A method that will make you feel better mentally and physically, especially at a time when you are not doing well
Everyone in life experiences situations where things do not go according to our ideas. In the context of a pandemic, this will be the case for most of us. Some people are worried that their expected competition has been canceled, someone has gotten pains due to a sudden change in training (when already running, so straight from 0 to 100 km per month), someone is dealing with more serious things such as loss of income, job loss or not being able to see family. Even well-meaning advice from friends sometimes doesn't have to relieve us. Maybe you're listening "head up", "I don't understand what you're dealing with, imagine what the Philomene" would happen to you, "or your friends will still say that you have to look for positives in the situation. I don't mind, someone may be at a stage where it works like this, but you may feel that you need something else.
Maybe now you don't want to jump in the room for online aerobics lessons or improve bends on the door frame, maybe you'd prefer to crawl somewhere in the corner and not call anyone. If you experience feelings that you do not know and do not want to trust, you can relax your psyche and help your health in a relatively simple way. And then you will enjoy those folds with gusto.
If you suffer from more serious mental problems or have been diagnosed with any of the mental illnesses, please consult the following recommendations with your doctor or psychologist.
Expressive writing
One of the simple ways to help yourself from unpleasant feelings has been described and researched since the 1980s by psychology professor James W. Pennebaker. He has devoted his research career to the relationship between health and the perception of feelings and thoughts that are part of human experience. Boom experienced expressive writing in the 1980s and 1990s, so I will present most of the studies from this period. Although expressive writing seems to be rediscovered by many researchers, methodologically the studies are so different that we prefer to look at the basics first.
The technique we are talking about is known as expressive writing. Pennebaker's effect is similar to the functioning of psychotherapy - to admit a problem, to describe it well, to perceive the causes and consequences well and to confide in the accompanying feelings, it has a healing effect. Proponents of the common factor theory might argue that the basic co-operative factor common to all therapies is the therapeutic relationship. However, therapeutic care may not be available to everyone, and even therapists do not do magic, but have a repertoire of useful techniques that we can involve ourselves in caring for our health. Pennebaker has been researching a way to help more people without an expert.
What does expressive writing look like?
The basic guideline used in the studies is that it is enough to write 4 x 15 minutes about an unpleasant experience or problem, while the respondents had to use all the time to write (they started again when it was no longer possible). One study even suggests using only 2 minutes. The days may follow each other, but according to a meta-analysis, it seems more effective to devote yourself to writing once a week. Although we are talking about writing, in some studies they have used dictaphone recording, and the spoken form of expressing feelings has similar results to the written one.
Don't know what to write about? Any revelation of feelings seems to be effective. However, as the Pennebaker report describes, the choice of topic can affect the outcome. For example, if students write about problems related to their studies, their grades will improve more than if they write about their traumatic experiences. So you can think about which area of your life you want to improve and write about it. It doesn't seem necessary to go too far into the past, even though you can include it in the story. Therefore, focus more on what you are experiencing in the present.
There are different tutorials on how to write and each can lead to a slightly different result. For example, when you write about physical survival, you can improve physical well-being, you can improve social well-being by writing about feelings, and you can get to problem solving by looking for ways to deal with the current situation.
The effect of writing on health and life
Subjective survival was measured by self-assessment questionnaires. Despite the fact that the writing experience was perceived as unpleasant, the respondents considered the activity to be meaningful. Compared to control participants who wrote on another topic, there is a long-term improvement in mood and a reduction in the symptoms of depression and negative survival after expressive writing. The meta-analysis summarizes the results of research, arguing that writing about emotional topics is associated with a significant decrease in subjective suffering.
In order to look at the practical side of things, there were also changes in the level of behavior. In one research, they divided high school freshmen who are subject to great stress into two basic groups - optimists and pessimists, according to personality tendencies. For both personality tendencies, students who write about emotionally significant topics receive better grades at school than those who write about a trivial topic. Optimists have the advantage that self-regulatory technology works well for them. The instruction in this case is: after "listing" from the problems regarding the study, formulate plans for how to handle the situation. For pessimists, however, this technique does not work very well for optimists.
Workers also benefited from expressive writing. Those who lost their jobs were employed more quickly in the months following the study and a significantly larger proportion of them were employed. The condition that separated the successful from the less successful was to write for five consecutive days of 20 minutes on deeply personal topics related to job loss, while others wrote in person about their normal activities and plans for employment. Interestingly, this success was probably not related to higher motivation, as the first group did not make more contacts with employers than the second. Respondents may have just been more relaxed, which is never to the detriment.
In the same study, the first group was found to have consumed less alcohol 3 months after the study. However, according to an overview of older studies, health behaviors (smoking, exercise, alcohol) are not as influenced by writing as they are in other areas, which may be due to the fact that health behaviors are more about commitments than emotions. Nevertheless, it is an interesting finding that there is a connection between writing and medical records. Compared before the research, after expressive writing, patients used the services of a doctor less often (which was valid for 2 months, 6 months and in one study even 1.4 years).
Writing on emotionally important topics also had a positive effect on immune function. The researchers observed an effect on the growth of T-lymphocytes, improved antibody production during vaccination, and a reduction in the frequency of visits to the medical facility. The study particularly benefited those who wrote about topics they hide from others. According to the authors, actively confronting one's (traumatic or unpleasant) experiences can have two mechanisms. On the one hand, there will be a better understanding of survival, framing of the event and its assimilation. In the second mechanism, as we know from psychosomatic theories, active retention of behavior is associated with higher activity of the autonomic nervous system and can lead to disease in the long run. In a more detailed analysis in this study, a change in perspective was actually observed in the individual essays over time.
One of the unpleasant consequences of expressive writing is a worsened mood after writing, while after writing a depersonalized essay the mood may improve slightly, after writing an emotionally charged essay there may be a short deterioration in survival, manifested e.g. anger and unrest. According to the above findings, however, it seems that writing brings more benefits in the long run.
Expressive writing can be specifically more effective in cultures where expressing individual emotions is considered weakness or inappropriateness (verified in China; Ji, Lu & Wang, 2019), and in situations where one does not have enough support with loved ones or friends (according to Ji, Lu & Wang, 2019). These studies are aimed at respondents with cancer, so it is not possible to simply generalize the results to a wider population, but we can estimate from them that if you like to keep your experience to yourself, it can help you all the more.
We see that writing is effective for both healthy and sick, unemployed, and first-year students. A new study on athletes suggests that the intervention may also help athletes cope with injury. The effect of writing is more pronounced on mental well-being and physiological activation than on overall functioning or health-related behavior. According to the meta-analysis, the magnitude of the effect of writing is medium to large. This is already a significant effect, obtained across studies and it would be a shame to overlook it.
How is it possible that it works?
Theoretically, several explanations are possible, there may be:
recognizing feelings and creating space for their reflection
clarifying problems and solving them spontaneously
increased spontaneity and vigilance in social situations - we are more attuned to others and ready to interact
better perception of oneself and others, perception of events in a new light
according to a more elaborate, cognitive theory, writing in thoughts allows stressful events to be reorganized, thereby reducing the physiological activation that is associated with inhibition and obsessive thinking. Writing helps to observe your thoughts, express them and control your emotions. This can create a sense of self-efficacy and resilience, and thus a sense that stressors are manageable.
And what is the effect on overall functioning and behavior? If you are more mentally well, you are more likely to attend classes and get a better grade. You will be better at the interview and probably easier to get a job…
What to take from it
Psychologists have long emphasized that expressing emotions is necessary for physical and mental health. Brief, repeated interventions involving the expression of emotions can affect overall health, mental well-being, and overall functioning months after that. In the article, we have shown how this can happen and that it is probably related to the natural human need to talk about unpleasant events. Many times, however, expressing our feelings may seem unsocial to us, so don't be afraid to reach for paper, pen and timer.
Remember that:
Once a week is better than daily
Just 15 minutes and use the whole time
it is advisable to determine in advance the topic you will be writing about
being worse for a while means you're doing well
writing in no way replaces regular exercise and a good diet in terms of health;)
Tip: look at what you wrote (but don't analyze, otherwise tear it apart!;) And look for words how to understand, realize. As they begin to occur more frequently, they may indicate a more pronounced shift.
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