The Power of The Pen
Friday, August 14, 2009 at 11:50PM The power of the pen
How spending 10 minutes a day with a simple pen and paper can dramatically boost your health. Denise Cullen reports.
Teenage girls instinctively understand the therapeutic benefits associated with keeping a diary. And now studies have documented what these chroniclers of adolescent angst have always known: confiding in the paper is helpful and healing, on both physical and emotional levels.
"The brightest spot of all is that at least I can write down all my thoughts and feelings; otherwise I'd absolutely suffocate," wrote Anne Frank. The entries, penned in a secret annex in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, became The Diary of Anne Frank, noted as much for the revelations of teenage emotions as the grim wartime conditions she experienced.
But does journal writing offer anything beyond a profound sense of relief? Intrigued by the ways in which psychological conflicts manifested themselves physiologically, Dr James Pennebaker, professor of Psychology at the University of Texas in Austin, pioneered research into the links between writing and health.
Twenty-one years ago, he conducted a study in which student volunteers were asked to write about a traumatic event in their lives and the associated emotions.
Initial findings that "writing about horrible things made people feel horrible immediately after writing" � resulted in sleepless nights for Pennebaker.
"In analysing the mood findings, it appeared that all we had succeeded in doing was inventing a new way to make people depressed," he writes in Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions.
Six months down the track, however, the picture changed. Pennebaker found that people who'd written revealing accounts of a personal trauma showed an "impressive drop" in visits to the doctor, compared with control groups who were assigned other writing topics.
"Our volunteers had also completed additional questionnaires four months after the experiment (and) virtually everything they said corroborated the health centre findings," he says.
"Writing about their deepest thoughts and feelings about traumas resulted in improved moods, more positive outlook, and greater physical health."
Subsequent experiments have shown that writing boosts health in myriad other ways, including strengthened immune function, a decreased reliance upon pain medication, improved lung function in asthma patients, and reduced symptoms in rheumatoid arthritis patients.
Some studies have further demonstrated reduced blood pressure and improved performance at work and school.
Yet according to author and columnist Stephanie Dowrick, whose most recent book is Living Words: Journal Writing for self-discovery, insight and creativity, less measurable benefits are no less tangible.
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Lyndall Boucher |
"Writing a journal can literally be life-changing," she writes. "It is the key to discovering your own unique inner world it lets you 'read' your own life (and) see the world around yourself more richly, more deeply."
Dowrick conducted a one-day course in November through the University of Sydney's Centre for Continuing Education. The course capacity of 100 people was quickly reached, and the waiting list grew just as long. A second course, scheduled for this month, is booked out too but another is planned for May.
Dowrick refutes the notion that journals are just for teenage girls. "Too many of us are persuaded to give up journal writing as we get older, often because we let ourselves be convinced that there are more important things to do, or that we should be attentive only to other people's lives and not to our own," she says.
Indeed, there are benefits for people in all sorts of circumstances. Grief counsellors say journal writing soothes broken hearts; psychologists and social workers say it can help heal those suffering other forms of loss.
Amanda Gordon, a clinical psychologist and vice president of the Australian Psychological Society, says she recommends journal writing for clients experiencing everything from work difficulties to relationship break-ups because "writing seems to make a difference".
But why does it? Some believe improvements in a person's wellbeing come about because writing offers catharsis; others suggest putting pen to paper provides space for reflection, the gaining of insight and the opportunity to attain some much-needed perspective.
But Dr Laura King, of the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri, Columbia, says only two conclusions can be made. "First, expressive writing has health benefits," she explains in the book The Writing Cure. "Second, no one really knows why."
Finding inspiration
Last thing at night, Lyndall Boucher curls up in bed with a purple pen and a journal covered in Japanese paper, and writes her heart out.
"I find it's good to get certain work and interpersonal issues out of my head and onto the paper � it stops the tapes that loop round and round and prevent you getting to sleep," she says.
Journal writing has always interested Boucher � but, like many people who sporadically pour out thoughts on paper, she often found herself lacking momentum, and stuck for inspiration.
After attending Stephanie Dowrick's one-day journal-writing workshop in November, however, she now writes at least three times a week, just prior to lights out, for around 10 to 20 minutes.
"The workshop provided some starting points and structure," she explains. "Instead of someone saying, 'Sit down and write something every day', we were given a range of prompts, and issues, and questions to consider that provided the basis for deeper and freer writing.
"Sometimes I might just start by writing the same question over and over again, until other thoughts start to emerge in a stream of consciousness."
Getting started
Famous diaries
Journals, by Kurt Cobain
This collection of notes, lyrics, sketches, and letters was drawn from 20 notebooks written by the Nirvana front man from the late 1980s until his suicide in 1994.
Diaries of Franz Kafka, by Franz Kafka
Described by The New York Times as exhibiting "ruthless honesty and self-awareness", Kafka wanted his diaries burned, but his friend Max Brod overrode his wishes.
The Diary of Anais Nin: Vol. 1 (1931-1934), by Anais Nin
The first of seven volumes, one reviewer described the journals as "the centrepiece of Anais Nin's controversial career". Unexpurgated versions were only published after the writer's death.
Andy Warhol Diaries, by Pat Hackett
What started out as an expense account diary dictated daily at 9.30am to long-time associate Pat Hackett evolved into a grab-bag of riveting gossip about Warhol's contemporaries.
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