After his father was rushed to the hospital with gastrointestinal bleeding, Yanatha Desouvre began to panic. So he did the one thing he knew would calm himself: He wrote.
“I’m so scared,” Mr. Desouvre started. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose my dad.”
In the next few weeks, Mr. Desouvre filled several notebooks, writing about his worry as well as his happy memories—the jokes he’d shared with his dad, the basketball games they’d watched, the time they put up hurricane shutters together, then cooled down with ice cream. Sometimes he cried as he wrote. Often he laughed.
“Writing allowed me to face my fear,” says Mr. Desouvre, a 42 year old who teaches marketing and business at a college in Miami. “My pen was a portal to process the pain.”
Yanatha Desouvre says writing has helped him cope with difficult experiences.
Photo: Brittney Bomnin/University of Miami CommunicationsSomething troubling you?
You should write about it.
An extensive body of research shows that people who write about a traumatic experience or difficult situation in a manner that psychologists refer to as “expressive writing”—recording their deepest thoughts and feelings—often show improved mental and physical health, says James Pennebaker, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Pennebaker pioneered the scientific study of expressive writing as a coping mechanism to deal with trauma back in the 1980s.
Expressive writing is a specific technique, and it’s different from just writing in a journal. People need to reflect honestly and thoughtfully on a particular trauma or challenge, and do it in short sessions—15 to 20 minutes for a minimum of three days is a good place to start.
Dr. Pennebaker says that hundreds of studies over several decades have looked at the potential benefits of expressive writing, including for people with illnesses such as cancer, PTSD, depression, asthma and arthritis, and found that it can strengthen the immune system and may help lower the rate of colds or flu. Research also found the technique can help reduce chronic pain and inflammation. It may help lower symptoms of depression and PTSD. And it can improve mood, sleep and memory.
Now, a new website, part of a research endeavor called the Pandemic Project, gives people an opportunity to try expressive writing about the coronavirus. On the site, which was created by a research team led by Dr. Pennebaker, people are prompted to write about how the coronavirus is affecting them. A text analysis program then provides feedback. (This is not an expressive writing study, but the researchers will be analyzing the samples to look for themes around trauma and the coronavirus.)
Expressive writing works because it allows you to take a painful experience, identify it as a problem and make meaning out of it, experts say. Recognizing that something is bothering you is an important first step. Translating that experience into language forces you to organize your thoughts. And creating a narrative gives you a sense of control.
But there are a few caveats. Expressive writing isn’t a magical panacea. It shouldn’t be used as a replacement for other treatments. And people coping with a severe trauma or depression may not find it useful to do on their own, without therapy.
Yet it can be a powerful coping tool for many, in large part because it helps combat the secrecy people often feel about a trauma, as well as their reluctance to face emotions. “The more you avoid a problem, the more trouble you will have with it, because you create a loop of trepidation and apprehension and increasing negative emotions,” says Brian Marx, a professor of psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine and deputy director of the behavioral science division of the National Center for PTSD. He uses a five-session therapist-led expressive writing protocol he helped to design, called Written Exposure Therapy, with patients at the VA Boston Healthcare System.
Why write? Thinking or talking about an event can lead to ruminating, where you become lost in your emotions. But writing forces you to slow down, says Joshua Smyth, distinguished professor of biobehavioral health and of medicine at Pennsylvania State University, who studies expressive writing.
The mere act of labeling a feeling—of putting words to an emotion—can dampen the neural activity in the threat area of the brain and increase activity in the regulatory area, says Annette Stanton, chair of the department of psychology and professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA. Dr. Stanton’s research suggests that expressive writing can lead to lower depressive symptoms, greater positive mood and enhanced life appreciation. “Writing can increase someone’s acceptance of their experience, and acceptance is calming,” says Dr. Stanton.
Expressive writing can even help your relationships. A 2006 study in the journal Psychological Science found that when one partner wrote about his or her deepest thoughts and feelings about a romantic relationship, both partners began using more positive words when writing each other instant messages, and the couple stayed together longer. “We think expressive writing helps people work through struggles in a relationship, that leads to positivity, and that positivity elicits more positivity in return,” says Richard Slatcher, distinguished professor in the psychology department at the University of Georgia, who was the lead researcher on the study.
What if you hate to write? Don’t worry. You don’t have to put pen to paper. Researchers say that speaking your thoughts into a recorder works just as well. Try expressive writing for 15 to 20 minutes a day for a minimum of three days. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar or share your writing with anyone. But dig deep into your thoughts and feelings. The goal of the exercise is to find meaning in an event.
Mr. Desouvre turned to expressive writing about 15 years ago, after the breakup of what he says was an unhealthy relationship. He wrote to understand why it made him feel vulnerable and sometimes physically ill. “You can’t keep things bottled up,” he says. (He has also written a screenplay and a novel.) “It will make you sick.”
The writing brought up an older trauma. When he was 9, he says he survived a shooting in a barbershop in Brooklyn. He had nightmares about it over the years, but tried not to focus on it. He started writing about it, then kept going. He wrote about growing up poor in New York and Philadelphia and about his grandfather’s death.
It helped. As Mr. Desouvre wrote, he asked himself how he felt about the traumas of his life and what they revealed about him. It was painful, he says. “But when I acknowledged the pain, I was able to see the courage I didn’t know I had,” he says.
He thinks of his expressive writing as a captain’s log—a recording of what happened and what he’s learned. Sometimes he jots down just a few sentences. But he always starts with “the tough stuff” and then writes about how he’s grown from the experience.
Recently, he’s been writing in a notebook he’s labeled “spring of 2020,” recording the stress of wrestling with germs, loss, misinformation, and his kids’ home schooling during the pandemic. But he’s also written about what he has gained: more time with his family, and perspective.
“My expressive writing gave me the courage to face my fears,” he says. “And I believe it has helped me discover the hope I need to heal and process the pain and hurt and to celebrate and be grateful for those awesome moments.”
How to Practice Expressive Writing
Set aside time, preferably alone. Turn off your phone. Don’t look at email or social media. Expressive writing doesn’t work well with a lot of interruptions or distractions.
Think short-term. This is not a journaling practice. Your aim is to write 15 to 20 minutes for three days. “This is a life-course correction,” says James Pennebaker, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of “Opening Up by Writing it Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain.” “Take stock of what is wrong and what you can do about it.”
Pick your medium. Pen and paper is nice because it slows you down. But research shows that using a computer or even recording your voice work as well. “The secret sauce is in the words—in the translation of thoughts and feelings into language,” says Joshua Smyth, distinguished professor of biobehavioral health and of medicine at Pennsylvania State University.
Choose a topic. What is bothering you the most? Is it something you can’t talk to anyone else about? Expressive writing is perfect for this.
Let sleeping dogs lie. If you had a traumatic experience but you’ve already dealt with it or it really doesn’t bother you, don’t write about it. You don’t want to start ruminating over something you weren’t thinking about to begin with. Expressive writing is meant for the topics you still need to process, says Dr. Pennebaker.
Don’t stress over the quality of your writing. Spelling and grammar don’t matter. “The point is to get your memory out, to describe as best as you possibly can what it has meant in your life,” says Brian Marx, professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.
Make the connections. Expressive writing works when you explore your deepest thoughts and feelings. Pick a topic that is worrying you and explore why it happened, how it is related to other things in your life, and why it is bothering you now.
Don’t limit yourself. You can stick with your original topic. But if it leads you to another one, that’s fine, too. “This is a meaning-making process,” says Dr. Smyth. “It might take some writing to get to what is really most essential.”
It’s OK if you feel bad at first. This is normal if you’re focusing on a negative event. It’s important to keep going. The benefits of expressive writing occur over weeks and months, says Annette Stanton, professor and chair of the psychology department at UCLA.
Give yourself advice. What recommendations would you give to a friend with a similar issue?
Don’t share. When people know they are going to share, their writing changes and they start to worry about impression management. Your goal is to be honest with yourself.
Power through. If you get stuck, just keep going. Dr. Smyth suggests writing the last sentence you wrote over and over until you get unstuck.
Move on. Try writing for three days. If it doesn’t help, try something else.
Write to Elizabeth Bernstein at elizabeth.bernstein@wsj.com or follow her on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter at EBernsteinWSJ.
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