Why you really should keep a journal, no matter how cheesy that sounds - Posted by
Oliver Burkeman Thursday 18 July 2013 14.59 BST
http://www.theguardian.com/news/oliver-burkemans-blog/2013/jul/18/why-keeping-a-journal
Sure, it sounds cheesy, but there is more and more evidence of the extraordinary healing power of writing things down
Writing for 20 minutes a day about a traumatic event accelerated the healing of physical wounds, researchers found. Photograph: Erhan Dayi/Alamy
If you've spent any significant time reading books or articles on the "science of happiness", you'll have encountered what I've long thought of as the Cheesiness Problem. It's an inescapable fact that some of the most thoroughly evidence-backed techniques for enhancing one's mood are also the most excruciatingly embarrassing – the sorts of things that those of us who imagine ourselves to be rational, sceptical types would never dream of confessing to.
This is awkward, since (as I've written before) it means having to choose between maintaining a pose of sardonic detachment or doing what actually works.
For me, the most vivid example is keeping a gratitude journal. On the one hand, it really helps. On the other hand – well, come on. It's keeping a gratitude journal.
Anyway, this problem just got worse. It turns out you should probably be journalling about your deepest emotional suffering, too. Maia Szalavitz at Time magazine reports on a new study suggesting that writing about traumatic experiences, and the emotions associated with them, for 20 minutes a day greatly accelerates the healing of physical injuries – in this case, tiny skin wounds administered as part of the research:
Researchers led by Elizabeth Broadbent, a senior lecturer in health psychology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, studied 49 healthy senior citizens, aged 64 to 97. For three days, half were assigned to write for 20 minutes a day about the most traumatic event they had experienced, and were encouraged to be as open and candid as they could about exactly what they felt and thought at the time…
The other participants wrote for the same duration about their plans for the next day, avoiding mentioning their feelings, opinions or beliefs. Two weeks after the first day of writing, researchers took small skin biopsies, under local anesthesia… Eleven days after the biopsy, 76% of the group that had written about trauma had fully healed while only 42% of the other group had.
This isn't the first study to show physical wounds healing more rapidly thanks to a writing-based intervention: a team at Kings College London found something similar a few years ago. Jamie Pennebaker, a professor at the University of Austin at Texas who's been studying the broader benefits of writing for years, makes the important point that you shouldn't view journalling as an attempt to formulate solutions to your problems; the real benefit comes from the third-person perspective that's attained when you externalise your thoughts. It's interesting to speculate whether the effect may be similar to that of meditation: not changing your thoughts and feelings so much as changing your relationship to them – so that you no longer take them to be an unquestionable, intractable, non-negotiable reality.
So, yes, it might be a worthwhile idea to start keeping a journal, however appalling that sounds. The good news, as the psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky explains in her book The How of Happiness, is that it's probably more effective to do so intermittently, rather than every single day, to avoid the procedure becoming so routine that it loses its efficicacy.
Write about your most profound fears, your feelings of loneliness, of regret and grief. Then hide it somewhere where nobody will ever find it, don't tell a soul, and we'll all carry on making cynical wisecracks on Twitter like it never even happened.
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Attention, fellow Olds! We've been talking about the internet all wrong
Oliver Burkeman: You're not "on Facebook", granddad – Facebook is everywhere, and language is evolving to reflect it
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7 steps to instant happiness Hannah Booth asks experts for their ultimate tips - Hannah Booth The Guardian, Saturday 15 August 2009
Be positive
"Positivity makes you more attractive and resilient, with lower blood pressure, less pain, fewer colds, better sleep. Increase the number of positive emotions in your day, however fleeting. One can lead to another and so on, until we're in an upward spiral of positivity. Take a moment to find the good in a situation. Don't over-generalise ('I can never hold down a relationship'), jump to conclusions ('I'll never finish this job') or ruminate endlessly. Any healthy distraction – a run, a swim – that lifts your mood is good."
Barbara Fredrickson is Kenan distinguished professor of psychology, University of North Carolina.
Be brave
"Studies show people regret not having done things much more than they regret things they did. Why? We can rationalise an excess of courage more easily than an excess of cowardice, because we can console ourselves by thinking of the things we learned from the experience. We hedge our bets when we should blunder forward. In fact, large-scale assaults on our happiness – a lost job or failed marriage – trigger our psychological defences (and hence promote our happiness) more than smaller annoyances. The paradoxical consequence is that it is sometimes easier to achieve a positive view of a very bad experience than a bad one. And yet we rarely choose action over inaction. Knowing we overestimate the impact of almost every life event makes me a bit braver and more relaxed because I know what I'm worrying about probably won't matter as much as I think it will."
Daniel Gilbert is professor of psychology, Harvard University.
Meditate
"Meditation helps us better manage our reactions to stress and recover more quickly from disturbing events. This is key to happiness. One study took people in high-stress jobs and taught them meditation for eight weeks: they felt happier after and even remembered why they liked their work. Before, they were too stressed to see it. Beginners can benefit from meditation, but it takes practice to see real benefits. I recently spent an evening with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, the Tibetan lama dubbed 'the happiest man in the world'. How did he get that way? Practice. Observing his behaviour, I noticed he recovered quickly from upsets and this is one way science measures a happy temperament. If you start to get upset, let go of the negative thought, deal with the problem – and then let go of that."
Daniel Goleman is a psychologist and author, based in Massachusetts.
Be kind to yourself
"The way we relate to ourselves – kindly or critically – has a major influence on our wellbeing, contentment and ability to cope with setbacks. If you're feeling self-critical, stop, take a few breaths, slow down and try to think of the ideal qualities you might have, such as kindness, warmth, gentleness. It doesn't matter whether or not you actually have these qualities – like an actor taking on a part, feel yourself become them. In a journal, make a note of what happens to your self-criticism when you do this. Then turn your attention to what you're about to do."
Paul Gilbert is professor of clinical psychology, University of Derby.
Use your pessimism
"Defensive pessimists expect the worst and expend lots of energy mentally rehearsing how things might go wrong. But by doing this, they can improve the odds of achieving their goals. It's a useful skill for everyone to learn. Imagine what might go wrong in a situation by focusing on specifics. If you're terrified of public speaking, try to articulate whether you're afraid of fumbling with your notes or tripping on your way to the podium. Then imagine what happens next: if you drop your notes, will someone laugh? By doing this you shift the attention from feelings to facts, so you can plan effectively to avoid (or at least deal with) negative outcomes if they occur."
Julie Norem is Margaret Hamm professor of psychology, Wellesley College, Massachusetts.
Find a calling
"Work less, earn less, accumulate less and 'consume' more family time, holidays and other enjoyable activities. Pursue goals but remember, it's the journey, not the end result, that counts. If your work is not a calling, can you reframe it to see it as more than just a pay cheque? If not, try to find a noble
purpose outside work – religion, teaching, political campaigning. Find activities that fully engage your attention and you're good at: singing in a choir, painting, driving fast on a curvy country road. This is known as 'flow'. Happiness is not a shallow state of feeling chipper all the time, or something you can achieve directly. We need love, work and a connection to something larger. Get these conditions right, then wait."
Jonathan Haidt is professor of psychology, University of Virginia.
Act happy
"My research compares happy and unhappy people, and underpinning this is the 40% solution: the degree of happiness it is within our power to change, through how we act and think. I've identified 12 happiness-enhancing activities – things happy people do naturally. They may sound corny, but they're scientifically
proven. You don't have to do them all – decide which fit you best. One, express gratitude. Two, cultivate optimism: visualise a future in which everything has turned out the way you want it, then write it down. Three, avoid obsessing over things or paying too much attention to what others are doing. Four, practise acts of kindness – more than you're used to. Five, make time for friends; be supportive and loyal. Six, develop coping strategies: write down your feelings when you're feeling upset and try to see that traumatic events often make us stronger. Seven, learn to forgive. Eight, immerse yourself in activities and be open to new ones. Nine, savour life's joys – linger over a pastry rather than mindlessly consuming it. Ten, work towards meaningful goals.
Eleven, practise religion and spirituality. And finally, exercise. You won't see the results from these activities right away: like anything important, you have to work at it."
Sonja Lyubomirsky is professor of psychology, University of California.
Additional interviews by Charlotte Northedge, Becky Barnicoat, Kiki Loizou and Abhinav Ramnarayan.
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