Students who wrote about their deepest feelings for 15 minutes a day, four days in a row, visited the doctor less in the months that followed
In the mid-1980s, psychologist James Pennebaker asked a group of university students to do something unusual. For 15 minutes a day, four days in a row, they would sit alone and write about the most upsetting or traumatic experience of their lives, including their deepest thoughts and feelings about it.
Other students wrote about the same events but only the facts, or about their feelings without the facts, or about trivial topics like the layout of their room. In the 1986 study by Pennebaker and Sandra Beall, the researchers then tracked how often each student visited the campus health center over the following months.
The students who had written about both the facts and their emotions made fewer health center visits than those who had written about trivial topics. Writing about trauma was not pleasant in the moment. Right after the sessions, those students reported feeling more upset. The benefit showed up later.
That study launched a large field of research on what is now called expressive writing. Over the following decades, studies tested it with medical students, unemployed engineers, people with asthma and arthritis, and many others, looking at outcomes from immune function to mood and job searches.
The overall picture is positive but modest. A 2006 meta-analysis by Joanne Frattaroli, which combined 146 studies, found a small but real benefit on average across psychological and physical health outcomes. Effects tended to be larger when people wrote for longer sessions and about topics they had not discussed before.
Why would writing help? One explanation is that putting an experience into words forces the mind to organize it into a story, which can make it easier to understand and set aside. Another is that holding back thoughts and feelings takes effort, and releasing them on paper may reduce that ongoing strain. Pennebaker’s own analyses found that people who benefited most tended to use more words about causes and insight as their writing went on.
For anyone curious to try it, the classic method is simple: set aside 15 to 20 minutes on three or four consecutive days, write continuously about a difficult experience and your deepest feelings about it, and do not worry about spelling or grammar. Nobody else needs to read it.
It is not a replacement for professional help. For some people, especially soon after a traumatic event, writing about it can be too distressing, and a few studies have found no benefit or even short-term harm in certain groups. If writing brings up overwhelming feelings, it makes sense to stop and talk to a mental health professional.
Sources
Pennebaker JW, Beall SK. “Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1986.
DOI: 10.1037/0021-843X.95.3.274
Frattaroli J. “Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis.” Psychological Bulletin, 2006.
DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.823
