If nothing else, the paradigm demonstrates that when individuals are given the opportunity to disclose deeply personal aspects of their lives, they readily do so. (p.6)

I don’t know if this line sparked some curiosity or just made me emotional. People have a strong desire to be heard whether it’s by themselves or by others, it doesn’t matter. What matters is getting it out of our system. To process hardships or triumphs through writing in a reflective and deeply personal way. 

That’s an emotional thing to think about.

I remember journaling as a safe space for me growing up. It’s where I’d go to write on and on about the day I had, the drama happening at school, my crushes, my internal conflicts, etc. And when I’d finish writing, I’d reread my entries with a certain curiosity, wanting to see what I had managed to get out. It was my way of processing.

I don’t know how I would have handled any situation in my life then, if I had not written it all down.

One of my best friends, Geo, is your typical guy (& that’s not to be offensive). I’ve talked to him about therapy before, but he’s always shrugged and been critical of the whole process. When I shared my experiences, he’d say something along the lines of well I’m happy that works for you, I just don’t know if it could for me. I’d say, then why not journal? And then he’d make a bunch of excuses as to why he doesn’t like journaling.

Last time I saw him, he spoke to me about life after graduation and how difficult it’s been to navigate… on top of all of life’s twists and turns. All of this to say that he’s been having a pretty hard time. As we walked he mentioned… in a very nonchalant, casual way… that he started journaling. 

Why did he start?… because he needed help processing. He needed help acknowledging and, as a result, confronting these sometimes difficult emotions. I think using that as a starting point to then start journaling about happy, good things would serve well for him too. 

One reason that we believe that expressive writing has been effective is that it serves as a life course correction… (p.37)

Like I said in my previous blog, I have a newfound “fear” or kind of hesitance to journaling. I now think that it’s because I know that if I pick up the pen I’ll be met with myself and be forced to confront all my wrongdoing (mainly because when I journal I usually rant).

But… occasionally, most of us benefit from standing back and examining our lives. (p.37)

What activities in your life feel like ice cream or broccoli? This was different in our beginning of class check in. Ice cream represented something good, and broccoli represented something you didn’t particularly like. We all expressed our feelings on ice cream and broccoli. It was great to hear what everyone’s differences were.

After our check in, I asked Dr. Zamora if we could go on another writer’s walk. The weather was beautiful. Dr. Zamora took a vote of hands who wanted to go, and those who didn’t want to go. To my surprise, we all went. It wasn’t as long as the first writer’s walk, but it was still great.

After our walk, we were handed an orange and purple piece of paper. Instead of shout outs, we used the pieces of paper to ask questions and compliment each other’s blogs from the week before readings. That was a different approach as well as interesting. It was interesting to hear some of the compliments and questions about our blogs.

Presentation time: CJ presented his presentation on Queer Composition(s). I think his presentation was very good. I learned a lot about the games that I have purchased for my son. The gaming experience is way over my head. I am just not into it. My son, on the other hand, loves his gaming.

In reading this article, one question caught my attention. What is it about trauma that influences health? Traumatic experiences can affect a person’s health, well-being, and mental health. People go through life experiencing unanticipated circumstances that can affect them in different ways. Psychologically, dealing with emotional changes, Socially, becoming withdrawn from others, and behaviorally, that can lead to lifestyle changes developing unhealthy habits. The article states “that they are associated with a host of biological changes including elevations in cortisol, immune disruptions, cardiovascular changes, and a cascade of neurotransmitter changes”.

Some traumatic experiences lead to PTSD, depending on how extreme the traumatic experience is and how you respond to it. People who suffer from depression are most likely to suffer from PTSD as well.

As I continued reading the article, I noticed that the case studies placed individuals into different groups. Some groups that didn’t show any signs of sickness after a traumatic experience, and other groups that showed PTSD as a result of their traumatic experience they’ve encountered.

Personally, I would place myself in the group of people who experienced trauma, but did not develop PTSD. For example, one of my closest brothers passed away from kidney failure. We were close in age, and wherever you saw me, you saw him, and vice versa. We were closer than two peas in a pod. Losing him was a painful experience. I suffered with pain for a while, but I didn’t let that pain consume me. I had to move on. I had children who depended on me.

This brings me to four questions in this article: Why is it that some people seem to deal with major or upheavals better than others? What is the profile of healthy coping? If such coping strategies exist, can they be trained? If such techniques are available, how do they work?

Personally, I believe that my way of coping with difficult experiences come from the Power of Prayer, Faith, and the support of Prayer partners. I was brought up in the church. My family and I stood firmly on the Word of God. The verse: Mathew 19:26 states: “With God, All Things Are possible”. This scripture is a reminder, that no matter what challenges I face in life, I put my trust in God. My father, Edward Boyd, was a Reverend, and my mother served ‘as First Lady. We have a powerful prayer group. Prayer and Faith is a major part of our lives. We believe in putting our trust in God’s hands. Our belief is that the battle is not yours, it’s the Lords. Yolanda Adams (is an American Gospel Singer), who wrote the gospel song “The Battle Is Not Yours”, reminds me of the faith I was raised with, and the belief that we do not have to hold on to burdens on our own. We turn our burdens to God and put our faith and trust in Him, to carry us through our times of struggles. Our faith and prayer helps us cope with any traumatic experiences we face in life. As for me and my household, we believe in the “Power of Prayer”.

However, I realize that not everyone is raised in the church, share the same beliefs, or depend on faith to lean on during difficult times of struggles that life brings. My faith in God is my source of strength and comfort during all of my traumatic experiences.

I understand that other individuals may rely on different methods and resources to help them cope with traumatic experiences. This leads me to consider how researchers use case studies on individuals’s to see how language and writing can help them cope.

In my opinion, I think there are pros and cons to writing about traumatic experiences. Writing can be difficult for some people when they revisit traumas that they’ve tried to bury deep in their subconscious memory. Then there are some individuals who believe writing helps them with their emotions and begin to heal, by putting their traumatic experiences into words, and expressing those feelings. The power of writing becomes a way of coping that allows them to tell their stories in their own words.

Either way, I strongly believe that individuals should release problems one way or another. Keeping problems, stress, or traumatic feelings inside most likely lead to health problems. It begins to eat away at you, opposed to speaking or writing about them. I connect this to the three “R’s”. Relax, Relate, and Release.

The article mentions “Studies show that writing resulted in less visits to the doctor or physician, and are more beneficial to males than females”. “Case studies were determined that there were not sufficient evidence to warrant adopting the writing method as part of clinical practice (more theory-oriented)”.

I think writing is a great therapeutic tool to use to help some individuals write about their traumatic experiences. I commend the researchers for their case studies on individual traumas. Support groups are very helpful. Writing may not help everyone. I believe that if it works for you, that that is a good thing. If it doesn’t, that’s okay too. We’ve all been through some type of traumatic experience or situation in our lives. What matters is finding what helps you cope, and what healing methods work best for you.

So this is like 40 pages… Yeah I am gonna limit my yap guys. I will be reading but instead of pointing out every single quote I like Imma save it for the really special ones this time. Maybe it was less of a yap this time, I don’t know yet I didn’t read/write it yet. We shall see what happens.

“As we lay out in this chapter, there is reason to believe that when people transform their feelings and thoughts about personally upsetting experiences into language, their physical and mental health often improve.” Not it taking three pages to finally get something that makes me go “oh that is why we are reading this”. The before was so much medical terms I kept checking to see if I was reading the right thing, cause nothing was mentioning writing, English, reading, or language till now.
But this paper gotta do a lot of convincing cause I think this is an iffy idea. I guess maybe afterwards the event is better on the mind? But when currently writing out the trauma it never makes me feel like my mental health improved. Sometimes the writing it out actually made things get worse as the event causing stress increased because of the writing. It depends on many factors what counts as mental health improvement.

“However, an increasing number of studies indicate that having people write about traumas can result in healthy improvements in social, psychological, behavioral, and biological measures”. Biological? Hello? Do I want to know what that even means. I get how psychologically it improves your health, thus your social life or behaviors improve, but biological? How in the world does that even happen man.

“By the mid 1980s, investigators started to notice that upheavals that were kept secret were more likely to result in health problems than those that could be spoken about more openly. For example, individuals who were victims of violence and who had kept this experience silent were significantly more likely to have adverse health effects than those who openly talked with others (Pennebaker & Susman, 1988).” Now see, here we get into a whole other issue. How can people speak out about certain things when society silences them? Women don’t report abuse for many reasons. Maybe it isn’t safe to do so, maybe they know there is a chance they won’t be heard, maybe they know there is a chance nothing will get done and things will be worse for them. It is important to note that when people are silent things don’t work out as well for them, but there are sooooo many factors people are silent. Might even be as simple as they don’t have anyone to tell or don’t think about telling these stories. But that is a whole thing about society being set up in some evil ways.

“Even though a large number of participants report crying or being deeply upset by
the experience, the overwhelming majority report that the writing experience was valuable and meaningful in their lives.” Me. If Alyssa makes us do some deep stuff I may cry, so even though it is her topic she better not. She makes us do some deep stuff things are gonna get real and I kinda want a chill Thursday. Love yall, but not enough to do a therapy session in the middle of class.

“He also found that longer intervals between writing sessions produced larger overall effect sizes, and that males benefited more from writing than did females.” This reminds me on how society expresses men to hold in emotions more and then that YouTube video where the woman goes “and who set that system up?”. Cause truly why do men tell other men to hold in emotions to the point where they get more out of deep writing. Let those emotions out men, let them out.

“Self reports also suggest that writing about upsetting experiences, although painful in the days of writing, produces long-term improvements in mood and indicators of well-being compared to controls. Although some studies have failed to find clear mood or self-reported distress effects, Smyth’s (1998) meta-analysis on written disclosure studies indicates that, in general, writing about emotional topics is associated with significant reductions in distress.” Real. This does seem like a painful thing to be doing. Also, not sure how I feel about all this self-report stuff. People be liars and I think about how people may think they are doing good but they lying to themselves. I want some more evidence other than all this self-report stuff.

“As researchers, we assume that, say, the diagnosis of a lifethreatening disease is the most important issue for a person to write about in a cancer-related study. However, for many, this can be secondary to a cheating husband, an abusive parent, or some other trauma that may have occurred years earlier”. HELLO?? Are people good. If I get asked to write about trauma, I will bring up the thing I am currently dealing with, if there is one. Like the diagnosis, I would bring up that, before going into the other nonsense. That is about me, my stress, my trauma, forget the other garbo. But me right now does not have some sort of cancer so I would indeed write about my mother or my father. My mother being a jerk to me or my father losing his leg in a stupid way. Those are the traumas I talk about, my go to being to hate on my mom cause the dad thing was suuuuper scary to go through. But like, ignoring your disease to vent about a cheating husband is wild to me. Forget that man. Rude rat. I was gonna note with the job loss example I was like “no duh people hate losing their job” and then it mentioned kids and stuff and I was like “…. oh right. People get married and have kids”. I do not be thinking about that. So it is wild of me to be thinking about some cheating man, but also to be thinking about kids, even though both are understandable. It would make sense to have concerns about loved ones in your life. Me causally forgetting how bad it can be for people to lose their jobs.

“provide sufficiently open instructions to allow people to deal with whatever
important topics they want to write about.” I do not know how to feel about this. I do hate prompts in general. I get why people need them, to bounce off ideas to start writing. But truly sometimes I got nothing. When Dr. Z asks us to write and then asks who wants to answer, I am like 90% sure every time I didn’t answer I had nothing. I wrote down the prompt and went something like “…. I do not even have a response for this”. I feel the same with the picture check in. Every single time those photos don’t really speak to me other than being pretty or something. I am making up some random connection every time cause they do not speak to me. Do I like writing? Yes, I can always come up with my own yapping. Clearly. But for some reason prompts just lock me and I just think and think and think about the prompt with nothing coming to mind. So if it was just a “write about your traumas” I can go OFF. A generic prompt would help me for this case. However, my not knowing how to feel about this despite my hate for prompts is that I would probably say a lot of stuff but not go too deep. I think a prompt that asks for a feeling, as much as I HATE when prompts want us to get a specific feeling, would probably get more out of people. Generalizing this cause who wants to get deep right off the bat. Asking more deep questions would get more lore out of people, thus making it worth it. For if it stays at surface level, it might not be all too helpful.

“In another study, students were asked to write about traumas in the standard way”. There is a standard way to write about traumas? Since when. How does one write about a trauma standardly.

“Similarly, in an unpublished project by Lori Stone (2002), students were asked to write about their thoughts and feelings about the September 11 attacks.” Usually I do not factor in the year of things but oh my gods. Hello. We getting crazy in this article. I mean I figured when the paper said “for two decades” it was old but bringing in a 2002 year study talking about 9/11…
And this is why dates are important cause jeez.

“Most studies comparing writing alone to talking either into a tape recorder (Esterling, et al., 1994) or to a therapist in a one-way interaction (Murray, Lamnin, & Carver, 1989; Donnelly & Murray, 1991) find comparable biological, mood, and cognitive effects”. I know I said I would pick important quotes but this sounds so fun. It is like all the old shows/films or shows/films set in the 80s or something where a character goes around talking into a tape recorder. That is so fun. Just yapping to yourself in a tape device. I would not yap about trauma though, that seems like a “yap about ghosts or murders in the town while you investigate things” type of activity. Though, there is also 13 Reasons Why so. What do I know about tape recordings.

“Rather, reading or discussing one’s traumas in a group format after writing may pose unexpected problems. Clearly, additional research is needed to help understand this process.” Not this 40 pages paper telling me more research needs to be done. You doing all this yapping and more research hasn’t been done yet? Also, yes. It is more stressful to yap to a group about your issues. People like to vent and keep things quiet. They need to get their thoughts out, clearly as the paper already discussed it is not good to hold things in. But telling random people your deep lore is a not fun activity.

“One possibility is that writing by hand is slower and encourages individuals to process their thoughts and feelings more deeply.” I agree. As a yapper, I hate writing by hand. I like the feel of both typing and writing, but writing takes so long. Also, while I do tend to keep my papers, hand writing stuff gets put away in folders that may not be seen for a looong time. I bookmark most if not all my writings on the computer, so they are easier to access. Better to revisit and revise if needed. I like typing more for organization and speed, but hand writing has its charm.

“In both cases, we found that people talked with one another at very high rates in the first 2-3 weeks. By the 4th week, however, talking rates were extremely low”. The timing gotta be mad low nowadays. I feel like we see so much now that we are always talking about the next bad thing and never really giving any bad moment its time to “shine?” Shine is probably a terrible word to use, but my point is we move very fast now. Does anyone take any time to process anything?

“However, if another person disagrees with their thoughts and feelings about the movie, the participants are more biologically around on a second screening – even though they are watching the movie alone.” This paper is starting to lose me so bad. What in the world are we talking about right now. I get we are now yapping about how great it is to yap to others but when in the world did movies get like this. “biologically around”. What in the world does that even mean. Do I not know what biologically means? I felt like I did but the more this paper brings it up the more I question my sanity. I truly am so lost. This movie example did not do it for me I am so confused on what this even means. What does it mean to be biologically around even if you are alone. What does that mean. Do people biologically watch movies? Clearly I am doing movies wrong cause what.

“Some people who don’t tell others about an upsetting experience may never think about the event and others do” Now how do we even know this stuff. How do you get people to talk about something they do not think about. If they don’t think about it, wouldn’t they not know to mention it, thus they wouldn’t mention they aren’t thinking about a thing they aren’t mentioning? Maybe I am getting too tired for the second half of this paper but I feel like I entered the Twilight Zone.

“The answer is no.” Brother. I can’t with this paper. All this yap to go “no” every now and then is crazy. I mean, so true. Sometimes your thoughts turn up with nothing. But it keeps happening and like are we even saying anything anymore. So much stuff to get rid of all the yapping to say “no”. So much back and forth with this paper I am losing it. I am like “oh okay yes I am following along” just for it to go “no”.

“suggested that once an individual attempts to translate a picture into words, it changes the memory of the picture. Most experiences are like pictures”. Already lost. We gotta stop with these examples man. What do you mean changes the memory of the picture. Do we not look at pictures to put them into words? Why we memorizing. And then it just moves on. We keep bringing in these exampls to think I get it, I don’t but the paper just moves on.

“The problem of capturing an experience with language is comparable to the engineering difficulty of defining an analog signal using digital technology”. Brother, now you KNOW I do not know what in the world you are talking about. Hello. What are these examples. Who is this paper for. Is this an inside joke I don’t get? I thought when giving examples, the examples are for people to better understand the topic. What engineer is reading this. What random niche inside joke did I just read? I mean maybe this is the point, I am to not understand the example. As someone who does not engineer, oh yeah it surley is hard to define an analog signal only using digital technology, hardest thing ever guys. I thought analog signals would be helpful with computers but maybe I am thinking of the wrong digital technology. Maybe other technology is better.

So. Reading the next lines. I was most definetly wrong on what I thought that line meant. I thought digital as in computer. Did digital mean finger. What is going ON in this paper bro. I for sure thought someone would be like “no CJ, you did understand the paper. Stop stressing”. But… did digital mean finger guys…. Cause … I most definitely did not get that example if it did indeed mean finger.

Okay moving on from that section cause I got that we need to label emotions better, but the examples are so confusing for no reason.

“Individuals who use very few negative emotion words or who use a very high rate of them are the ones most likely to remain sick after writing, compared with those who use a moderate number of negative emotion words.” I feel like we gotta factor in more stuff. Do these people have the vast vocab to use all these different emotions? Cause I know of the basic emotions, I wouldn’t be able to get too into it. I feel like being better equipped with terms might change results when writing out your feelings. Also, how do we know the levels of sickness? The paper keeps mentioning health, but who got doctor seeing money. Do we factor that in, the availability to see a doctor? Consider other things going on in the person’s life, other stress factors? I feel like there are too many variables with this sort of thing.

“Although most therapists would agree with the importance of shifting perspectives, the difficulty for a researcher is in devising a way to track this shift.” I feel like all of this was super hard to track, as so much of it was based on what the person said about themselves. But what do I know. I mean if you got the time you could see how the writing shifts with time, if the emotional words used get more positive or negative. That could be one way to track things.

“Specifically, the more that people oscillated in their use of 1st person singular pronouns (I, me, my) and all other personal pronouns (e.g., we, you, she, they), the more people’s health improved”. How in the world did people write in different point of views. How do you not yap in first person. Those some creative people not gonna lie. Being able to transform a lore drop to a different point of view must take mad skills.

“Be cautious in interpreting these findings”. This paper keeps saying things and then being like “jk ignore all that”. Hello. What are we doing. I am trying to learn here and every time I go “got it” it is a prank.

“We still don’t know for whom it works best, when it should be used, or when other techniques should be used in its place.” Crazy thing to say after all this. Overall this article was saying a lot of something and nothing at the same time. Kept presenting all this data or questions to go “there isn’t enough research” or that the study proved no difference between the data sets.