Journalling can relieve pain and other symptoms

This month, we are honoured to have author, Elizabeth Reilly blogging for us. In her book, 'Back in Charge - How I healed from chronic pain', Elizabeth charts her road to recovery from severe chronic pain using a neuroplastic approach. Elizabeth's blog discusses one of the techniques she used to support her recovery - journalling.

Stress causes chronic pain and symptoms

Study after study is now demonstrating that chronic pain is caused by learned neural pathways in the brain, which is not at all the same as saying “It’s all in your head.” The pain – as all pain sufferers know – is very real and can be excruciating.  It is now also recognised that such pain and other chronic symptoms can be caused by stress, especially historical stress from one’s childhood. People who have suffered in their early years – perhaps from abuse, neglect, bullying, parental conflict, divorce, bereavement and other such traumas – can develop different neural pathways from those with less stressful lives.  

Or maybe your stress is current, caused by trying to juggle the impossible in our permanently switched-on lives – relationship difficulties, career pressures, the demands of small children, truculent teenagers, aging parents – or maybe all of these.   

You might also have certain personality traits such as perfectionism, being a people pleaser, having a strong inner critic, being hypervigilant – all known causes of anxiety and therefore stress. 

Whatever the cause, parental and societal expectations often force us to repress our “difficult” emotions, to the extent that our minds can’t cope and our bodies create physical symptoms instead.  Getting in touch with these repressed emotions is incredibly freeing and will help to reduce chronic symptoms. And one way to do that is by journalling.

Journalling

Journalling, as its name implies, means keeping a journal or diary, which could of course mean virtually anything, but with regard to health and wellness what is usually implied is “therapeutic journalling”, also sometimes called “expressive writing.”  The idea behind it is to tap into one’s unconscious and to try to access one’s repressed emotions.  

Free writing 

One of the most successful and frequently advocated techniques is that of “free writing.”  You simply take an issue in your life that you think might have led to repressed emotions or stress, and you write about it as quickly as you can, ignoring all typos and grammatical mistakes, correcting nothing, but just letting the words pour out onto the page. It is stream-of-consciousness writing – I call it “psychotherapy without the therapist” – and I have been astonished by what has come up when I really let rip. Be as free as possible, try to write the raw, unfiltered truth with no holds barred.

Get in touch with your “inner child” – we all have one, no matter how old we are – and throw a real verbal tantrum onto the page. Think about topics that you have been actively avoiding – in fact the more you’ve been avoiding them, the more important it is to get at them. But don’t overthink before you start. Choose a subject – such as “my relationship with my siblings” or “how I was bullied at school” – and begin. And if a subject feels too difficult to write about at any time, don’t. You might be able to come back to it at a later date. 

Destroy your writing

Don’t hold on to your writing – bin it. A Japanese study, published in Scientific Reports for Nature on 9th April 2024, and quoted in The Guardian, The Times and The Telegraph among others, has found that writing down your reaction to a negative incident on a piece of paper and then shredding it, or scrunching it into a ball and throwing it in the bin, gets rid of anger. “We expected that our method would suppress anger to some extent,” said Nobuyuki Kawai, lead researcher of the study at Nagoya University. “However, we were amazed that anger was eliminated almost entirely.”

If you prefer to write on the computer – and personally I do, as I find touch typing much quicker than handwriting and therefore easier to get down the fast flow of thoughts – you can simply delete the words when you’ve finished.   Or you could print your page out and then, without reading it, rip it into shreds which can be enormously satisfying.  You don’t want to stir up the emotions again, or perhaps tinker with the writing and think, “Well, that’s a bit strong, I didn’t really mean it.” Yes, you did mean it, and you will feel all the better for getting it out. 

Structure your writing

Although the actual writing is as free as you can make it, it is important to structure the subject areas you are going to write about before you start.   Psychotherapist Nicole Sachs, who calls her approach “JournalSpeak” and has written extensively on the subject, suggests that you write down three lists of possible stressors: “past stressors,” “current stressors,” and “personality traits,” and then choose one topic from one of the lists and write about it for twenty minutes.  Any less and you won’t have given your unconscious much of a chance; any longer and you might begin to ramble, although it’s certainly not necessary to stop if you are in full flow. 

Structuring your writing also means taking into account how, when and where you write as well as what you write.  Set aside a quiet time and space where you will be undisturbed. It is not ideal to bring up childhood traumas just before going into an important business meeting! Or just before bedtime. 

Other writing techniques 

Dr Howard Schubiner, in his book Unlearn your Pain, suggests that in addition to “free writing” you can also try writing an unsent letter to someone or creating a dialogue with them. Another method that some people have found useful is writing in the third person. However you approach it, the idea is to get at the uncomfortable, unconscious feelings. Trust where your writing takes you, so long as it is emotionally important.

Afterwards

There is no getting away from the fact that journalling can be emotionally difficult and painful, but the benefits can be enormous, so learn to trust the process. A calming meditation afterwards can be really helpful. After emptying out all the difficult stuff, fill yourself up with self-compassion and love. Think positive thoughts and find peace. Or maybe practise gratitude. Perhaps start a different sort of journal – a gratitude journal – which can be wonderful for stress-reduction, and for unlocking your “inner pharmacy.” The value of this cannot be over-emphasised. 

The benefits of journalling

James Pennebaker, professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the pioneers of writing therapy, has listed in his book 'Expressive Writing – Words that Heal' the many benefits that can accrue from what he terms “emotional writing.” These include, among other things, a reduction in stress, fewer visits to the doctor, lower blood pressure and heart rates, improvement of working memory, better sleep, enhanced immune function, improvement in the quality of people’s social lives, reduction in symptoms for sufferers of chronic conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and cancer – and reduction in chronic pain. Quite an impressive list!

Personally, through journalling, I felt an enormous reduction in physical tension and pain, because, as Dr David Clarke, President of the Psychophysiologic Disorders Association and Medical Advisor for Living Proof said in his podcast for the Curable app: “The more you put your repressed emotions into words, the less they need to go into the body and that is what results in the relief of symptoms.”

You will be amazed at how much lighter and freer you feel from your writing, in your physical body as well as in your mind.  You will also gain a greater perspective on your life and a deeper understanding of yourself. 

A word of caution

Having said all of that, some people on a healing journey may feel they are not ready to engage with a process that could be emotionally challenging and that is fine too. Techniques such as brain-training exercises, somatic tracking and mindfulness meditation are equally important, and in many cases are sufficient for recovery. You might feel like writing at a later stage in your journey, or maybe not at all.  Whilst I have personally found journalling very therapeutic, there are many paths to healing and all of them are of equal validity.