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Writing Memoir: Saving Your Life
You’ve heard it before: Writing saved my life.
If you’ve wondered about the truth of that, I’m happy to report that there’s a boatload of science behind that saying.
In 2005, for example, British researchers found that short periods of “expressive writing” resulted in better physical and psychological health.
Writing about traumatic, stressful or emotional events has been found to result in improvements in both physical and psychological health, in non-clinical and clinical populations.
It makes intuitive sense to me that writing about our tragedies and triumphs can improve our emotional health or bring us peace of mind. But I was surprised at the number of studies showing an impact on physical conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, Epstein-Barr virus, and hypertension.
Most of these studies focused on short, guided periods of expressive writing or guided, written disclosures of trauma. The writing practices were standardized as much as possible in order to achieve some measure of reliability for the studies.
But what is meant by “expressive writing”? In an article for Psychology Today, Dr. John F Evans provides a definition:
It is personal and emotional writing without regard to form or other writing conventions, like spelling…
