F-R-E-E-Write Your Way to Wellness?
Dozens of studies have found that most people, from schoolchildren to nursing-home residents feel happier and healthier after writing about deeply traumatic memories.
In his book Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas, James Pennebaker, summarises ten years of scientific research into the connection between writing and increased physical and mental wellbeing.
He concludes that writing is a tremendously powerful tool, “far more powerful” than he and his team predicted when setting up their study. The effect isn’t just emotional or spiritual. F-R-E-E-Writing, it seems, isn’t just good for your soul but for your blood pressure, insomnia, psychological well-being, and more.
One study found that those who wrote in this way had more active T-lymphocyte cells, an indication of improved immune system. Other studies have found that they tend to take fewer trips to the doctor, function better in day-to-day tasks, and score higher on tests of psychological well-being.
The benefits occur regardless of literacy or educational level. All that is needed is a sufficient level of literacy to communicate with oneself. And the more often people write, the more beneficial the effects.
As a result of such findings, Writing Therapy is now used to help people with all kinds of physical and emotional problems, including life-threatening illnesses such as cancer; chronic conditions such as asthma and rheumatoid arthritis; drug and alcohol addictions; eating disorders; and trauma. It has also been shown to be beneficial for combating low self-esteem, depression, and stress-related ailments and, more surprisingly perhaps, to have a positive impact on heart health: heart rate and blood pressure.
In addition, writing therapy is ideal in helping people cope with grief and loss. For example, poetry therapists were asked to work with the students of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, after the shooting tragedy there in 1999.
Virginia Woolf writes eloquently of this in her memoir, “A Sketch of the Past”. By writing of her experience of sexual abuse at the hands of her half-brother, she felt she did for herself what the then new practice of psychoanalysis was doing for its patients: “I expressed some very long and deeply felt emotion. And in expressing it, I explained it and then laid it to rest”.
But FREE-Writing isn’t just for those who are consciously in need of healing. It is of benefit to all.
- F-R-E-E-Writing rights. At a daily level, it improves your psychic state, elevates your mood, makes you feel centred, sets you up for your day. Everybody always feels better after a F-R-E-E-Writing session than before.
- FREE-Writing connects. We connect with ourselves — the inner self, at all levels: mind, emotion and spirit. We connect with the outer world, by increasing our awareness of all our relationships, with people, places and things
- FREE-Writing uncovers. Because we write as fast as possible, thoughts and emotions are allowed to rise without the internal censor kicking in. This brings us to new understandings — concealed meanings and significances are brought to the surface. Woolf calls them “shocks”, those moments of profound insight that come from examining our past, because of how they force an awareness we wouldn’t otherwise have had.
- F-R-E-E-Writing unblocks. The new recognitions, ideas and emotions overcome habitual anxieties or self-sabotage. This is a very different dynamic from attempting to control what we perceive to be our flaws or bad habits. Consciously disciplining ourselves into change is generally doomed. We manage it for a time but our old, ingrained ways resurface, stronger than ever. (We see this dynamic clearly in binge drinkers or compulsive eaters but it is there to an extent in us all.) With regular FREE-Writing, the shells of our bad habits fall away as new experiences and preferences emerge – without conscious manipulation.
- FREE-Writing contextualises. Over time, we realise that our lives have been going somewhere, however blind we may have been to the direction. We find the connections beneath the surface fractures, the meaning that has been trying to establish itself in us. Re-entering the experiences of our lives allows them to serve as starting points for new, often unpredictable, inner movements that yield profound transformations.
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I did not know that there was a name for this exercise. The first time I did something similar was in high school. Our English teacher instructed us to just write what was on our mind at that precise moment. We had two minutes, I believe, and then we had to read them aloud to the class.
I remember the first one she read aloud (no names were given) was basically a regurgitation of the material we had been learning in that class to date. I remember that horrible sinking feeling in my stomach, thinking I had completely missed the point of the exercise, because I had written exactly what was on my mind, which was stuff like “I hate my pants, it’s sunny out, wonder what I’m having for dinner” and the like. Then she read several more and I realized I had nothing to fear as mine was very similar to the majority of the other students. WHEW.
It was a great exercise and I haven’t thought of it in years!
I can see how such an exercise now, for me, would have good potential to be therapeutic and cartharctic. I’d have to type it rather than hand write it though … I have no patience for handwriting anything nowadays.
Love the post!
I completely agree that free writing can be therapeutic. It can be essential in helping one work out there thoughts as well as very useful in developing ones opinion on the pros and cons of a big life choice.
No doubt this is therapeutic, I would point out that before writing one must understand words – and the vocabulary set of the layperson has become quite limited, seems to me.
@creativejunkie: I used to think that about handwriting too but I’ve gone back to it — especially for F-R-E-E-Writing.
@nosheeping: you betcha! no important decision gets made in this house now without lots of F-R-E-E-Writing all round.
@ Harvey: The great thing about F-R-E-E-Writing is: it takes that pressure off. I have used this technique with groups who had very underdeveloped literacy skills (immigrants, recovering drug users) but they were still able to access the benefits. All that is necessary with F-R-E-E-Writing is that you can communicate with/understand yourself.
Apropos to handwriting, here is a freewriting exercise essay I wrote sometime ago:
The Mechanics of Writing
…I must get an ink pen. I have always enjoyed the glide of the nib over rag paper, the rasp and scratch so distinct from pencil or ball point, sometimes hurried almost angry and now more leisurely and contemplative.
Pencils are nicely musical at times and sharp has two meanings also. I’ve composed most of my articles and scholarly papers in pencil, jotting down, scribbling in margins, lining through, crossing out, making notes, outlining, expanding it then finally typing what may be close to a final draft.
Somehow having pencil in hand meshes the two arenas, physical and mental to produce something of substance that is words on paper. Without getting too metaphysical, the graphite mark of connected line tracing out letters creates a physical thing which I have created. It becomes my word representing my thought and my labor.
Others may write the same word but it is not the same.
Typewriters also have a charm about them and in a newsroom can certainly be musical.
Alas, there is no music and nothing of substance in computers…
Orna, I am going to try this. I was taken with Izzy’s description in A Dance in Time. I’ll let you know how I get on!
(ps Steve, I dont agree about computers. they have their own music. Sometimes I’m afraid I love my laptop as much as I love my kids!)
Good post. I think it is possible to recover from depression, but it takes time and patience. I can’t find any good message boards on the net, can you recommend any?