The Pros And Cons Of Expressive Writing

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Flaws of Expressive Writing Scientific studies have steadily demonstrated that expressive writing, or writing about one’s emotional state of mind, can have many benefits regarding one’s health (as cited in Freda & Martino, 2015). But does it for everyone? Is expressive writing really such a valuable tool in dealing with traumatic events? Several studies show that expressive writing can have some limitations. Freda and Martino (2015) examined whether expressive writing could help parents of children with leukemia cope with such a serious illness. The study assessed the psychological states of the parents numerous times. Freda and Martino (2015) found that expressive writing mainly worked for parents who indicated “a good psychological outcome (GPO)” (p. 351). On the other hand, the researchers discovered that the caregivers with a “low psychological outcome (LPO)” did not profit from expressive writing (Freda and Martino, 2015, p.351). Freda and Martino (2015) found that, “The LPO parents showed severe distress at baseline, which only worsened after their writing. Narration did not lead them to transform their traumatic experiences; it did not function as a stimulus to build a new event framework” (Freda & Martino, 2015, p. 356). Hence, expressive writing seems to not be beneficial …show more content…

Stockton et al. (2014) aimed to find out whether expressive writing could lead to posttraumatic growth. This concept refers to the positive psychological improvements that individuals can experience when working on processing trauma (as cited in Stockton et al., 2014). These researchers found that while expressive writing could lead to considerable progress in posttraumatic growth, it did not lessen the disturbing thoughts that are associated with traumatic experiences (Stockton et al., 2014). Again, this demonstrates that expressive writing has

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