Secrets & Confession! Expressive writing as therapy!

Expressive Writing

Expressive writing - sometimes referred to as ‘written disclosure’, is a form of writing therapy developed primarily by James W. Pennebaker PhD (Regents Centennial Professor for Psychology at the University of Texas). His studies and collaborations have uncovered that expressive writing improves health and eases emotional pain.

In expressive writing people write continuously, and in the first person, without care for grammar or spelling. It’s a deep dive into thoughts, opinions, and emotions rooted in experiences, memories, and trauma. Typically you express for around 20 mins.

James Pennebaker PhD explains that holding back powerful emotions, thoughts, and behaviours is stressful. Additionally, long-term, low-level stress could influence immune function and physical health. In other words writing helps the healing process.

Expressive writing is a process and it takes on a number phases:

1. Lowers your mood initially (as you are deep diving allowing emotions to surface)
2. In the days afterwards it lightens your mood
3. When practiced over time it can result in fewer visits to the doctors
4. Greater sense of value and meaning

Secrets!

A secret is a something you haven’t divulged or something only very few people know. This can mean an act, an event or a trauma that you have not or cannot discuss, so you keep it suppressed, never to be told.

There are many variables as to why you might be holding a secret. There is confidentiality in the workplace or the confession of a friend who has sworn you to secrecy. Maybe you feel your act, event or trauma is so painful you can’t possibly say it out loud.

You may feel you’ll be judged, but the truth is you are already your own juror, with your secret under lock and key.

Your secret is something that can affect your everyday responses to situations. You may not be aware of it. Or all too aware that your response to a comment, a conversation has reminded you of that time when…

Just like we find it difficult to inflict physical pain upon ourselves, we human beings, the complicated creatures that we are, can choose to avoid emotional pain as well. However, our emotional state does affect our physical as well as emotional wellbeing.

The way emotional pain showed up physically for me was through the loss of my voice. Sometimes for hours, sometimes days and the longest stint was 6 months.

You may present anger or upset or complete avoidance when your suppressed secret is triggered. You will work on that well-rehearsed coping strategy that helps you push down those emotions.

And when almost simultaneously that physical ailment appears, you perhaps don’t join the dots that your body as a living, breathing organ has responded in its entirety. It wants to rid itself; lift itself.

Unless you are self-aware, you will very likely see the source of your trigger as insensitive, while they may look at you perplexed as to what they have done to warrant your strong response?

Pain suppressed, you and the source who triggered that response, may agree to differ in your silences. And you continue a well-rehearsed pattern as those niggles pile upon the doubts and feed the emotional angst.

Confessions - Let it go!

In this context I use confession as:

“acknowledge something reluctantly, typically because one feels slightly ashamed or embarrassed.”

I confess that losing my voice for 6 months was hard for all around me, but while I did seek help to overcome the ‘inconvenience’, when referred to a speech therapist, there was a comfort in being able to be quiet, allowing others to take the reign. Work was harder to navigate, colleagues continued to insist on talking to me and one Director even confessed he didn’t believe me.

I am bi-lingual and in my speech therapy session, my therapist asked me to say something in German. I looked at her, my eyes and expression probably reflecting the illogical request. I even laughed. No sound came out!

But her expression said, “I’m really not kidding!” So I did, and my voice filled the room as my larynx dropped. I remarked on what had just taken place, in my native english, and all that came out was a squeak. She lip read.

I had held on to so much anxiety and anguish, pushed it down and continued on my journey so stoically, that my body had a physical response to my suppressed emotions. It made a decision that I needed to tune back in. How does yours manifest?

What’s more, I was settling in to this new normal because I was exhausted and needed, no I really wanted, somebody to take over and make it all better! But the truth is nobody can help, unless you help yourself.

There are many avenues you can explore to confess what's eating you inside; a friend or a priest or if you are proactive you seek professional help i.e., a counsellor or a therapist as your verbal sounding board.

But have you ever taken your thoughts about an event, a trauma, an act and confessed on paper?

Writing as a therapy

I didn’t know when I was writing as a child and then through adulthood that my writing was my therapy, my counsellor. I didn’t label it, but I understood it allowed me to quietly process my emotions. Mostly I processed emotions around not feeling safe or fitting in, and all which those emotions encompassed.

My adult mind understands how to label ‘safe’ and ‘not fitting in’, but the child me just wrote because when her friends disappeared, they moved or we moved, and her family were busy that’s what she had and her disposal. Quiet reflection and depth of processing.

And that child made decisions and promises for her adulthood. How clever of her!

The adult obliged, and went on to fulfil the promise and honour the child self, with that single mindedness to succeed in the quest, in her desire for the perfect, where all would be well.

The child did not have boundaries! She’d never been shown what success looks like. So the adult me didn’t know when to celebrate all of her wonderful achievements. How high must she go before the quest was done? Can you achieve more than 100%? Celebrate, of course I will when I’ve reached my goal… When is that exactly?

As a child I felt an outsider because we weren't native to the country we lived in. As a child I placed myself ‘outside’ of the circle, because we moved so much I didn’t want to be part of something I would leave behind, again and again. Also, I carried shame and embarrassment, which I masked. This somehow manifested as aloofness and mystery. Aloofness and mystery was attractive it seems. Not quite the vibe I was going for.

Then of course there was my innate trait, high sensitivity, which has me craving for quiet retreat and deep processing and with that came a wish for deep connection. I talked less and listened more. I spent more time watching than I did joining in. I didn’t find that deep connection in a friendship as a child, although I have not been alone.

I equated my feelings of being different to being an english girl in a german speaking school and having to work harder to be better, so that I wouldn’t be noticed as the english girl in a german speaking school. But I felt my difference. Moving to the UK surprisingly was even harder. I had to unlearn so much and learn more.

As an adult I continued to feel the outsider. Until I learned not to.

I still catch myself emotionally drifting away from the company I am in. So I keep checking in.

Why I am writing this?

All of this analysis and self-reflection, including the navigation of my dad’s dementia diagnosis was processed on pieces of paper and my laptop.

I have an understanding of my triggers, it doesn’t mean I will never respond or react adverserly again.

The beauty of understanding is, through processing pain, small or ginormous, comes the ability to choose differently, to write a new chapter and ask if that thing that was keeping you ‘safe’, is really a ‘trap’?

On paper you can process the shame and embarrassment and process and learn from your responses and reactions and you can choose to acknowledge that perhaps you deserve a little more respect from yourself and maybe show yourself more love for the amazing ‘stuff’ you have already achieved. It is very private. Celebrate the small and big wins! The paper absorbs your thoughts, the good and the condemnation, and when all is said and done, you can watch your confession go up in flames as you light a match on the fire place.

Through this process, whenever I find myself triggered, I can typically write about that scenario and often I have found myself understanding why I responded a certain way.

Equally sometimes it really is because the source of the trigger has simply been bullish or insensitive. Perhaps a learned behaviour of their own!

You cannot be responsible for their reactions, you can only choose to notice how you respond to your own.

The Director who didn’t believe me when I lost my voice lost his years later, just for a very short time, but he did tell me and he did apologise for not believing me.

How does writing aid a healthier and happier future?

Writing and talking can help improve physical and emotional health over months.

Why does writing result in these benefits?

People come to a new understanding of the emotional events themselves. Problems become simpler and more manageable on paper. And the process helps resolve problems. Once resolved the emotions no longer need processing and they take up less thought and space.

Unresolved matters tend to consume us more. Processed they lose their power.

Feeling inspired?

Need some help along the way to emotional release? Get in touch.

Let's chat: https://linktr.ee/nicolamcdonaldwriteyourway

Would you like to do some healing of your own, in a beautiful, safe space and within a small group?

Reserve your spot in my in-person Healing Through letters Workshop, ANDOVER, HAMPSHIRE (UK) and take advantage of the current discount. Reduced from ï¿¡52.50 to ï¿¡45: https://book.stripe.com/eVaeXmdanagpcxy6ox

If this has been helpful or inspiring please do leave a comment. Thank you and have a beautiful day. Nicola McDonald