Emotional expression and physical health: Revising traumatic memories or fostering self-regulation?

Abstract

Health benefits derived from personal trauma disclosure are well established. This study examined whether disclosing emotions generated by imaginative immersion in a novel traumatic event would similarly enhance health and adjustment. College women, preselected for trauma presence, were randomly assigned to write about real traumas, imaginary traumas, or trivial events. Yoked real-trauma and imaginary-trauma participants wrote about real-trauma participants' experiences. Imaginary-trauma participants were significantly less depressed than real-trauma participants at immediate posttest, but they were similarly angry, fearful, and happy. Compared with control group participants, both trauma groups made significantly fewer illness visits at 1-month follow-up; however, real-trauma participants reported more fatigue and avoidance than did the other groups. Imaginary-trauma group effects could reflect catharsis, emotional regulation, or construction of resilient possible selves.

Written Emotional Expression and Emotional Well-Being: The Moderating Role of Fear of Rejection

“…In sum, these findings suggest that individuals high in fear of rejection benefit from written emotional expression by gaining a new understanding of emotional experiences, thereby promoting general self-regulatory processes (Greenberg, Wortman, & Stone, 1996;King & Miner, 2000). In our view, written emotional expression is an intentional strategy that may serve to compensate for a lack of perceived social support typically experienced by individuals high in fear of rejection.…”

Dealing with a ‘hidden stressor’: emotional disclosure as a coping strategy to overcome the negative effects of motive incongruence on health

“…This disclosure changes the emotional and cognitive processing of stressful experience in a way that the stressful experiences lose their power to distract cognition, disrupt emotions and to trigger physiological stress reactions (Lepore, Greenberg, Bruno, & Smyth, 2002;Pennebaker, Mayne, & Francis, 1997). The cognitive changes as a result of emotional disclosure may include that individuals gain a deeper understanding of their negative emotional responses to stressors , which again facilitates emotionregulation strategies (Greenberg, Wortmann, & Stone, 1996). According to Pennebaker and Seagal (1999), putting stressful experiences into words through emotional disclosure fosters the integration of those experiences into a coherent narrative that may render the stressful experience more meaningfully.…”

Does Altering the Writing Instructions Influence Outcome Associated With Written Disclosure?

“…Although some studies have suggested that written disclosure is associated with improvements in physical and psychological health, findings from other studies have suggested that written disclosure may not produce significant health changes (see Sloan & Marx, 2004b, for a review). These equivocal outcomes are not surprising given that a number of investigators have unsystematically altered various aspects of the procedure, such as the number of writing sessions used (Greenberg, Wortman, & Stone, 1996;Lepore, 1997, Stroebe, Stroebe, Schut, Zech, & van den Bout, 2002, the duration of the writing sessions (Greenberg et al, 1996;Schoutrop, Lange, Hanewald, Duurland, & Bermond, 1997;Stroebe et al, 2002), and the length of time between writing sessions (Esterling, Antoni, Fletcher, Marguiles, & Schneiderman, 1994;Schoutrop et al, 1997;Stanton et al, 2002). In general, investigators have not provided a rationale for such methodological alterations, nor do they include appropriate comparison groups to examine the effect of such alterations.…”