Feb

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The Healing Journal

February 5, 2007 | Leave a Comment

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[-journaling-]

by Nancy S. M. Waldman

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‘journals’ © 06-07 nancy waldman

Since 1999, when the Journal of the American Medical Association came out with the positive findings of a small study that looked at the therapeutic benefits of writing about one’s feelings, the field of therapeutic writing has spread into all aspects of physical and mental health fields. A quick search of the internet shows oodles of sites and people ready and willing to show other people how to harness the power of journal writing. The studies themselves, in fact, tend to be buried under all these other sites.

It’s difficult, however, to find any evidence – scientific or otherwise – that points to any doubt that writing works on our bodies in a healing way. It’s much more common to find unadulterated proponents such as David Spiegel, MD in the Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, who said, “Were the authors [of the AMA study] to have provided similar outcome evidence about a new drug, it likely would be in widespread use within a short time.”

For writers and experienced journalers, none of this comes as a surprise. But there are all kinds of writing and types of journals. How do we know what works best?

The study done by the AMA in 1999 found that patients who wrote about their feelings surrounding stressful life events experienced improved immune response over those people who simply recorded their plans for the day. But do we have to write about our traumas in order to reap the benefits of journaling? Many people – including Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way – swear by the technique of writing three quick pages every morning without censoring, planning or structuring.

Another proponent Gillie Bolton,
Senior Research Fellow in Medicine and the Arts, King’s College London University, recommends a 6 minute “mind dump” of information followed by a slightly more structured time of writing about a concrete rather than abstract theme. Childhood memories are recommended as a rich vein.

Common sense tells us that in something as personal as physical and mental health, we would be best – after scouting about for the options – to do what feels right for us. Perhaps that will be an information “dump” one day, but a deep soul-searching trauma-review the next. One thing is sure. Once you’ve given yourself the time and space to explore yourself through journaling, you will return to it again and again as a free, portable, side effect-free way to heal susceptible parts of yourself.

What those susceptible parts are, no one can tell you. It might be improved mood, clarity of thought or immune function. It’s worth a few minutes of each day devoted to our journals to take a chance on all of the above and more.

We end with a quote from Gillie Bolton’s page of therapeutic writing prescriptions:

To me, writing is actually a process of deep listening, attending to some of the many voices in the self that are habitually blanketed during our waking lives. Some of those voices we ignore at our peril. This is why people who write for the first time with a trusted facilitator say things like: ‘it unlocked something I didn’t know was there’….Someone I worked with said: ‘Hell, did I write that? Was that really me?’ You can’t pick something safe with writing, like you can with role-play. I suppose it’s because you’re not listening to yourself as you write. Writing takes you out of control….you listen to yourself after you write. And this is the key. The interlocution is delayed until the writer chooses to reread their own writing. While they write, the page offers no judgement at all.

a good article on the topic from The Observer.

See all our articles on Journaling
Here are all our articles on Writing

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Originally published in the July 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: space and spaces

also posted in: Creative Cross-pollination , Creative un-Blockers , Essays - Nancy , Journaling , Motivation , Practice & Practices , Process , Self-evolution , The Original PCQ, 05-06


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