Glenn R. Schiraldi, Ph.D. Psychology Today blog post, February 24, 2025

This post is part of a series on adverse childhood experiences. Read the other parts here.

“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” —Zora Neale Hurston

The psychologist James Pennebaker demonstrated that those who wrote about their most difficult experiences significantly improved their mental and physical health. He reasoned that keeping painful emotions all inside was not healthy, that unexpressed emotion would, as Shakespeare wrote, “whisper the o’erfraught heart and bid it break.”

So he asked research subjects with diverse traumas to simply write for 15-30 minutes on each of four days, expressing the facts and their deepest feelings and thoughts surrounding those difficult experiences. He noted that childhood traumas were the least likely to have been confided and the most likely to cause illness later in life.

Understandably, mood slipped during the four days of writing. Thereafter, those who had confided in writing showed less depression, anxiety, stress, and illnesses, and improved self-esteem. Subsequent research has linked journaling to improvements in PTSD, sleep, functioning, job and marital satisfaction, and medical symptoms.

Journalling appears to be helpful for a number of reasons. For example, Pierre Janet explained that freezing with the unspeakable, helpless terror of trauma interferes with proper memory storage and that we must slow down and verbalize until memory is stored normally.

Much is implied by “slow down.” Trauma overwhelms our coping ability, resulting in states of hyper- or hypo-arousal. In either extreme state, the ability to verbalize and cooly process painful memories is thwarted as logical, verbal areas of the brain go “off-line.” For proper memory storage to occur, we must return arousal to a window of tolerance, where arousal is neither too high or too low.

Thus, Pennebaker has advised people to ease up if writing becomes overly distressing.  But can more be done to help journaling be even more effective?

In 2024, science journalist Donna Jackson Nakazawa published The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal, an impressive approach to journaling about adverse childhood experiences that has furthered Pennebaker’s work. In various, gentle ways, Nakazawa prompts readers to put their life story on paper in a way that helps them make sense of their difficult experience and change the habitual ways that they have reacted to them.

Her approach not only helps readers get painful emotions “off their chest,” but weaves healing compassion and understanding into the difficult memories of life, calms physical and emotional arousal associated with those memories, and restores a wholesome sense of self and optimism. As one progresses along the writing journey, Nakazawa skillfully explains how to incorporate neuroscience-based practices to capitalize on the brain’s neuroplasticity. For example, she explains how to:

• Transmit the soothing vibration of sound to the vagus nerve to calm the emotional region of the brain and regulate heart rate, respiration rate, and other symptoms of dysregulated stress arousal.
• Identify and change old neural pathways associated with painful childhood memories. For example, readers might locate unpleasant bodily changes as they relate their life story, and soothe them by gently softening around the edges of tightness and breathing in comforting breaths.
• Stimulate an inner sense of security and love by imagining joining with kind benefactors with whom individuals felt safe and valued, exactly as they are.
• Identify and replace learned “truths” from childhood (for example, “I don’t belong here, I’m not safe, I’m no good”) with positive self-truths (such as, “I am strong and worthwhile, I persevere, I believe in me”) and messages of healing and hope (“You’re doing great, good job, you’ve come so far, now it’s time to live with joy, I can enjoy pleasant emotions”).

Nakazawa calls these approaches to rewriting one’s inner story “neural re-narrating.” Her approach guides readers to see the completeness of their lives, rather than avoiding old memory fragments, and then rewire the painful childhood memories in a way that helps one view one’s entire life with kindness, acceptance, and patience. She writes: “Every adversity you face in your life gives you an opportunity to show up in new ways for yourself, stand up for what you need, and take care of yourself in a new way.”

One important caveat: Journaling does not take the place of needed professional help. Remember, trauma typically overwhelms the individual’s present ability to cope with disturbing memories. A skilled trauma therapist can help individuals calm and settle childhood memories and the resulting disturbing reactions.

However, if you are presently reasonably comfortable with and able to calmly handle unpleasant emotions, journaling might be a very useful tool to support your healing journey—either as an adjunct to psychotherapy or as a self-managed tool.

References

Schiraldi, G. R. (2021). The Adverse Childhood Experiences Recovery Workbook: Heal the Hidden Wounds from Childhood Affecting Your Adult Mental and Physical Health. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

Nakazawa, D. J. (2024). The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal: Neuroscience-based Writing Practices to Rewire Your Brain from Trauma. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger.

About the Author

Glenn R. Schiraldi, PhD, has served on the stress management faculties at The Pentagon, the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, and the University of Maryland, where he received the Outstanding Teacher Award in addition to other teaching/service awards. His fourteen books on stress-related topics have been translated into seventeen languages, and include The Adverse Childhood Experiences Recovery Workbook, The Self-Esteem Workbook. The Resilience Workbook, and The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook. The founder of Resilience Training International (www.ResilienceFirst.com), he has trained laypersons, emergency responders, and clinicians around the world on the diverse aspects of stress, trauma, and resilience.

Photo credits: AntonioGuillem /  istockphoto (title image); stancluc / istockphoto