When I first came across the work of James Pennebaker during my PhD studies, I was pretty inspired by it. His initial idea was that writing about personal traumas over a period of time could help people process them and begin to heal. This theory came from an observation, made by many different scholars and thinkers over time, that keeping secrets is stressful, and that humans appear to have an innate need to confess.

The nature of the way society often talks about trauma and mental health challenges means that those who experience them often feel intense shame or stigma around their struggles. While this situation appears to finally be improving, for many people shame has been a hefty barrier to talking about what has happened to them for a long time. For example we are only now beginning to understand the sheer scale of the abuse that happens to children because many who experienced it have felt forced into silence for so long.

James Pennebaker had the idea that if people were able to write about their experiences, a practice her called ‘expressive writing’, this may form part of a process that would allow people to process what had happened to them and begin to heal. One of the advantages of expressive writing is that it’s possible to do this in private, or to share it with people you trust, either way you have control over who sees it.

What is expressive writing?

In their book, Opening Up by Writing it Down (affiliate links – if you use these links to make a purchase I’ll get a tiny commission), James Pennebaker and Joshua Smyth describe expressive writing as “a technique where people typically write about an upsetting experience for 15-20 minutes for three to four days (Pg. ix).”

They are not prescriptive on the number of days, or the time spent writing each day, and actively encourage people who are interested in this practice to experiment with what works for them personally. They suggest that this kind of writing exercise allow people to spend time gaining a better understanding about the feelings that have about what has happened to them.

What is the theory behind it?

Pennebaker and Smyth note that having traumatic experiences is bad for your health, and suggest that some traumas may have more insidious effects than others because the nature of them, as I suggested above, means that people feel unable to discuss these important personal experiences.

They describe keeping “major secrets” as stressful, having a numerous negative biological and psychological impacts including reducing immune function, impairing the work of the cardio-vascular system, agitating the nervous system and even impacting on the chemistry in our brains. Sustained over long periods of time these effects can lead to physical illness and mental distress.

By contrast finding a way to release or confess secrets, particularly ones that are difficult or upsetting, can relieve the pressure on our bodies and minds and help reduce both distress and physical illness. Expressive writing may be one way of releasing those secrets.

Evidence

Pennebaker first described his technique in 1986, and in the time since then has conducted a vast programme of research with hundreds of research participants. In his early studies he asked college students to write about traumatic experiences for four days in a row, and he found the following effects:

• Immediately after the writing exercises the students reported increased feelings of sadness and anxiety
• Over the long term students who had completed the writing exercises reported few visits to the student health centre than control groups of students who had written about non-traumatic subjects
• Students who had completed the writing exercises also reported feeling a greater sense of value and meaning

Since those early studies Pennebaker and Smyth have conducted a range of experiments on expressive writing with a wide range of people and have found positive impacts on numerous physical and psychological health markers and conditions, including:

• Enhance immune function, including in some people with HIV
• Lower blood pressure after expressive writing
• Improvements in lung health in people with asthma
• Improvements in joint health in people with arthritis
• Improved wound healing
• Improved quality of life in cancer patients
• Improvements in symptoms of depression and PTSD

Who does it not work for?

After seeing some of the evidence it seems like expressive writing could be a easy and cost effective technique to help anyone. However there are some people who the technique appears to have little impact on.

Some of the studies that Pennebaker and a range of colleagues conducted suggested that expressive writing was most useful to people who did not have other opportunities to disclose, suggesting that for people who do have those opportunities may feel little benefit.

I have also read elsewhere (and apologies as I cannot remember the source) that people themselves writing almost the same account of a traumatic event over and over, rather than seeing their accounts evolve over time, may receive little benefit, and may even find writing about their traumas harmful. It is possible for people to become ‘stuck’ in their story, rather than evolving through it. For many individuals a skilled therapist will be able to help them gain a better understanding of their feelings about what has happened to them where they may struggle on their own.

Further reading

If you are interested in learning more about expressive writing I recommend you read Opening Up by Writing it Down (affiliate links – if you use these links to make a purchase I’ll get a tiny commission), James Pennebaker and Joshua Smyth. It contains detailed information about the research they have conducted, along with practical writing exercises that you can try. I also find written in a clear and approachable style.