Opening Up by James W Pennebaker Chapter Twelve

I am skipping a couple of chapters because, although I have a few quotes from them, I cannot relate what I read to myself and, although this blog is not as focused on myself as my others, I am trying to keep it intimate as well as informative.

When I first began reading and there was a comparison done between confession and inhibition I knew where I fell on the continuum. If confession were on the right and inhibition on the left, I would definitely be closer to the left than to the right. I have no problem baring it all. I am more likely to confess things inappropriately than to inhibit myself.

Holding things in is not my forte.

And this chapter is all about how confession is used by religions and political groups, by psychiatrists and self-help advocates. It is all about how these organizations manipulate situations to create an environment where confession is most likely to happen.

Do I sound a little hostile, saying “manipulate” when it comes to doing something that is helpful? I suppose that is how I feel. While interesting I found the whole chapter rather disturbing and a challenge to discuss because I have tried to make what is explained in the chapters applicable. Short of telling you to go to a priest and confess your perceived sins or paying a psychologist to listen to you in hopes of getting healing, what can I draw from this chapter that will help the average person at this very moment, sitting before their computer, reading my words?

What if I were to ask you to write out your darkest secret right here, right now? Could you do it? Is there something that was done to you or that you yourself have done that you have never shared with anyone else? Will you get a book and pen this moment and begin writing? Probably not. Putting it into a book might mean having it read someday. Even if you were to tear out the pages and burn them, the missing pages would create a tension by their absence. Is it enough to write and abandon what was written?

Yes. Apparently it is. Like the Biblical scapegoat on whom the sins are placed and that is then released into the desert. But I concede, there are details I have not recorded in my journal. I have typed them out and deleted the file immediately. I didn’t even save it. I just hit the X to close the document and when asked if I wanted to save it said No.

No, I do not want to save these things. But if I don’t write about them, if I don’t formulate them into words, then I am saving them. I hold onto them. As Pennebaker explained in a previous chapter when describing how listing helps the mind be able to focus on something other than what needs to be packed for an upcoming trip, writing down these details frees me from their constant presence. Maybe I’ll need to write about them more than once. Maybe I’ll need to write about them in different ways. I can write about them in my journal and tear out the pages, if I am so inclined and don’t mind having pages of gap in my book. Or I can typed them out and delete without saving. I can take the experience and explore it in a poem. Or I can recreate it in a short story. I can even rewrite how things happen so maybe there is no trauma.

Through reading DeSalvo’s book and now Pennebaker’s, I am learning that, while the need to confess and not inhibit is essential, how we go about confession is not singular and is as varied as the individual needs of each one of us who have things in our lives that need our healing, that need our attention, and perhaps need our love and forgiveness.