I changed my topic to "Expressive Writing" I want to focus my research paper on this topic.

"Expressive Writing" consists of using written communication as a way to liberate the deepest traumas, emotions and feelings that are difficult or not so easy to express in another different way to communicate. "Expressive writing" has been adapted in clinics and sessions with the psychologist as a means of therapy. It has been carried out many studies in which it has been demonstrated that expressive writing has many beneficial effects on health for people that have crónicas illness and mental illness.

I am very interested in this topic because I find it incredible how the activity of writing daily about anything helps us to release deep emotions. I am also intrigued by the fact that the strongest and deepest emotions of a trauma are easier to bring out and release through writing, maybe the fact of writing about ourselves is something that has been underestimated and on the contrary it has an immense effect at the moment of meeting and getting to know ourselves better.

The academic article "emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing" was published by the Cambridge university in 2018 and written by Karen A. Baikie and Kay Wilhelm. This article presents the benefits of "expressive writing" for people who have experienced trauma or stressful events. It also gives an overview of all the studies that have been carried out to contribute and inform all the possible benefits of using expressive writing as a therapy in clinics for people with mental problems and even illness problems.

To start off, the authors affirm that writing about traumatic or stressful events has beneficial effects on physical and emotional health. They also give the example of colleges students that wrote for 15 minutes on 4 days consecutive days about their most traumatic experiences and after that, they reported significant benefits in their mental and physical health. The authors also talk about the 13 studies that have been conducted in a laboratory, to carry out the theory of "expressive writing" as therapy and, they are almost similar to the example they gave us before. Basically, these 13 studies involved participants writing about traumatic or emotional experiences during multiple sessions, on consecutive days, for 15 to 20 minutes at home or clinics. After that, the participants reveal a considerable range and pest of emotional trauma in their writings.

Moreover, they talk about the discovery of the immediate and long-term effects of expressive writing and some of them are related to health, social and behavioural outcomes such as reducing blood pressure, improving immune system functioning, reducing depressive symptoms, reducing absenteeism formwork and schools, quicker re-employment after a job loss, improving working memory and sporting performance, higher student's grade point average, assessed social and linguistic behaviour. The authors also mention for whom this therapy has been most beneficial, people with a variety of medical problems, a traumatic history, groups of trauma survivors, people with a post-traumatic stress disorder, children of alcoholics caregivers, children with chronic illness and students screened for suicidality. However, benefits affect different for different individuals, and the studies showed that effects were greater for males than females and difficult to track the results of the writing for people with psychosomatic disorder and borderline personality disorder. The conclusion of the studies showed that expressive writing demonstrates some solid beneficial effects on physical and/or psychological health still, more researches have to be done but pieces of evidence are sufficient for clinical to begin applying expressive writing as a solid therapy with caution.

What a found important in this article is the important information that the authors are giving about all the studies of expressive writing. The main ideas of the article are the way studies of this therapy were carried about, the long-term beneficial effects that have people who use the expressive writing activity as a therapy in their lives, Who are the most benefited from this therapeutic activity. Overall, this article was very helpful to get the general concept of this practice and inform myself about all the studies that help the act of writing to get more involved in society as a support or help for people with traumas or strong emotions

work cited.

Baikie, Karen A., and Kay Wilhelm. “Emotional and Physical Health Benefits of Expressive Writing.” Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, vol. 11, no. 5, 2005, pp. 338–346., doi:10.1192/apt.11.5.338.

The academic article "The Event-Specific benefits of writing about a difficult life experience" was published in 2021 by Europe's Journal of Psychology, written by Charles Matthew Stapletona, Hui Zhangb , Jeffrey Scott Bermanc.

In this Article, Charles M. And the others authors, present a study designed to find out if the benefits of expressive writing are specific to the event written about or whether the benefits are global in a life's individuals. He asked 120 undergraduate students who had experienced at least two difficult life events to participate in his research. Then, he divided this group into two, the experimental individuals and the control groups individuals. The experimental group was asked to write about one difficult life even whereas the control group was asked to write about an interesting life event. Later, these writings were evaluated and analyzed of variance of the emotions/feeling such as strength, passion, upsetness, fear, and more. In this investigation, researchers focused investigation on three main areas, the first one is that the benefits of writing may be only associated with specific life experiences, the second one is to take into consideration the specificity of the emotions and thoughts changed by writing and, the third is considering the specificity of the writing context.

Furthermore, in this study, the mechanism of expressive writings shows that writing about life's problems allows for the disclosure of the secret in people's life, helps the writer let go of thoughts and feelings, reduces the mental and physical workload of inhibition. This mechanism also encourages individuals to use more cognitive processing words hence, these words may encourage individuals to deeper cognitive processing in life's struggles, and help individuals make sense of the upsetting event, organizing their experiences and developing a coherent narrative concerning the event. It also suggested that emotional catharsis could explain many of the observed effects of expressive writing. The results of this study show that participants in the experimental group felt stronger, less upset, and less avoidant of that difficult life event that they just wrote. However, other researches suggest that initial changes in the cognitions and emotions about a particular life event may be applied to other similar experiences. It is like playing new abilities to similar situations.

I found this article very informative and analytic according to the benefits of one particular event. It makes me think about how expressive writing can differently impact each persona that uses it as a therapy or activity, In the article, the authors mention the importance of observing effects in participants and how emotional catharsis could explain them, this statement makes begs the question, what emotional catharsis is exactly? How does this affect participants when using expressive writing? Therefore, this article leads me to investigate more about this topic and most likely my next research will be on this topic to support my thesis.

work cited.

Stapleton, Charles Matthew, et al. “The Event-Specific Benefits of Writing About a Difficult Life Experience.” Europe’s Journal of Psychology, vol. 17, no. 1, Feb. 2021, pp. 53–69. EBSCOhost, https://dc153.dawsoncollege.qc.ca:2325/10.5964/ejop.2089.

The academic article "Benefit finding and expressive writing in adults with lupus or rheumatoid arthritis" was published in 2001 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley, a company that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. It was written by Soper, Barlow and Von Bergen, C. W.

The authors focused the article on making research about implementing expressive writing in people who were employed and Who have experienced the loss of a job.

This research documented the negative effects of job loss on the psychological and physical well-being of workers. Lossing jobs normally, evoke emotions such as anger and fear. To deal with this, the authors found out that expressing and integrating these feelings by writing about emotionally traumatic job loss experiences help to understand, assimilate and confront the job loss event.

The study was focused on understanding expressive writing effects Through various processes.

the article showed a study made in which 62 people were asked to participate, participants might be employed at least 5 months, 31 participants of the group were asked to write about non-emotional issues. 38% of this part wrote about have been found employed. On the other hand, the other half of the group were asked to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about their layoff and how their life had been affected and 53% of this group had successfully found jobs.

The most important of this writing study were the processes of disinhibition and confrontation. Disinhibition processes focused on understanding and assimilating emotions evoked after losing a job and Confrontation processes focused on confronting emotions/feelings and the actual problem which by the time can diminish negative effects on the physical part of the writer. Conclusions about this study see the expressive writings as a viable way to therapeutically address problematic negative emotions that are related to traumas when losing jobs

work cited

Soper, Barlow, and C. W. Von Bergen. “Employment Counseling and Life Stressors: Coping through Expressive Writing.” Journal of Employment Counseling, vol. 38, no. 3, Sept. 2001, p. 150. EBSCOhost, https://dc153.dawsoncollege.qc.ca:2325/10.1002/j.2161-1920.2001.tb00497.x.

In this article Juanita focuses on students at an Ecuadorian university who use expressive writing as a means of relieving the stress of meeting university graduation requirements.

Juanita discusses the fact that in Ecuador, specifically at this university, acquiring a certain level of English as a foreign language is a requirement and that this fact has some impact on students trying to fulfill this requirement. Fulfilling this requirement for students can unleash stress and anxiety, to which the university has implemented expressive writing as a means to help alleviate and reduce this stress.

Juanita talks about the study that was conducted at this university, where expressive writing was reported to be highly effective in reducing academic stress. These were some of the ways in which it was effective. 1. Writing about academic stress in previous situations helps to alleviate stress and to recognize the factors that produce stress. 2. students found writing a more comfortable way than talking in expressing their feelings 3. expressive writing helps to explore those deep feelings about the stressful situation. However, there were students who reported that expressive writing did not help them relieve stress, whereas having a more active social life such as talking to friends, exercising, or even reading helped them much more in releasing stress.

The reflection I have on this article and taking into account the previous articles is that expressive writing helps too much to release and relieve certain emotions, however it depends on the person this method will not be the most effective. For people with physical and mental illnesses it is efficient in both long and short terms, however for students it is very different as this method can be one option out of thousands of options that exist to choose how to release stress.

work cited

Argudo, Juanita. “Expressive Writing to Relieve Academic Stress at University Level.” Profile: Issues in Teachers' Professional Development (2021): n. pag.

This academic article “the durability of beneficial health effects associated with expressive writing” was Published by “Taylor & Francis group“ Specialized in publishing books and academic journals, which has published an international journal entitled “anxiety, stress & coping” where you can find this article. This article was written by Denise Sloan, she has a PhD in psychology and she is part of the American psychological association. Brian Feinstein, he is an associate professor in the department of psychology at the Rosalind Franklin university and has also a PhD. Brian Marx, he is a professor of psychiatry at the Boston university school por medicine.

The intention of this article is to study and examine the durability of the benefits associated with expressive writing, some findings suggest thath among firts year college studnets, expresice writing may provide some short-term relief for certain symptoms (Denise et al)

To prove the durability of these benefits, the authors of this article studied the durability in 3 ways. The method was to influence participants using this method for 2, 4 and 6 months. After studying the participants and their implemented results. This method, they realized that the results may require much more time to be observed. (Denise et al) However, they predicted to fit certain aspects of psychology with expressive writing. Expressive writing is associated with psychology and the physical health benefits. (Denise et al)

Thanks to this they were able to predict that psychological health benefits associatted with expresive writting would have short term effects, whereas physical health benefits and improvements "would be sustained for a longer period of time" (Denise et al). in conclusion, epressive writing can be associated with beneficial aoutcome, at leas in the shoth term ( Denise et al).

My thoughts on this are more profound since reading the previous articles, I wondered if the psychological part was a part to take into consideration when analyzing the durability of the benefits of this method. However the results were not predicted to be more extensive as the observations that the authors of this article made were not long enough to test whether in the long term there could be any benefits from expressive writing.

work cite

Sloan, DeniseM., et al. “The Durability of Beneficial Health Effects Associated with Expressive Writing.” Anxiety, Stress & Coping, vol. 22, no. 5, Oct. 2009, pp. 509–23. EBSCOhost, https://dc153.dawsoncollege.qc.ca:2325/10.1080/10615800902785608.

This academic articles was written by Cindy k. Chung and James W. Pennebaker. It was published in “Wiley”, it is a sit web focused on helping educators an students in their professional careers.

The objective of this article is to see if the time intervals left between sessions when using the expressive writing method has any impact on the results obtained with this method. The authors of this article chose participants in which they were paid an amount for each hour in which they actively participated using this method. The participants were divided into three groups, group one wrote for 1 hour with a 30 minute break. Group number one wrote 15 minutes a day twice a day and group number three wrote 15 minutes a day. The organizers of this study found the following results, participants in group number one evoked more feelings of sadness and depression in the writing, however, 3 days actively participating in this study, the same participants found the work harder to write and easier to do as the feelings were "released" more frequently. (Cindy and James ). While the other groups did not have as many results that stood out because it took longer to observe.

In this article you can see that expressive writing is more effective if used more frequently, and perhaps this factor would make its beneficial results more likely to remain with patients in the long term, however it is more costly and time consuming to evaluate patients in the long term.

work cited

Chung, Cindy K., and James W. Pennebaker. “Variations in the Spacing of Expressive Writing Sessions.” British Journal of Health Psychology, vol. 13, no. 1, Feb. 2008, pp. 15–21. EBSCOhost, https://dc153.dawsoncollege.qc.ca:2325/10.1348/135910707X251171.

This article was written by Dianne Maroney, she is a clinical nurse specialist in psychiatric/mental health nursing, she is the founder of “the imagine project TM”, she is also the founder os a nonprofit organization that help kids, teens and adults overcome challenging life circumstances though expressive writing. Her article was published by “Proquest” a sit web focused on empowering researchers around the world, most of its articles are scientific articles.

This study is led by Dianne, and its objective is to empower children who grew up with trauma, drama and stress. The goal of this project is to improve the mental health of children who did not have a good care of it, and that most likely in the rage, if not treated in time, may develop anxiety, depression, conduct disorder, among others. This project consists of a series of steps to embroider the most disciplined traumas of children and young people, it helps to release thoughts, emotions and stories that were never intended to be removed because of trauma.

This article makes me reflect that expressive writing can have a very strong effect in the long run as long as this method is used 100% through projects like this one, which specialize and focused on combating trauma in young people and children with writing through seven steps with the "the imagine ProjectTM".

work cite

Dianne, Maroney. "The Imagine ProjectTM: Using Expressive Writing to Help Children Overcome Stress and Trauma." Continuing Nursing Education, Pediatric Nursing; Pitman Tomo 46, N.º 6, 2020, 300-302,311. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2471026508?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true

Thank you for visiting my blog, now I will give you a summary of the topic I chose for my research paper.

First of all I want to clarify what was the topic I chose, I decided to talk about expressive writing, it was a topic that had caught my attention for some time now, so I thought it was perfect for this research.

when I started looking for information on the subject the most common thing I found was that expressive writing has been a method used to release strong emotions such as sadness, frustration and even stress. other studies showed that this method helped people with traumatic experiences to overcome them through this tool. However something that caught my attention during my research was the fact that the effects and benefits of this method lasted short term for some people and long term for others. The more I read, the more I understood what the difference was and in the end i decided that my thesis research paper was going to be about how expressive writing was successfully used on patients but its effects were not successful enough in the long term for those suffering from mental disorder such as anxiety.

The reasons I concluded this is for 3 reasons:

1. The cognitive state of people with mental disorder is more complex to observe, and in the short term, this method is beneficial, however, in the long term it does not show results of the method.

2. People with anxiety report that other activities such as having a more social life or exercising work much better for them in the long term and may even become a good life habit.

3. Many articles argue that more studies should be done on the long term results in patients using this method since most of them do not have the resources to observe the long term results, which means that they are not able to see the finally results of the method in the long term.

To conclude, I learned a lot about this method, I read a lot about how it helps people suffering from lupus, I also read that the nurse Dianne is also practicing the projectTM, a project which helps young people and children who suffered from trauma to improve their mental state through this method.