Healthy, well-adjusted people after having emotionally challenging experiences, can carry unprocessed emotions for many decades, be it childhood angst, conflicts with family and friends, or remorse over missteps and lost opportunities. During several scientific studies, researchers asked participants to write about a disturbing experience for 15 to 20 minutes a day for three or four consecutive days. The point of the exercise is not to craft a perfect essay, but to dig deeply into one’s emotional baggage, then translate the experience into language on the page.
An analysis of the participants’ writing about trauma found that those whose health improves most tend to use a higher proportion of negative emotion words than those associated with positive emotions. The growing use of insight, and associated cognitive words over several days of writing is also linked to health improvement. The creation of a coherent story, with the expression of negative emotions, work together in therapeutic writing. Evidence of these processes are seen in the immediate improvement in autonomic nervous system activity.
