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Overcoming Trauma Paper

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Expressive Writing as a Helping Mechanism in Overcoming Trauma For the class project I will research the topic of expressive writing in relation to overcoming traumatic experiences. Based on my own experiences I am very interested in expressive writing as a strategy in dealing with and processing traumatic events. Expressive writing is a form of writing in which individuals put their deepest thoughts, emotions, and feelings into words. This can happen in the form of journaling, letter writing, poetry writing, or in any other way that a person chooses to express him or herself. I think I will do a literature review for this project, in order to be able to find out more about this strategy from multiple angles. This topic is very important in that it can be used as a strategy in psychotherapy. Many individuals in this world have experienced some type of trauma during their lives. It is oftentimes very hard to deal with traumatic events but there are certain strategies that can really help to overcome such experiences. Writing in particular can help individuals in that it can be “used as a tool for conducting exposure and facilitating the processing of traumatic memories” (Cummings et al., 2014, p. 1). …show more content…

During my preliminary research about this topic there was a certain name that kept appearing throughout different research articles; J. W. Pennebaker seems to be the leader in the field who invented the technique of expressive writing. Many other researchers have built upon and validated his findings. Cummings et al. (2014) explain that, “Research has consistently documented a positive association between writing about emotional/stressful experiences (e.g., Pennebaker, 1997a) and both physical and mental health” (p.2). Therefore I am eager to find out more about Pennebaker’s original study and technique as well as other research in connection to this

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