Healing Power of Reading

Though none of my therapists tapped into the therapeutic power of bibliotherapy, the right book at the right time is transformative. Without the help of a therapist, though, it takes sleuthing to match the right book for the right time. I subscribe to blogs like “Literary Hub,” “Brain Pickings,” “The New Yorker Fiction,” and PRI’s “Selected Shorts.”. If I like the book I check out novels and short story collections by the author. Other resources are the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, Nobel Prize for Fiction, and other award-winning sites. I work back through winners and runner ups including Pulitzer Prize biographies and autobiographies. Later I enter empowering books into Goodread’s database and get related recommendations.

Reading PLAY Room – Public Domain Image

Literature allows readers to participate in lives other than their own and this sets it apart from other art forms. Good literature allows you to enter that characters’s soul, a powerful tool for self-renewal no therapist can offer. And I think the same can be said for art and music.

Literature helps us to see the value of a life. Literature defines what we feel. It opens our eyes, it sensitizes and empowers us. It has the power to sharpen attention, enabling us to perceive what we might never have considered.

 The voice of literary narrative narrows and expands attention like a camera lens blurring background so you can focus on the foreground and blurring the past so you can focus on the present. Tedious workouts and tasks become my storytime.

Nonfiction

Nonfiction is such a part of my daily flow that I almost forget to mention it here. Most of my day is consumed by reading all the blogs I subscribe to. One email click opens up five to ten or so clickable articles or research studies. I enjoy this so much I feel guilty about spending so much of my day clicking my way through articles. But it is an essential part of what I do. and it puts me in a timeless sense of FLOW. 

Recovering from Trauma and Emotional Upheaval

It wasn’t until I had left teaching that I came across the now-famous work of James W. Pennebaker. “Opening Up: the Healing Power of Expressing Emotions” was published in 1997 and “Writing to Heal: a Guided Journal For Recovering From Trauma & Emotional Upheaval” was published in 2004. Pennebaker began his work in the late 1970s. His research on traumatic experiences included the death of spouses, natural disasters, sexual traumas, divorce, physical abuse, even the Holocaust.

He divided his research subjects into three basic groups: no trauma, trauma talked about, and trauma kept inside. He found that people who were not able to confide in someone about their trauma later visited physicians almost 40 percent more often than those who had a chance to openly discussed their trauma.

Other research labs later confirmed his studies. One related study with gays and lesbians who were out versus those who kept their sexual orientation a secret found the ones who were out had fewer major health problems. Overall the studies confirmed positive immunological protection of being open with yourself.

These encouraging findings of talking versus not talking about trauma sparked the idea to see if the effects would be the same with writing. So in the mid-1980s, Pennebaker conducted a study with fifty freshman college students. When they signed up, all they knew is that they would be writing for fifteen minutes a day for four consecutive days. Depending on a flip of a coin, they would be writing about traumatic or superficial, non-emotional topics.

Students writing about traumatic experiences made 43 percent fewer doctor visits for illness than the control group who wrote only about superficial topics. They had significant beneficial immune function, including T helper cell growth. T helper cells are a type of white blood cell that plays an important role in the immune system. Systolic blood pressure (upper number) and heart rate dropped significantly lower than before the writing began. And when tested four months after the writing, diastolic blood pressure (lower number) remained lower than their initial baseline.

There were other effects unrelated to the immune system. The students that wrote about trauma reported feeling happier and less negative in the long term than before writing. Reports of depressive symptoms, rumination, and general anxiety tended to drop in the weeks and months after writing about emotional upheavals. Other studies confirmed these results and went much farther, reporting better performance at school and better social relationships.

More recent studies found that when people first write about trauma, they see and understand from their perspective. But the most dramatic change comes when they are encouraged to switch perspectives. They benefit most when they see and write about events from another person’s perspective.

The benefits of a self-distanced perspective were shown by Ethan Kross, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. His research deals with a paradox in therapy. On the one hand, it is helpful to analyze and understand one’s feelings. On the other hand, people’s attempts to do this are often counterproductive leading to rumination and/or avoidance.

His research addresses this paradox by having the client take a self-distanced or third-person perspective. Both Pennebaker and Kross found a self-distanced perspective was shown to cut down on rumination. Self-distancing is at the core of Metacognitive Therapy and Insight Meditation.

Simple Guidelines

Pennebaker found that people benefit most from expressive writing by following simple guidelines.

Acknowledge your emotions openly.

Feel and label both the negative and the positive feelings that take place during and after the trauma.

Construct a coherent story.

The traumatic experience almost by definition is a mix of chaos and terror before and after the trauma. The goal of writing is to take disconnected events and put them back together into a meaningful story of what happened and how it is affecting you.

Switch perspectives

I found that effective when I took my mother’s point of view. Up until then, I hated her for being cold and unaffectionate with me. But taking her perspective, I saw that she was under terrific pressure and anxiety. She had no life preparation for the traumatic situation she was thrust into.

My father was unable to see and accept that my sister had a mental illness – that I’m sure he caused – and needed kindness and acceptance, not hostility and alienation from the family. He wanted to be king on the throne, the accepted paternal role when he grew up. Whatever he said and believed was beyond challenge. With no counseling or prior knowledge of mental illness, my mother was in charge of my sister while satisfying my father’s strict orders and commands, while keeping the family from falling, at least not completely, to pieces.

Taking her perspective helped to dissipate some of the trauma from chronic memories affecting my life, especially in my relations with other women. I was irrationally angry, hurt, and violent with most of them, but I had no way of preventing my violence. I was truly like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

At least a part of childhood adversity is recorded and stored in a part of the brain apart from the rational frontal cortex and inaccessible to the conscious mind. It took medication to stop the violence. Prozac does that for me, though now after about twenty-five years, I have begun successfully reducing the dosage.

Find your voice

Impressive writing is not the point of expressive writing. Those who benefit the most can express themselves in their own words openly and honestly. You are writing for yourself. You can be open and honest with no fear of censorship. You can come out in the open with your most hidden secrets. You can express exactly who you are without pretension. Even though it is for your eyes only, it can be difficult to hang everything out there.

Unlimited PLAY Rooms

Hacker PLAY Room – Public Domain Image

Bibliotherapy has been my PLAY room. But as writing shifts to feeling like work, I am exploring other PLAY rooms. Even though I do not play piano, I tinker with chords and musical patterns using an electronic keyboard, inputting to Garage Band on my computer. I play at photography and video creating Youtube videos in Final Cut Pro. I attempted to fit in learning to play the piano and cartooning.

Unlimited sources of PLAY; hiking, sports, dancing, cooking, baking, electronics, home repair; limited by time, and in my eighties, life is short. If I were a therapist, I would encourage clients to explore PLAY rather than assisting them in ruminating their lives away.

Self-help books that help:

Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus

The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body