The Surprising Health Benefits Of Writing About Your Troubles

By Kathleen Murphy

Especially for older adults, putting your worries on paper unleashes a host of health benefits – from boosting your mood to clarifying your decision-making

After the death of her mother from lung cancer, author Cheryl Strayed struggled with deep grief. She floundered through drugs, promiscuity, and divorce. Then she decided to “find herself” by backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail. Seventeen years later, she was able to make sense of it all through her book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

She didn’t know it at the time, but Strayed was doing something smart for her health. She used a scientifically proven method to help overcome life’s challenges .

It’s called expressive writing. Research has shown that this kind of immersive, reflective journaling benefits both mental and physical health. Many people find it useful for everything from recovering from trauma and smoothing major life transitions to finding peace after a particularly rough day. And no writing experience is required.

The proven benefits 

In a series of research projects in the mid-1980s, the social psychologist James Pennebaker recruited subjects to write for 15 minutes for four consecutive days. Half of the group wrote about emotional or traumatic events, while those in a control group wrote about superficial topics, such as the style of their shoes or the appearance of their bedroom. The results were stunning.

Those who wrote about difficult experiences shared heartbreaking stories of divorce, suicide, abuse, loss, and rape. The exercise was emotionally painful, and many left the lab feeling depressed and depleted.

But by the end of the four-day experiment, the writers reported feeling happier than when they started. Their anxiety, depressive symptoms, and recurring nightmares dissipated.

Their physical health also improved. Compared to those in the control group who wrote about mundane topics, students who wrote about their difficulties made 43% fewer visits to a doctor for illness over the next six months.

Two years later, researchers repeated the exercise, adding a blood test. Pennebaker and his team found that after the subjects wrote about their feelings, their white blood cells began replicating more quickly in response to foreign invaders — a clear sign of strengthened immunity.

Since Pennebaker published his work, more than 200 studies have confirmed the physical and mental benefits of getting your thoughts out onto the page. A 2019 study found that among victims of recent traumas, journaling increased resilience and decreased depressive symptoms. An astonishing 35% of participants who began the study with indicators of likely clinical depression left it no longer meeting this criterion.

Health benefits were also discovered through a 2009 research project nicknamed “The Nun Study.” This project reviewed personal essays from 678 Roman Catholic sisters — an ideal control group, since they shared routines related to nutrition, exercise, and sleep. Researchers found that the nuns who had maintained strong language skills prolonged their cognitive function longer in life and were better protected against Alzheimer’s.

Why it works

Scientists have several theories. One is that capturing your worries on paper creates a sense of “psychological distance,” encouraging a more objective approach to problems. For example, if you’ve been stewing over why someone has hurt you, writing may make it easier to see their point of view or envision a new way forward.

Other experts say that externalizing thoughts through writing frees up cognitive resources. Research shows that even something as simple as writing a to-do list reduces the amount of information that you have to retain, making space for other thoughts.

Researchers at Michigan State University set out to substantiate this theory. Their study looked for brain wave changes among 44 chronic worriers after they wrote about their life’s challenges. When the worrywarts got their concerns out of their heads, they freed up valuable mental space, making their thinking and decision-making more efficient.

Those who wrote about their worries were able to offload them and “run more like a brand new Prius,” study co-author Jason Moser said in a statement. As for those who didn’t offload their worries, Moser said they “ran more like a ’74 Impala — guzzling more brain gas to achieve the same outcomes on the task.”

Practice on the page

If you’d like to incorporate this type of writing into your first aid kit, take up a paper and pencil. You could also use a computer, but writing the old-fashioned way may be better. Compared to typing on a keyboard, writing by hand leads to higher brain connectivity, which promotes learning, a 2024 study published in Frontiers in Psychology concluded.

Here’s how to give the process a try, based on recommendations from Pennebaker’s book Writing to Heal and Sandra Marinella’s guide The Story You Need to Tell:

• Topic — You can explore a single experience or several different ones. The most important decision is to choose topics that are personal and important to you.
• Duration — Aim to write for 10–20 minutes. During particularly hard times, Marinella wrote, she promised herself, “You only need to write for 10 minutes. But I usually write for more — and it always helps.”
• Frequency — While some people prefer to journal daily, others write for as many days as it takes to reach a sense of resolution. Pennebaker said he journals “maybe two or three times a year when something miserable is going on…I view it almost as an antibiotic. You have these bad things going on, and then you use this method to get past it.”
• Method — Once you start, write continuously. Don’t stop to worry about spelling or grammar or about what anyone else would think. If you run out of things to say, simply repeat what you’ve already written.
• Structure— Sketch out the background of the situation and the chain of events leading up to it. Include a beginning, a middle, and an end. “The real art is translating an emotional experience into words,” Pennebaker said. “It forces structure in creating a story.”
• Tone— Express your deepest emotions and thoughts. Use all your senses, keeping in mind that no detail is too small and no feeling too large. Name the precise shade of your emotions: Did you feel irritation or frustration? Disappointment or disillusionment? Resentment or rage? The act of pinpointing those feelings can prompt valuable insights.

When to take the plunge

When’s the best time to yank off the band-aid and confront your life’s most awful experiences? Experts say don’t rush yourself. You need time and space to face up to challenging events and assimilate them into your life story.

This is true even for professional writers. After being liberated from a concentration camp at the end of World War II, Elie Wiesel vowed to give himself time to grieve before sharing his nightmare. He kept that promise. His renowned memoir Night didn’t appear until 1960.

Not everyone benefits from writing expressively, and the practice is hardly a cure-all. Many people who go through trauma or difficulty need additional support, such as therapy or prescription medications.

Still, getting your thoughts out on paper remains an accessible tool that may help you process change and forge a fresh path ahead. As Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis during their occupation of the Netherlands, wrote in her diary, “When I write, I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived.”

Kathleen Murphy has always been a writer – for newspapers, magazines, companies, and nonprofit organizations. Today, as an independent journalist, she writes about physical health, emotional wellness, and successful aging. She’s living her dream through her creative projects and her adventures in the great outdoors. You can explore all of Kathleen’s published works here. We are thrilled to welcome Kathleen as a new feature writer for agebuzz!