Expressive writing can get you rid of those feelings of worry and anxiety
Do you often find yourself extremely worried and anxious? The secret to improving your condition lies in a quite simple task. A recent study has confirmed the findings of a previous research, and indicates that expressing your feelings through writing can help you relieve stress, and stop it from preventing you from performing everyday tasks.
Unfortunately, many people are facing the unending problem of worrying about things that haven’t happened yet, and some of them might not even take place. Although it doesn’t look like something serious, such unnecessary worrying might lead to the development of anxiety disorders, which can really affect one’s health.
Now, researchers from Michigan State University have discovered what people can to do to ease their minds, and relieve stress. In a study published in the journal Psychophysiology, they highlighted the benefits of writing about feelings of worry and anxiety. Apart from making people feel better and less stressed, it can even help them carry out simple tasks and get better results.
The first scientific evidence in favor of expressive writing
All this neural evidence shows how beneficial it is for a person to keep a diary. To collect this evidence, researchers had a few anxious college students perform a simple task on the computer, which could measure how quick they could react and how accurate they were in solving the task.
Before they had to do this, some of the participants had to write about what they did during the day. At the same time, the others had to put down all their feelings. During the task, all groups showed the same quickness, but the second one was more efficient. Researchers performed an electroencephalography on each of the participants, and revealed the second group used fewer brain resources to perform the task.
Jason Moser, one of the researchers, made an interesting comparison related to the performance of the group who used writing to relieve stress.
“Here, worried college students who wrote about their worries were able to offload these worries and run more like a brand new Prius.”
Therefore, this is the first scientific evidence which supports writing as a therapeutic means, a way to relieve stress, and to assure better performance in regular tasks.
Image Source: Pexels
