Ever heard the advice ‘make lemonade if life sends you lemons’? Wise words, no doubt, but how do we rise above hurt feelings and anger, come to terms with life-threatening illness, or rebuild our lives after redundancy or the loss of a relationship?
We all acquire ‘emotional baggage’ as we travel through life. The good news is that when the baggage gets heavy, we don't all need a 12-step program or a personal therapist to ease the load. For the everyday ups and downs of life, most of us have a hidden ability to be our own therapist - to heal ourselves, in fact.
Writing is a good way to unlock this hidden power. Let your emotions out in writing, and when you see what you write, you'll begin to know what you feel. Putting those negative feelings into words may allow you to gain some control over them.
Put your deepest thoughts and feelings into words, even if no one ever reads them. In fact, don’t plan to show the writing to anyone else; write it just for you, advises Professor James Pennebaker of the University of Texas, Austin USA, a major researcher in this field.
The medium is not the message. Whether you type on a keyboard, write in ink, use pencil or chalk doesn’t matter. Writing in the air with your finger (if you don’t mind looking a bit eccentric) can work just as well.
The healing power of writing has been found to work for life’s downs and ups – we can write about events that were traumatic, or just distressing; we can write about happiness and strength that we hope for in the future. Either way, most of us will benefit by putting it into words. Our immune systems will normally improve, too, which is good for us, and bad for the common cold.
Magic formula? There is none. Spelling and grammar don’t matter in this case - knowing how to punctuate (or even just knowing how to spell 'punctuate') won't make you feel better faster. There is no ‘right way’ to write about your feelings. You are the expert on you, after all, and you’ll know best what suits you.
If you can write about your deepest thoughts and feelings for 15-20 minutes at least, without stopping, and do that for several days in a row, so much the better. If, over several sessions of writing, you develop a new perspective and see things from other points of view as well as your own, you are even more likely to benefit from your writing. When you express your thoughts and feelings in a way that makes new sense to you, the new perspective can bring new understanding and a new peace of mind. That’s the key to letting go of anger, hurt feelings and shame, and transforming those emotional lemons into a tonic.
Who knows, maybe after a few experiments you might even catch the writing habit and keep a journal. Perhaps you’ll be the next Bridget Jones! If so, well and good, but for most of us, the chance to clean the emotional slate is ample reward for a few short writing sessions.
5 top tips for expressive writing
1 Write about what crops up most often now in your thoughts and dreams.
2 Write whatever comes into your head, in the way that suits you. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar.
3 Tell yourself the story – it’s your understanding that matters.
4 You can write about positive things too – the future you want to achieve.
5 If writing about a traumatic memory becomes too distressing, STOP and do something pleasant instead. Give yourself a treat!
Further information
Opening up: The healing power of expressing emotions - by James W. Pennebaker (1997), published by The Guilford Press.
The writing cure: How expressive writing promotes health and emotional well-being - by Stephen Lepore & Joshua Smyth (2002), published by the American Psychological Association.
©: Cecilia Lenagh 2008. All rights reserved. www.cecilia-lenagh.com
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