Expressive Writing and Trauma

We often hear that it’s Good To Talk, but are you aware that it’s also Good To Write? Over recent years a mounting body of evidence has been uncovered that shows writing has therapeutic value.

There are distinct links between writing about traumatic, stressful or emotional events and an improvement in both physical and mental health. It seems that expressive writing can aid recovery from psychological trauma, and as such could provide a useful adjunct to conventional treatment.

The Power of The Pen

Curiously, research shows that expressive writing can benefit physical health just as much as emotional health, perhaps even more so. It can bring about improvement in many physical conditions, notably an improved immune response for HIV patients, and decreased admission rates in Cystic Fibrosis.

However, the patient groups that focused on forms of psychological distress like trauma, have also seen promising results. Though it doesn’t seem to work for everyone, and whilst some participants benefit from the process, others, like adult survivors of childhood abuse, could actually find the writing tasks detrimental. As yet it’s simply not clear why some subjects benefit and others do not.

The Plot Twist

The method of research has varied from study to study, but it's certainly more than just casual journalling. Participants were encouraged to write about their feelings, but they were also asked to give their writing context, adding chronological details, such as dates and times. It’s quite striking that this particular combination proved far more effective than writing about feelings alone.

Seemingly there is something more to expressive writing than just a bit of cathartic ranting into a journal, in fact initially participants reported feeling worse after completing tasks. If writing merely provided an outlet, if it was just an exercise to “let it all out”, then surely they’d just feel relieved afterwards? But this initial drop in mood, or negative affect, seems to indicate that there is something more complex occurring. So, what exactly is happening?

Discombobulated

Trauma can leave your narrative of events fragmented, and memories can be nonsensical or jumbled. It can become difficult to place them in sequential order, to remember them at all, or to even want to.

Fighting a daily battle to avoid or suppress painful thoughts can be exhausting to live with, because the harder you try to ram memories down and ignore them, the more insistent they are at popping up at inopportune moments. Seemingly innocuous sensory input, such as a smell or a sound, can trigger a trauma memory, leaving sufferers disorientated, unable to tell the past from the present. It can feel like the trauma is happening all over again, just from a whiff of aftershave, or a car back firing.

One of the theories why expressive writing might help survivors of trauma, is that it might be helping people to make sense of what happened. In the same way that trauma therapy helps put traumatic events back into chronological order, giving memories context and rebuilding that shattered timeline, writing about trauma might well serve the same purpose.

Putting feelings and events together in a piece of writing could be a way to link, process and think through the meaning of an experience, and beyond that, to take ownership of it. Integrating the memories into the here and now, rather than leaving fragments blasting into everyday life in the form of intrusive thoughts, or flashbacks.

Work in Progress

It's not yet clear why some people find expressive writing helpful, whilst others reap no benefit, and it’s wise to remain circumspect until research gives us a definitive answer. This is still an idea with wide-reaching implications, and it could be provided for the mere cost of a pen and a piece of paper. It's unlikely that expressive writing will ever replace the therapeutic relationship in trauma treatment, but as an addition to talking therapy, it could be a promising tool to help survivors move on with their lives.