Putting stress into words: Health, linguistic, and therapeutic implications

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

When individuals are asked to write or talk about personally upsetting experiences, significant improvements in physical health are found. Analyses of subjects' writing about traumas indicate that those whose health improves most tend to use a higher proportion of negative emotion words than positive emotion words. Independent of verbal emotion expression, the increasing use of insight, causal, and associated cognitive words over several days of writing is linked to health improvement. That is, the construction of a coherent story together with the expression of negative emotions work together in therapeutic writing. Evidence of these processes are also seen in specific links between word production and immediate autonomic nervous system activity. Implications for therapy and for considering the mind and body as fluid, dynamic systems are discussed.

Related collections

Most cited references 7

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

EFFECT OF PSYCHOSOCIAL TREATMENT ON SURVIVAL OF PATIENTS WITH METASTATIC BREAST CANCER

David Spiegel, HelenaC. Kraemer, JoanR. Bloom … (1989)

0 comments Cited 199 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

The psychophysiology of confession: linking inhibitory and psychosomatic processes.

James Pennebaker, Cheryl Hughes, Robin O'Heeron (1987)

A theory of inhibition and psychosomatic disease suggests that the failure to confide traumatic events is stressful and associated with long-term health problems. We investigated the short-term autonomic correlates of disclosing personal and traumatic experiences among two samples of healthy undergraduates. In Experiment 1, subjects talked into a tape recorder about extremely stressful events that had occurred in their lives, as well as what they planned to do following the experiment. Skin conductance, blood pressure, and heart rate were continuously measured. Based on judges' ratings of subjects' depth of disclosure, subjects were classified as high or low disclosers. Talking about traumatic events was associated with decreased behavioral inhibition, as measured by lower skin conductance levels among high disclosers. Disclosing traumatic material was also associated with increased cardiovascular activity. In Experiment 2, subjects both talked aloud and thought about a traumatic event and about plans for the day. Half of the subjects were alone in an experimental cubicle and talked into a tape recorder; the remaining subjects talked to a silent "confessor" who sat behind a curtain. Among high disclosers, both talking and thinking about traumatic events produced lower skin conductance levels than did thinking or talking about plans for the day. The presence of a confessor inhibited subjects' talking. Implications for understanding the nature of confession and the development of an inhibitory model for psychosomatic processes are discussed.

0 comments Cited 65 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Emotional disclosure about traumas and its relation to health: effects of previous disclosure and trauma severity.

Melanie Greenberg, Arthur Stone (1992)

This study sought to replicate previous findings that disclosing traumas improves physical health and to compare the effects of revealing previously disclosed versus undisclosed traumas. According to inhibition theory, reporting about undisclosed traumas should produce greater health benefits. Sixty healthy undergraduates wrote about undisclosed traumas, previously disclosed traumas, or trivial events. Contrary to expectations, there were no significant between-groups differences on longer term health utilization and physical symptom measures. However, Ss who disclosed more severe traumas reported fewer physical symptoms in the months following the study, compared with low-severity trauma Ss, and tended to report fewer symptoms than control Ss. Results suggest that health benefits occur when severe traumas are disclosed, regardless of whether previous disclosure has occurred.