James Pennebaker’s expressive writing practice is responsible for kicking off a whole bunch of personal transformation for me in 2024.
Expressive writing is almost like journalling, except that you must write continuously for a certain amount of time, you commit to doing it for 4 days in a row, and you write about the same topic for the entire 4 days.
The precise instructions are:
- Write about something extremely personal and important for you;
- Write continuously for at least 20 minutes;
- Write only for yourself;
- Deal only with events or situations you can handle now.
It really is as simple as that. But it’s been shown to have positive influence on emotional expression, immune response, wound healing, performance on standardized tests, and more.
I believe the magic is in the combination of the continuous writing requirement and the repeated returning over multiple days.
my general experience
In my experience, the first 15 minutes of Day One is easy.
By Day Two, the clawing starts to set in. You get antsy: you feel like you’ve run out, or you’re stuck, or you just want to stop for some reason. But you have to keep writing for at least 20 minutes, and there’s time left on the clock.
You bring your resistance, and the practice simply responds: “Keep going.”
So you flail and wail. You write around it. You write your excuses, you write all your ways to avoid it.
And the practice responds: “Keep going.”
And eventually you run out of everything to write, except for the thing that you’ve been avoiding.
But there’s still time on the clock.
“Keep going.”
🤷♂️ Well, guess there’s only one thing for it.
So yeah. 80 minutes of writing over 4 days. Try it sometime, you might get something out of it.
more information
- Episode 225 of Therapists Uncensored has an interview with Pennebaker, and is where I learned about the practice.
- Pennebaker’s website on the practice is here.