Journaling for Health Part 2: How Does Expressive Writing Work?

This is part 2 (of 5) of a series on journaling to improve health, or what James W. Pennebaker, the seminal scholar on the topic, calls “expressive writing.”   I’ve been doing research into expressive writing, which has been demonstrated to improve mental and physical health, in order to roll my learnings into an interactive experience currently in development.

In studies, expressive writing has been consistently shown to improve mental and physical health; however, there is no agreement about how it works.

Some propose that writing enables people to disclose previously repressed thoughts and feelings, the inhibition of which takes physiological effort.  This is called Inhibition Theory, and it suggests that the physiological work of repressing emotion might stress one’s system over time.  Repression leads to decreased immunity and poor health.  Others endorse Cognitive or Behavioral Change Theory, which advocates the notion that people benefit from facing a troubling topic, changing the manner in which they think about it, then changing the manner in which they behave in response to it (Graybeal, Sexton, & Pennebaker, 2002).

As someone with a keen interest in narrative and a background in literature and writing studies, I would suppose that—in addition to Inhibition and Cognitive Change theories—some form of Narrative theory might also be set into the mix.  Human beings are storytellers.  Without stories, we lack meaning–and without meaning, our lives feel nasty, brutish and short.  With a good story, nearly any harsh reality can be transcended or integrated into a meaning that enriches us.

Pennebaker, too, supposed that narrative must be integral to expressive writing’s salutory effects.  In the nineties, he developed a piece of text analysis software called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count.  LIWC measured the degree to which people used specific categories of words.  Using this software across a range of studies, researchers found that people who benefited from expressive writing went from using fewer causal words, like “because” or “reason,” and fewer insight words, like “understand” or “realize,” to using a high rate of causal and insight words by the end of the study.

Pennebaker & Seagal write, “In reading the essays of people who showed this pattern of language use, it became apparent that they were constructing a story over time.  Building a narrative, then, seemed to be critical in reaching understanding” (Pennebaker & Seagal, 1999).

References

Graybeal, A; Sexton, J. D.; and Pennebaker, J. W. (2002).  The Role of Story-Making in Disclosure Writing: The Psychometrics of Narrative.  Psychology and Health (Vol. 17, No. 5, pp. 571-581).

Pennebaker, J.W.; Seagal, Janel D. (1999). Forming a Story: The Health Benefits of Narrative.  Journal of Clinical Psychology (Vol. 55, No. 10, pp.1243-1254).