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Podcast script Advise

Jazz music

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Voiceover: Welcome to episode number 48 of Talks About Life. A podcast where the title says

we have talks about life. We are here today to talk about writing therapy and how people can

benefit from writing therapy. And we are very lucky to have our podcast host Sarah and her

exceptional guests here in the studio today.

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Sarah: Welcome everyone once again, I just wanted to give everyone a quick warning that

today’s episode is going to be more serious than all of our other podcasts. Since we are going

to be talking about sexual abuse, and mental health, if you are under the age of 16, I

recommend listening to something else. Or if any of the topics are a trigger to you please go

ahead and turn this podcast off. Anyways back to our episode….

Sarah: Okay, now that we got that out of the way, we can start today’s discussion. But before

we jump right into it, I am going to please ask all of our lovely guests to please introduce

yourselves to our audience.

James: If it's fine with everyone I will start the introductions.

Everyone else at different times: Yup. That’s fine with me. Go for it.

James: Hello everyone I am James W. Pennebaker, a professor from the Southern Methodist

University
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Ha: Hello I am Ha working with the Department of Psychology, Chung-Ang University, Seoul.

Bae: Greets everyone I am Bae also working with Ha and the Department of Psychology,

Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Hyun: Nice to meet you all, I am Hyun who is also working with Ha and Bae, and therefore I also

work with the Department of Psychology, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

Arnold: Hello I am Arnold and I worked for the Department of Clinical Psychology, University of

Amsterdam, Amsterdam.

Albert: Hello I worked with Arnolad on the same paper and I also work with the Department of

Clinical Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam.

Jan: Hello everyone I also worked with Arnold and Albert I work with the Department of

Pedagogical and Educational Sciences, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Sarah: And lastly we have Soul and Jonh from GP, Park House Surgery, St Helens.

Soul: Pleasure to be here.

John: Thank you for the invitation.

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Sarah: Okay now that everyone has introduced themselves, I want to give one last disclaimer

that we are going to be talking about mental health and abusive relationships. If any of this

makes you feel uncomfortable please stop the podcast.

Sarah: Alright now let me introduce the main topic of today’s podcast. Since we are in the month

of May and May is known to be mental awareness month, I thought we could talk about writing

therapy and how it works, and who can benefit from this form of therapy. So I guess my first

question is: What is writing therapy?

Soul: If it’s fine with my colleagues I would like to explain that,” Writing therapy, is otherwise

described in the literature as ‘expressive (emotional) disclosure’, ‘expressive writing’, or ’written

disclosure therapy.” It might also have, the” potential to heal mentally and physically.”(Soul and

John, 2012) In other words, writing therapy is a therapy technique where people just write out

their feelings. In order to process the situation that is causing them stress. When they have

processed the situation it becomes easier to open up about the stressful situation and find a

way to overcome the situation.

John: I completely agree with you, Soul. I would also like to give out a popular theory that could

explain how writing therapy can work. Writing therapy work because writing helps the brain

reason, realize, and process traumatic events, in a way that the brain can register the events, in

a different way. ”(Soul and John 2012)

Albert: I also agree with this theory that writing activates the person into processing the

traumatic memories since a lot of people who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress will use writing

therapy as an alternative if they do not respond to any other therapy. And for the viewers, post-

traumatic stress is a mental condition that people who have experienced or witnessed traumatic
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events, remember the traumatic experience when a triggering reminder happens. A triggering

reminder could be an action smell or even a sound. It all depends on the person and what

happened in their experience.

(Arnold,Albert, and Jan 2012)

Arnold: That is right, in our studies that we have been researching by pulling articles that fit

within our criteria about how writing helps post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We pulled

these experiments to come up with a clear conclusion: if writing therapy does help people with

PTSD. There have been experiments where people that suffer from post-traumatic stress, are

made to write about their experiences and the other group does not, but in both of the groups

they do fill out surveys about their experiences and how it made them feel. As for the group that

has to do the writing they have to answer more questions about how the writing made them feel.

Based on this we have come to the conclusion that the ” face-to-face writing therapy seemed

equally effective to TFCBT. ” (Arnold, Albert, and Jan 2012) And just to explain to our lovely

audience what TFCBT is, it’s just talking about face-to-face cognitive behavior therapy which is

also very commonly used with PSTD patients. So we can conclude that writing therapy is just as

helpful to people who are doing therapy with a therapist in real life. This conclusion can be

helpful to people who do not yet feel comfortable with face-to-face cognitive behavior therapy.

Since face-to-face cognitive behavior therapy is similar to writing therapy, the main difference is

that in cognitive behavior therapy, you are talking to a therapist about the situation causing the

stressor instead of writing it down.

Ha: I agree with you Arnold, but I would also like to say that post-traumatic stress patients aren’t

the only ones that benefit from writing therapy, people who are survivors of sexual abuse can

also use writing therapy to feel less shame. Since, ” shame, which occurs through a marred
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sense of the self, it’s another common symptom caused by sexual abuse.” (Ha, Bae, and Hyun,

2012)

Bae: That is right based on our experiment in which we had people that volunteered, who

unfortunately went through sexual abuse, it showed that the people that were doing the writing

felt less shame and guilt for what had happened to them. We did the procedure like this, ”

Participants were divided into the FT group and the control group.

Sarah: Sorry to interrupt but before you move on, I would like to explain to everyone listening

that an FT group is a group of people that were having the writing therapy program.

Bae: Why thank you Sarah for the wonder FT group explanation. I sometimes get too excited

about the work that I forget to explain the terminology. Now back to explaining the project. The

FT group participated in four writing sessions that lasted for an average of two weeks. The

control group did not participate in the writing session and only responded to the pre-and post-

task questionnaires at two-week intervals. During the first session, the FT group was informed

of the details of the program and completed the consent form indicating that they thoroughly

understood the program and their participation was fully voluntary. Afterward, they completed a

questionnaire in approximately 15 minutes. The forgiveness-writing program consisted of four

30-minute sessions. Directions were provided on the top of the writing sheet in each session.

The writing sessions were guided by a trained clinical psychologist and additional treatment was

provided after the program for those who requested.” (HA, Bae, and Hyun, 2012)
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Hyun: Exactly Bae. The “results indicated that the reduction of shame was significant in the FT

group.” (HA, Bae, and Hyun 2012) And also that the “ results indicated that the reduction of

depression was significant in the FT group.” (HA, Bae, and Hyun, 2012) So these results help

prove that writing therapy helps lower depression and negative feelings associated with

stressful situations. One of the reasons that it helps lower depression and negative feelings is

that writing therapy helps the person work out their thoughts and feeling about the situation and

also eases the memories of the traumatic events. This is very ideal for people that would like to

move on from past events and move on with their life. For example, the people who have dealt

with sexual abuse and have developed PTSD from the situation.

Bae: Yes, I guess that the main takeaway from all of this so far is that writing therapy helps

people who write out their feelings to help them feel better about the situation that has

happened. People that deal with PTSD or traumatic situation benefit greatly from this form of

therapy.

Sarah: Okay, now that we have an understanding of what is writing therapy and who it can help

the most. My next question is can anyone else other than people who have PTSD or have gone

through sexual abuse use writing therapy?

James: Going back to Ha and what he said earlier that many other people can benefit from

writing therapy. Even college students can use writing therapy, to help them improve their

grades and even their writing skills. Since,” people who benefited from writing began with poorly

organized descriptions and progressed to coherent stones by the last day of writing” (James,

1997) Through our observations, we have seen that people that have poor writing skills, and

that have started writing therapy have greatly improved their writing skills and their organization

skills, since they are writing for long periods of time.

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Jan: This observation goes to show that anyone can use writing therapy. Since it is an easy and

beneficial way to express your feelings. It is as simple as just opening up the Notes app on your

phone and starting to rant about your day, good or bad. Or if you prefer to actually write keep a

journal and write at night about things that have happened throughout the day. It doesn’t have to

be all about the bad things that happen, you can also include the good thing that happen. To

make you feel even more grateful for the good things that have happened. If you are someone

who struggles to express emotions with people writing therapy is beneficial. Because it is just

you and the paper, you have control over what you want to write, and as you grow more

comfortable with your feeling. It will become easier to express yourself and your feelings to

other and yourself.

Sarah: Well isn’t that all very informative? Before our guests leave I want to thank them again.

Everyone at the same time: Thank you for having us.

Sarah: Before we go, I would like to give an overall view of everything that we have talked about

today. Some of the main points mentioned today were how writing therapy helps, post-traumatic

stress patients, as well as people who are survivors of sexual abuse. But they are not the only

ones that writing therapy can help. As mentioned before students and people who generally

have a hard time expressing their feelings, can also benefit from writing therapy. Well, folks,

that’s all the time that we have for this episode. I hope that everyone has enjoyed this episode.

Join us next week to discuss social anxiety and how to overcome it.

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Citations

Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Apa PsycNet. American Psychological Association. Vol. 8, No.3 pg

162-167 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1997-06306-006

Soul Mugerwa, and John D Holden (2012) Debate & Analysis Writing Therapy: a New Tool for

general, British Journal of General Practice, pg 661- 663,https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp12X659457

Arnold A.P. van Emmerik a Albert Reijntjes b Jan H. Kamphuis (2013), Writing Therapy for

Posttraumatic Stress: A Meta-Analysis, pg 82-88, Physiotherapy and Psychosomatics,

2013;82:82–88, https://doi-org.proxy.library.ucsb.edu/10.1159/000343131

Neul Ha, Sung-Man Bae & Myoung-Ho Hyun, (2019) The effect of forgiveness writing therapy

on posttraumatic growth in survivors of sexual abuse, Vol 34, No. 1 Pg10-22, 10-22,

https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2017.1327712