrine activity.

Invited Essay
Putting Stress into Words: Health, Linguistic, and Therapeutic Implications by James W. Pennebaker
Behav. Res. Ther. Vol. 31, No. 6, pp. 539-548, 1993

Thanks, Dr. Pennebaker your words are beautiful and hopeful. 

The information provided in the essay summary (taken directly from the article) about the number or proportion of negative emotion words in writing that is healing seems to contradict some of Pennebaker's earlier findings (listed in an earlier post). I will email him to ask him to clarify the seeming discrepancy. 

The case for the evolution of a coherent story is strengthened. It doesn't need to make sense before we begin writing.  We write so that over time, it begins to make sense.   Even if we start out overwhelmed by the mass of it, we can tinker at the edges until we get there.  I am starting to see the value of the coherent story everywhere - the arts, attachment security, social science research, physical health, trauma memory resolution...