James W. Pennebaker - Expressive Writing: Words that Heal

Writing saved my life. From best-selling authors to private journal keepers, from students entering college to soldiers returning home after deployment, from those who recently lost a loved one to those who suffer from childhood violence, we hear how writing saves lives. Ive said the same thing myself.

Writing has helped me deal with my own health challenges, including PTSD, a diagnosis of advanced cancer, and a recent cancer recurrence. In fact, this book might not exist had I not come across the first edition of James Pennebakers Writing to Heal ten years ago. Learning about personal and expressive writing helped me regain my health and live a more happy and productive life.

When Writing to Heal was published in 2004, it was the first journaling book that was rooted firmly in scientific research. What drew me to it was my own need for healing, my hope that after all my years of teaching and studying academic writing that I might find something that would allow me to write my way out of a serious depression.

After reading just a few pages, I discovered why my own writing hadnt been helping me. I was stuck in a never-ending cycle of rumination telling the same story over and over. There was no arc in my story; it was a flat line. Then when my story arc turned starkly downward, I knew it was killing me from the inside. Writing to Heal explained why I needed to write a new story in a new way.

Pennebakers book provided me a way to work out the most troubling events in my life, but in a way I had never done before. The writing assignments provided a life-course correction by helping me bring closure to painful childhood memories, recall experiences from my youth with a more positive perspective, and get beyond the emotional turmoil from my own adult mistakes.

Writing to Heal also opened up new professional interests and opportunities. I began to work with a local therapist to lead her clients in writing to heal group sessions. As my writing to heal practice grew, so did my desire to bring other like-minded professionals together. In 2007, I created Wellness & Writing Connections, LLC and the Wellness & Writing Connections Conference series so counselors, healthcare professionals, educators, and others could share how they were using writing with their clients, patients, and students.

Over the next four years, several hundred healthcare professionals, counselors, educators, and others interested in writing to heal came together at the Wellness & Writing Connections Conferences in Atlanta. Studying over a hundred concurrent conference sessions, I identified guiding principles and defining characteristics in the types of exercises presented at the conferences. From these findings and from studying my clients responses in workshops and clinical settings, I developed several writing to heal programs, like Transform Your Health: Write to Heal in Part III of this book.

Through all of this, I developed an easy friendship with James Pennebaker, or Jamie, as he likes to be called. When Jamie and I gave a talk and workshop on Writing to Heal at Duke Integrative Medicine in March 2012, I learned that Writing to Heal was out of print. I offered to help update, revise, and enlarge it so it could be available again. Jamie agreed and we made plans to collaborate on this project.

This book is the result of our collaboration. We agree that it brings together clinical and scientific perspectives that can help people learn more about the process of writing and move towards better health physically and emotionally.

John F. Evans

Chapel Hill, NC

If you are currently living with a trauma or emotional upheaval, you have made a courageous step by opening this book. You may be seeking a way to deal with this event so that you can get on with your life. Its tempting to avoid thinking about the trauma altogether and pretend that everything is fine. Some of your closest friends might want you to do this as well. In reality, though, you cant ignore a massive upheaval that is probably affecting every part of your life.

This book was written for people living with a trauma or an emotional upheaval. It may have occurred in the distant past, or you may be in the middle of it right now. It could be a single event or a long-term chronic problem. Whatever it is, you probably find yourself thinking, worrying, even dreaming about it far too much. Hopefully, some form of expressive writing, as described in this book, can help you get through some of the conflict, stress, or pain that you are feeling.

Dozens of workbooks, workshops, and self-help systems are available to help you deal with emotional upheavals. Some may be beneficial for you; others may not. Most have been developed by people who work with clients on a day-to-day basis. Im not one of those people. Im a research psychologist who accidentally discovered the power of writing in an experiment I conducted in the mid-1980s. In the study, people were asked to write for four consecutive days, fifteen minutes per day, about either a traumatic experience or a superficial event. To my surprise, those who wrote about traumas went to the doctor less often in the following months, and many said their writing changed their lives. Ever since then, Ive been devoted to understanding the mysteries of emotional writing.