I’ve long been an advocate for writing as a means of
healing. Putting pen to paper, or fingertips to keyboard, has been the best
weapon in my arsenal for plumbing the depths of my emotions and moving past
hurts – particularly when an issue involves another person.
The other day I came across some academic endorsement
of the catharsis I have experienced via the written word (yay science!).
In her book Rising
Strong, vulnerability expert Brene Brown references research from James
Pennebaker at the University of Texas. James says: “Emotional upheavals touch
every part of our lives. You don’t just lose a job, you don’t just get
divorced. These things affect all aspects of who we are – our financial
situation, our relationships with others, our views of ourselves, our issues of
life and death. Writing helps us focus and organise the experience.”
Pennebaker’s study, published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, found that participants who wrote about traumatic experiences
for four consecutive days reported greater happiness three months later,
visited the doctor less than usual during the following six weeks and seemed to
have a healthier immune system compared with the control group who wrote about
superficial topics.
Essentially, he says, translating painful and
confusing experiences into words helps us get to grips with what happened,
which helps us navigate our way through. We become active creators in our own
life stories rather than passive bystanders.
I’ve never tried the four-day exercise that Pennebaker
advocates, but I did use writing as therapy recently when a friend did
something really shitty to me that left me reeling. My first instinct was to
contact him and force him to explain his actions, but my wounded pride would
not let me. I’m glad I hesitated, because communicating with him before I had
got my thoughts in order would mean I would have likely launched some personal
attacks that I would regret forevermore (and looked like a dick in the
process).
What I did instead was write him a letter (using pen
and paper, so I’m less likely to edit it as I go) being very specific about why
I was upset. I wrote two pages, and when I read it back, I could see a very
clear pattern. My tone had changed from being angry and accusatory to being
self-reflective. Which is a helpful progression. I’d expressed my pain without
having to confront him, and had managed to make sense of it to the point where
I recognised how I had contributed to the situation by having unrealistic
expectations of his behaviour. I was still unhappy about the event but I was no
longer furious at him. Anger, after all, is a secondary emotion, masking a
deeper fear – if we want to move past what happened, we need to find out the issue
underlying the anger. I did not send the letter; I did not need to.
When you feel overwhelmed by emotions sometimes you
just don’t want to do the things you know will help. You feel justified being
angry, so you don’t *want* to move past it. But I know from experience that if
I can funnel my emotions onto a piece of paper, I will process the experience
in a much more helpful way. And when the lesson has been learned, the Universe
won’t send me that situation again.
This entire blog is testament to the power of the
written word to ease the pain of the human heart, and build a bridge to peace.
Almost every post I have written has reshaped my emotional landscape and
empowered me to be proactive in working through the challenges I face.
If there’s something you’re struggling with right now,
I’d recommend you try writing about it. Don’t worry about being clever or
lyrical or creative, just be honest about how you feel. It might not resolve
your pain but I bet it will give you some clarity to move forward.
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