February 26, 2024
Journalling is getting a lot of focus recently. Dr Andrew Huberman devoted a whole episode to it. The American Psychological Association interviewed James Pennebaker, whose work in the 1980s was the original expressive writing research. Thousands of subsequent papers have supported his original findings: reflecting on our day produces measurable mental and physical health improvements.
Nonetheless, taking time to reflect is a practice that many of us still struggle with. Here's why it works, and how to do it well, even if you've only got a minute or two.
What’s so great about writing?
Even a few minutes of expressive writing can have direct, positive impacts on mental and physical health - including for writers who are already generally physically and mentally healthy. A 1998 meta-analysis found that expressive writing was about as effective as therapy in improving overall health outcomes, which is startling given the gaps in time and cost.
Writing works, but it’s less clear how it works. Pennebaker’s theory is that keeping complicated and embarrassing things to yourself is stressful, which in turn affects the immune system; writing removes that stress and so takes the pressure off the immune system. But even he acknowledges that’s probably not the whole story. Multiple mechanisms are probably involved, including the opportunity to make sense of complicated events and feelings, create a coherent story and a sense of control around them, and allow them to settle in long-term memory for future reference. In other words, by applying language to whatever's going on, you're helping to reduce the stress associated with it, and allow your body to shift into the calmer state it needs to be in to recover effectively.
Not all journalling is equal
The good news from the research is that you don't need to journal every day, and you don’t need to fill pages. Just taking a few minutes each day for a few days when you need to sort through a difficult situation or experience, putting words to complex emotions, and creating structure out of turmoil, are enough to have measurable effects on your health over time.
What you write, and how you write about it, count. The writers who get the greatest health benefits are those who vary their perspective. They switch out of “I” stories to wonder what might be going on for others. They keep some of their focus on the positive end of whatever spectrum they find themselves on - they might write about feeling "not happy" rather than "sad", for example. They try different approaches to making sense of the situation, in particular by exploring cause and effect.
What they don’t do is write about the same thing over and over, which as Pennebaker puts it, is essentially written rumination.
Journalling is free, quick and it works - particularly if you take a little care over how you do it.
