Journaling: an entry to healing

“Write hard and clear about what hurts.” Ernest Hemingway was considered one of the darkest writers of our time, but he was onto something.

Many studies have shown expressive writing has the ability to heal body and soul, even some showing a long-term benefit on the immune system and blood pressure.

In 1994, a study out of UT Austin enrolled participants who had recently lost their job to examine the impact of expressive writing on their reemployment. 1/3 of the group were instructed to write about their plans for each day; another 1/3 of the group were asked to write their deepest feelings about their job loss; and the remaining 1/3 did not write. Even though all the participants spent the same amount of time in their job search and received approx the same number of interviews, the group who wrote about their job loss disappointment benefitted significantly. This group had a dramatic advantage over the other groups in achieving new employment. The results were so striking that the study ended early so the researchers could advise all groups to immediately start writing about their deepest feelings, so they could receive the same benefits.

An evaluation of 13 studies showed that writing is at least as beneficial as psychological intervention. If you are seeking the therapeutic benefits of writing, follow these steps:

✍️ Write about negative experiences, NOT the positive ones (a study showed that when subjects were asked to write about their happiest moments, they actually damaged their positive feelings, because it had a dissociative effect..! Alternatively, short written notes about positive experiences do no harm.)
✍️ Delve into your deepest feelings.
✍️ Commit to writing at least 15 minutes per session.
✍️ Don’t think too much, just write. An added bonus is sometimes people discover underlying meaning through their writing, but it’s not necessary to reap the therapeutic benefit.
✍️ Allow the words to flow and forget about proper spelling and grammar.

Start with these three questions: “What happened?”, “How did I feel about that”, “Why did I feel that way?”

Artist: Arno Rafael Minkkinen