大象传媒

Have you ever written a diary, or taken up journalling in the morning?

During Woman’s Hour’s programme dedicated to writing and putting your life on the page, the psychotherapist and author Julia Samuel explored the idea of writing as therapy.

Here are her five reasons why embracing writing could have a positive impact on your health and wellbeing.

1. Writing can strengthen your immune system as well as your mind

“James W. Pennebaker, a social psychologist and professor, proved through his research that individuals who write about their thoughts and feelings had improved physical and mental health. It helps them manage and learn from their experiences and writing strengthens their immune system as well as their minds. One of the reasons for this is that in writing about their emotions they used the subjective ‘I’ to focus their viewpoint. This connected them to their emotions, allowed them to think about them with more clarity and then that meant they could express themselves more clearly to others and get the support they needed.”

2. Journalling in the morning can help you have a more productive day

“People who are going through a difficult time, as most of us are at different levels right now, often wake up with a sense of dread. The day ahead is daunting. By writing ‘morning pages’, which is a stream-of-consciousness journalling, it is writing down all and any of the thoughts that are in your mind onto a page. Not worrying if they make sense or are right grammatically. Just getting what is going on in your head written down, clears your head to have other different, perhaps more hopeful, thoughts. It is suggested that you write three pages, which could take about 30 minutes. The theory is that you recover any time spent on writing by having a more productive day.”

3. Self-awareness through writing can decrease anxious thoughts and stress

“In writing about how we feel, we learn to know ourselves; understand what we feel, what we think and how the people and situations in our life distress us. This knowledge means we are able to manage our emotions and respond having worked out what the best response is, given the situation. Research shows that this increased self-awareness decreases depressive symptoms, anxious thoughts and stress. This improves our outcome in every sphere of life.”

4. Writing gives you control and a feeling of agency

“The enormous benefit of why writing can be therapeutic is that it is free and only dependent on ourselves and our capacity to develop it as a practice. There is so much in life that is not in our control or is beyond our budget which can leave us feeling powerless. Buying a notebook and a pen and putting words on a page can liberate us to have a real sense of agency.”

5. Writing can positively change the messaging in our heads

“One of the cruel aspects of suffering is that often we turn against ourselves, self-attack. By journalling we begin to see what we are actually saying to ourselves, and recognise that we wouldn’t speak to anyone like that - let alone a friend. So it can change the messaging in our head, improve our self-compassion, reduce stress and anxiety, and from there good connections with others grow.”

Listen to Julia Samuel’s interview with Emma Barnett in full on 大象传媒 Sounds where you can also catch up on the Woman’s Hour programme all about putting your life on the page. You can follow Woman’s Hour on Instagram and @bbcwomanshour.