Opening Up

I am in the midst of reading a new-to-me book entitled "Opening Up--The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions" by psychologist James Pennebaker. This book was recommended to me as required reading by Barbara Woods, the psychologist from whom I am receiving training in biofeedback. For the past couple of months, I have been immersed in reading about the benefits biofeedback, meditation, hypnotherapy, and emotional disclosure can have on our psychological and physical health. It has been a wonderfully enlightening experience and I feel that everything I am absorbing will make me a better therapist and coach to my clients as I have always believed in the mind-body connection of health and wellness.

So what is it about this book that is so interesting? Pennebaker writes about how putting emotionally upsetting experiences into words can affect your thoughts, feelings and physical health. Pennebaker has explored the nature of self-disclosure and it's impact on physical health. When we are able to translate events into words, this action affects the brain and immune functioning. Incredibly, the words we use to describe the trauma or unpleasant events can either be spoken or written--both forms have the power to improve our health.

Think about it--when we talk to others or participate in a group we feel connected to another person or persons and often feel better about ourselves. Your mind and body relax in response to sharing information about yourself. This is why getting together with friends over lunch, attending support group meetings or participating in workout groups are so very effective in helping us cope with stressors or achieve our goals. Incredibly, when we translate our experiences into words, the disclosure process itself, may be as important as the feedback we get from others with regard to what we have disclosed.

We all need to feel heard and listened to. When I first became a child psychologist I did so, partly because as a child I often did not feel "heard." Not that my parents followed the doctrine that "children should be seen and not heard," rather, as an only child growing up in a household with busy parents working to make ends meet, I often did not feel that my thoughts and ideas were important. So when it was time for me to choose an area of specialty for my internship, I gravitated toward children and adolescents because I felt that I could be available to them to listen to their ideas and concerns. Since then I have branched out to be available to adults and couples to help them navigate through their difficult or challenging times.

You most certainly have experienced the exquisite sense of relief that follows when you have "gotten something off your chest," right? Talking cures have been around for along time and encompass many cultures. Medical healing ceremonies in Native American, African and Asian cultures typically involved some form of confession or disclosure of secrets by the person who was to be healed. In our culture we have priests, rabbis, therapists, physicians, hairdressers, masseuses, and other professionals whose role is to hold another's disclosure in order to help them be released and move forward. Many people tell me that they have experienced complete strangers confiding personal secrets to them while on airplanes or waiting at bus stops. Perhaps as you read this entry, you recall an instance where you told a complete stranger something very personal and experienced a sense of relief after the disclosure.

Pennebaker writes about the stress our bodies experience when we inhibit or hold back expressing our thoughts and feelings. Holding onto such stress has been implicated in psychological disorders such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and health disorders such as ulcers, hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome, headache, back pain, immune disorders and some cancers. Research has suggested that when people write or talk about emotional events, reductions in blood pressure, muscle tension and skin conductance occur during or immediately following the disclosure. In one study, Pennebaker and another psychologist, Janice Kiecolt-Glaser studied immune functioning on two groups of subjects who were asked to write for 20 minutes each day for 4 consecutive days. One group was to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings concerning a trauma, while the other group were expected to write about a superficial topic. What the researchers found was that those who wrote about their traumatic experience had heightened immune functioning compared to those who wrote about superficial topics. Even more interesting, the effect persisted six weeks after the study was finished!

Do you need to have experienced a trauma in your life to benefit? No! However, if you are ruminating or thinking about a current issue in your life that is taking up space in your head or keeping you awake at night, then writing about it can help to resolve it in your mind. Conversely, if you have experienced a trauma in your life that you have not shared with someone because of embarrassment or shame, express it on paper--release it from your head and allow the healing to take place.

Pennebaker writes that whatever your topic, (1) explore the objective experience (i.e., what happened) and (2) record your feelings about it. That is, write about what you feel about the issue or concern and why you feel the way you do about it. Dr. Woods, my mentor, adds another component which I have, in turn, suggested to my clients: Once you have written about the what and why, then write about what you have learned from the experience. Learning occurs when we are able to make a change in our behavior or thoughts as a result of understanding our experience. When you have given yourself permission to express and acknowledge your feelings (either to another person or within the privacy of your journal), you then give yourself permission to learn and allow your body and spirit to heal.

Thought for the Day: Purchase a journal and begin to write in it each day for 15-20 minutes. Write about your experiences, your thoughts and what you have learned. After you have spent some time writing, reflect on how your body and mind feels now that you have acknowledged your thoughts and allowed them a place outside of your head.

"A flow of words doth ever ease the heart of sorrows;
it is like opening the waste weir when the mill dam is overfull.
Come, sit thou here beside me and speak at thine ease."
--Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood