Opening Up by James W Pennebaker Chapter Six

In this chapter of Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, Pennebaker describes more research, this time with college students transitioning from life at home to life on campus and with Holocaust survivors. On the surface, it doesn’t seem that either of these would be applicable to most readers. For instance, I’ve already graduated college and I am too young to have survived the Holocaust. So what is there for me to learn from these studies?

Plenty. From the research done with the college students I’ve learned that writing about circumstances does not have a permanent effect. Discouraging? Not in the least. Frankly, a person’s commitment to emotional, spiritual, psychological, and physical wellbeing and wellness is not a one time deal. Surgery is a one time deal and who wants surgery? A lobotomy can give the individual a sense of being emotionally and psychologically balanced but I am not raising my hand to volunteer for one. Yes, it is challenging to write about things that hurt, to put into words the pain or even trauma one has faced. But ultimately it is worth the commitment. As Pennebaker explains:

In general, writing about coming to college promoted health for a little over 4 months. By the fifth month after writing, however, students who had written about their thoughts and feelings were getting as sick as everyone else. . . .Within 3 months after writing, students who had written about coming to college reported being as happy or happier than those who wrote about superficial topics (82).

So it is not enough to sit down for a few days and write and then do nothing. It is not enough to say what you are thinking and feeling to a therapist and walk away without looking back. It is necessary to be honest, to write for however long it takes, and to be prepared to sit down and paper again at some point in the future because life will inevitably bring more pain, some new grief, another reason to write.

And from the Holocaust survivors I’ve learned that it is never too late. Trauma and pain can take root and while it may seem to make sense not to expose others to the pain you have experienced, protecting someone else will not keep you from suffering more. I can understand why the survivors didn’t want to tell their children about what happened to them. I can appreciate why they would say that others couldn’t understand what really happened.

I know I don’t. I know I never will. I also know that it is hard to listen to the stories, to know what happened even from a distance. When I read about these things, I can close the book. When I see them on the television, I can change the channel. I don’t have to look at the images. I can close my eyes. What if, when I closed my eyes, I saw it all replayed forever in my mind because it is not something I know about intellectually but something I survived personally?

I am tired as I write this. Just the thought of reliving in words what these people lived is exhausting. But I digress from the focus of the chapter. Forty years later, when these survivors were invited to discuss their experiences, no matter how horrifying the recollections were, they benefited physically from speaking about what happened if they were high level disclosers. Even medium level disclosers were found to have reduced heart rates and, after the interviews, were less likely to seek medical attention than their low level disclosers did. Remarkably, many of the survivors who had never told their story before had not only viewed their taped interviews but shared them with loved ones.

Finally, I learned that not everyone grieves in the same way. The traditional five stages of grief are not necessarily experienced by everyone. Some people simply cope differently from others.

Not all people feel or express overwhelming grief when faced with terrible traumas. Furthermore, many people who do not get particularly upset or depressed following major loss may actually be psychologically well adjusted (78).

I am a “navel watcher,” by which I mean that I tend to observe things in myself constantly. Every now and again I manage to just live in the moment and feel what I am feeling. More often than not, however, I will think about why and what and how. I’ve been journaling for so long I don’t even know if I could let a life experience go unwritten. It is both a blessing and a curse. But I have slowly come to recognize that my way is not the right way. A lesson I have learned from my son who takes so much as it comes. He’s unflappable, really. So when I read Pennebaker’s assurance that people who don’t react to trauma are not necessarily in denial, I took great comfort from that.

At the end of the chapter, Pennebaker offers a summary of ideas:

Many people cope naturally with traumas. Not everyone progresses through the stages in grieving or coping.
The degree to which coping can be accelerated is limited. Coming to terms with any major upheaval takes time.
Potential problems if you are still in the midst of crisis. . . . [W]riting or talking about your experience will tend to improve your health and, over time, and psychological adjustment. However, confronting an ongoing crisis may very likely make you more distressed temporarily.
The trauma has long since past and you are still living with it. . . . If you are currently living with a trauma from years gone by, writing or talking about your
thoughts and feelings associated with it can help you to get past it.
And the usual admonitions. . . . In your writing, explore your deepest thoughts and feelings in a self-reflective way. Set aside a specific time and location to write continuously. If you talk to someone else, it helps if the person is objective and not personally involved. Don’t be surprised if you feel somewhat sad or depressed immediately after writing. The work of self-reflection can sometimes be painful even if the benefits are clear. (87-88)

I want to reiterate that last part: The work (because this is work) of self-reflection (not blaming or raging but really looking at the self and its responses) can sometimes (more often than not) be painful (to say the least) even if the benefits are clear (and even when the benefits are not immediately experienced or felt).

Hopefully, as I continue sharing what I am learning, the benefits will become increasingly clear.