Writing Therapy

We all remember writing essays at school and how boring many of us used to think they were. A writing assignment was the ugliest form of torture we could think of from teachers, especially now that social media took over, people would rather reduce everything to one picture with maybe a short sentence. That allows the following question: why do we write?

One might think that writing is a form of communication, the very first forms of writing in history were made to inform about daily life or to eternalize a memory of stories that people back then believed are worth remembering. Mesopotamia was where it all started as far as archaeologists can say, writing was used for administrative purposes as well as legal functions and literature. As life became more sophisticated, so did people, creating the need to use writing for more than just informing or entertaining.

The experts reported that the idea of writing as a form of therapy goes back to the reign of Ramses II, about 1,200 BC. Some even argue that on the entrance to his royal library was inscribed: “House of Healing for the Soul.” Later in the 20th century, the 1980s specifically, James Pennebaker, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, led the modern writing therapy movement in a research study that showed the clear health benefits of “expressive writing” about emotional distress, pushing writing to become a legitimate tool for therapeutic purposes.

Nancy Aronie, the author of “Writing From the Heart” Says that so many people carry their secret stories of shame for years and years in their bodies, not just in their minds but they feel lighter when they can let them out by putting them on paper or screen.

Now, what exactly are the health benefits of writing, those are yet to be explained. It could be that the emotional catharsis through writing mimics closure and unburdens you from loads of negative emotions that could eventually get in your way to achieve whatever you are striving for. It could be a way to see your thoughts rather than just imagining them because people do remember more when they write, avoiding -this way- subjectivity and you might even change your perspective… but then again; more studies are needed to discover the full potential health benefits of this kind of therapy.

In 2012, the British Journal of General Practice published an article entitled: “Writing therapy, a new tool for general practice?” where they shared examples of studies where writing therapy was beneficial like improved disease and cognition in irritable bowel syndrome patients with longer-term disease, reduction in resting blood pressure levels, improved walking speed and effective pain in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, improvements in lung function of some adults with asthma and a reduction in use of beta-agonist at 3-month follow-up (just to mention a few).

What dr. Jordan. B. Peterson says about this topic makes more sense than anything else. The famous clinician and author of “12 rules for life, an antidote to chaos” says that we write to learn how to think. Writing teaches us to practice organizing our thoughts and organizing our thoughts teaches us how to think which ultimately leads to speaking and expressing our thoughts appropriately. The famous doctor explains that someone who can think, write and speak is deadly.

So, writing could not only benefit people physically but could also be a tool for discipline, a discipline to our thoughts because we don’t just write about our emotions, we also write to express our beliefs and, in the process, we might find ourselves convinced with the opposite of our starting position -unless of course, we’re narcissistic beyond redemption- for as long as we’re living, we keep learning and exploring to aim towards becoming the best versions of ourselves.