A Story Needs Lots of Positive-Emotion Words and a Moderate Number of Negative-Emotion Words

"Individuals who used a moderate number of negative emotions in their writing about upsetting topics evidenced the greatest drops in physician visits in the months after writing.

That is, those people who used a very high rate of negative-emotion words and those who used very few were the most likely to have continuing health problems after participating in the study.

...those people who tended to use many words in the positive category and a moderate amount in the negative category had the greatest health improvements...

Individuals who tend to use very few negative-emotion words are undoubtedly most likely to be characterized as repressive copers - people defined as poor at being able to identify and label their emotional states.

Those who overuse negative-emotion words may well be the classic high neurotic or, high Negative-Affect individuals. These individuals are people who ponder their negative emotions in exhaustive detail and who may simply be in a recursive loop of complaining without attaining closure. Indeed, this may be exacerbated by the inability of these individuals to develop a story or narrative.

A high rate of positive-emotion word use coupled with some negative-emotion words suggests there is an acknowledgment of problems with a concomitant sense of optimism."

Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999

Secrets Make Us Sick

"Findings to support the inhibition model of psychosomatics are accumulating. Individuals who conceal their gay status, conceal traumatic experiences in their past, or are considered inhibited or shy by other people exhibit more health problems than those who are less inhibited (Pennebaker, 1997. p.164)."

Trauma Can Change What We Believe

"Implicit in most of the cognitive therapies is the assumption that traumas disrupt basic beliefs or schemas (Pennebaker, Colder & Sharp, 1990)."

Core beliefs are how we see ourselves, others, the world and the future.

Examples of healthy core beliefs include:

• I am competent. I am lovable. I am basically good. I matter.
• I can trust others.
• The world is a safe place.

After abuse or trauma, our beliefs can change and become distorted, for example:

• I'm incompetent. I'm defective. I'm a failure. I'm unlovable. I'm bad. I'm worthless.
• I can't trust other people. Other people are out to hurt or take advantage of me. I'm bound to be abandoned, rejected. I'm defective, so others will not love me.
• The world is a dangerous place.

It's true we were helpless to protect ourselves then and the terrible thing made us feel like we were terrible. But now we distrust and feel scared all the time, even when we are safe.

What was true in that terrible moment - there and then - we now carry with us in the here and now.

Like a jaguar that runs up the tree for safety but refuses to come down from the tree when the danger has passed.

It makes sense that the trauma-influenced core beliefs are a way to cope, to protect oneself. Be on guard. Be on the lookout so it does not happen again.

What starts as self-protective ends up being a wall that shuts us out of our own lives.

That's when we need a shaman to sing our jaguar down from the tree.

Adding Insult to Injury...

"...most people naturally discuss daily and significant experiences with others. Even major traumas such as the death of a friend, a shared natural disaster, or a house fire are usually discussed in detail with close friends.

Less socially acceptable traumas, however, can be far more difficult to confide: marital infidelity, embezzlement, being the perpetrator or victim of rape.

Whereas talking about the trauma with others can strengthen social bonds, provide coping information and emotional support, and hasten an understanding of the event, the inability to talk with others can be unhealthy for a number of reasons..."

Pennebaker, J.W. (1989). Confession, Inhibition and Disease. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 22, 211-244.

Cherish Parents

"As parents become distressed in response to economic problems, they often become less nurturing and more hostile toward their children. These relationship changes lead, in turn, to psychological problems in adolescents (as cited in Dinizulu et al., 2014)."


... If a community values its children, it must cherish its mothers. --John Bowlby

Fear vs. Faithful Friends

"...'They became revolutionaries despite themselves.' In the years leading up to the war, John Adams feared British retaliation and hesitated to give up his budding law career, he only got involved after being elected as a delegate to the First Continental Congress."

"George Washington had been focused on managing his wheat, flour, fishing, and horse-breeding businesses, joining the cause only after Adams nominated him as commander in chief of the army. 'I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it,' Washington wrote."

"Martin Luther King, Jr., was apprehensive about leading the civil rights movement; his dream was to be a pastor and college president...He was unanimously elected to lead the boycott. Faced with giving a speech to the community that evening, 'I became possessed by fear.'"

"When the pope commissioned him to paint a fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo wasn't interested. He viewed himself as a sculptor. Two years would pass before he began work on the project, at the pope's insistence."

"And astronomy stagnated for decades because Nicolaus Copernicus refused to publish his original discovery that the earth revolves around the sun. Fearing rejection and ridicule, he stayed silent for twenty-two years...Eventually, a major cardinal learned of his work and wrote a letter encouraging Copernicus to publish it. Even then, Copernicus stalled for four more years."

"...when an angel investor offered $250,000 to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak to bankroll Apple in 1977, it came to an ultimatum: Wozniak would have to leave Hewlett-Packard. He refused. 'I still intended to be at that company forever.' Wozniak reflects. 'My psychological block was really that I didn't want to start a company. Because I was just afraid,' he admits. Wozniak changed his mind only after being encouraged by Jobs, multiple friends, and his own parents."

Adam Grant from Originals

What original idea are you holding back because of fear? Step up to the plate and take one for the team! Keep your eye on the ball and get yourself onto first base. Trust the team to bring you home. That's what we're here for. 

I watched the movie, Moneyball, on the flight home yesterday. In the movie, the owner of the Oakland A's asks the general manager what his fears are about proceeding with his unorthodox plan to win games. The GM says he has none and goes on to have a record-breaking 20-game winning streak (after a long losing streak). 

Superstar David Justice asks a benched player called up to play what his fears are - because it's obvious that the ONLY thing stopping us is our own fear. 

A good ol' boy talent scout says that a player without confidence is like a man with an ugly girlfriend. I was glad to see that old man go down. Unfortunately, it's a metaphor the mainstream clearly understands. 

Fear or confidence - it's your choice. You're sexy when you're confident (and nicer too).

Courage to Change the Systems

"When we become curious about the dissatisfying defaults in our world, we begin to recognize that most of them have social origins: Rules and systems were created by people. And that awareness gives us the courage to contemplate how we can change them.  

Before women gained the right to vote in America, many 'had never before considered their degraded status as anything but natural,' historian Jean Baker observes. As the suffrage movement gained momentum, "a growing number of women were beginning to see that custom, religious precept, and law were in fact man-made and therefore reversible." 

Adam Grant in Originals