Why Writing About Hard Things Heals — And the Small Shift That Helps

I have been thinking about journaling for a long time. Not as a hobby. As a question.

When something hard happens, I go back to the page. Most people I know do something like this. Some write. Some talk. Some run. The page is mine. And every time I sit down with a hard thing, I notice the same thing — by the end, the thing is smaller. Not gone. Smaller.

For a long time I thought this was just a feeling. Then I started reading the research.

It turns out that writing about hard things has been studied for over thirty years. The original work came from a researcher named James Pennebaker in the mid-1980s. He asked people to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about painful events for fifteen to twenty minutes, a few days in a row. Then he watched what happened. People who wrote about hard things had fewer doctor visits months later (Pennebaker & Beall, 1986). They reported less stress. Their immune systems looked stronger.

This was a strange result. Writing is not medicine. But the data kept coming.

A big review in 2006 pulled together 146 studies on this kind of writing (Frattaroli, 2006). The effect was small but real. Writing about hard things helped, on average, across many kinds of people and many kinds of struggle. A more recent review of journaling for mental health, looking at 31 different studies, found that about 7 in 10 of them showed clear benefits — less anxiety, less depression, fewer trauma symptoms (Sohal et al., 2022).

The Question I Find Interesting

So journaling works. That part is settled enough.

What I find interesting now is a different question. Not whether writing helps, but how. And what to do when it does not feel like it is helping. Because I have had those days too. Days when writing about something hard just makes the hard thing louder. Days when I close the notebook feeling worse than when I opened it.

I used to think this meant I was doing it wrong. Or that journaling was not for me on those days.

Now I think something different. I think the page can do many things. And the way you write, on a hard day, might matter as much as whether you write at all.

A few months ago, I came across a 2025 study from researchers in Shanghai and Oxford that looked at this question (Zhou et al., 2025). They worked with bereaved people — people carrying the heaviest kind of writing prompt. The kind of grief that does not lift on its own.

What they found was simple and small. The act of writing helped. And one tiny shift inside the writing — a shift you could miss if you were not looking — helped even more.

The Bridge

The next chapter walks through what they actually did. Three studies, real method, careful design. The findings are not dramatic. They are quiet. But they pointed me toward something I had not noticed before about my own writing.

References

Frattaroli, J. (2006). Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 823–865.

Pennebaker, J. W., & Beall, S. K. (1986). Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(3), 274–281.

Sohal, M., Singh, P., Dhillon, B. S., & Gill, H. S. (2022). Efficacy of journaling in the management of mental illness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Family Medicine and Community Health, 10(1), e001154.

Zhou, N., Ren, F., Cao, C., She, Z., Smith, K. V., & Xi, J. (2025). Can self-distancing benefit adjustment to bereavement? A multi-method investigation. Social Science & Medicine, 367, 117743.

What the New Research Actually Found

The study I have been thinking about is by a team of researchers in China and the UK (Zhou et al., 2025). It came out in February 2025 in a journal called Social Science & Medicine. Three connected studies, all looking at the same question — does the way we reflect on grief change how we carry it?

A small note before the details. The researchers worked with bereaved people. Specifically, adults who had lost a close family member or partner in the last five years and were still struggling. About 1 in 10 people who lose a loved one to natural causes will develop what is called prolonged grief disorder — a kind of grief that does not soften on its own and gets in the way of normal life (Djelantik et al., 2020). For people whose loss came suddenly or violently, the rate is closer to half. This is who the research is for.

Study One: A Survey of 207 People

The first study was just a careful survey. The team asked 207 bereaved adults about their grief, and about how they tended to think about their loss. Did they relive it as if they were back in the moment? Or did they observe it from a small distance, like a witness watching themselves?

The pattern was clear. People who naturally observed their grief from a small distance reported less severe grief symptoms. They also reported less grief rumination — the loop of repetitive, stuck thoughts about the loss, the unfairness of it, what could have been different (Eisma & Stroebe, 2017).

This was not new. An earlier study with bereaved children and teenagers had found something similar (Kaplow et al., 2018). Kids who used more distancing language when talking about their loss had fewer symptoms of trauma. The 2025 paper just added more weight to a pattern that researchers had been noticing for a while.

Study Two: One Quiet Sitting

The second study was a lab experiment with 45 people. Half were asked to recall their loss as if reliving it. The other half were asked to step back and observe themselves at that moment, from a small distance.

The people who observed themselves felt fewer negative emotions afterward. The people who relived the loss did not feel worse on the negative side, but they felt fewer positive ones too — the warm memories dimmed along with the painful ones.

I want to be careful here. This was one short session, with only 45 people. The effect was real but small. But it lined up with what other researchers had found. A 2015 study with veterans carrying trauma showed something similar. When the veterans reflected on their hardest memories from a small distance, their bodies showed less stress — slower heart rates, calmer breathing — than when they relived the moment (Wisco et al., 2015). The body, somehow, knows the difference.

Study Three: Three Days of Writing

The third study is the one that stayed with me.

The team worked with 31 people who were all carrying severe grief. Each person was asked to write for fifteen minutes a day, three days in a row, about their bereavement. Half wrote in the first person — I felt, I remember, I cannot believe. Half wrote in the third person, using their own name or he/she — Anna felt, Anna remembers, Anna cannot believe.

This was the same writing protocol that an earlier study had used (Park et al., 2016). In that earlier work, the effects of just three days of writing lasted up to six months.

Here is what happened in the new study. Both groups felt better. Both groups reported lower grief symptoms after the three days. Writing helped. Both kinds of writing helped.

But only the third-person group also broke free of the rumination loop. The same loop the survey had picked up in study one. When grief was looping, writing in the third person seemed to give people a way out of the loop that first-person writing did not.

The Bridge

This is the part that I keep returning to. Both kinds of writing helped people feel less grief. But only one of them quieted the loop. The next chapter is about why that small difference matters — and why I think it points to something true about reflection itself.

References

Djelantik, A. A. A. M. J., Smid, G. E., Mroz, A., Kleber, R. J., & Boelen, P. A. (2020). The prevalence of prolonged grief disorder in bereaved individuals following unnatural losses: Systematic review and meta-regression analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 265, 146–156.

Eisma, M. C., & Stroebe, M. S. (2017). Rumination following bereavement: An overview. Bereavement Care, 36(2), 58–64.

Kaplow, J. B., Wardecker, B. M., Layne, C. M., Kross, E., Burnside, A., Edelstein, R. S., & Prossin, A. R. (2018). Out of the mouths of babes: Links between linguistic structure of loss narratives and psychosocial functioning in parentally bereaved children. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 31(3), 342–351.

Park, J., Ayduk, Ö., & Kross, E. (2016). Stepping back to move forward: Expressive writing promotes self-distancing. Emotion, 16(3), 349–364.

Wisco, B. E., Marx, B. P., Sloan, D. M., Gorman, K. R., Kulish, A. L., & Pineles, S. L. (2015). Self-distancing from trauma memories reduces physiological but not subjective emotional reactivity among Veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder. Clinical Psychological Science, 3(6), 956–963.

Zhou, N., Ren, F., Cao, C., She, Z., Smith, K. V., & Xi, J. (2025). Can self-distancing benefit adjustment to bereavement? A multi-method investigation. Social Science & Medicine, 367, 117743.

I keep returning to the difference between two kinds of thinking.

There is a kind of thinking that goes deeper into the hurt. You picture the moment again. You hear the voice. You feel the chest tighten. The thinking is honest, and the feeling is real, but the thinking is not moving anywhere. It just keeps tightening.

Researchers who study this have a name for it. They call it rumination — the loop of repetitive thought that goes over the same ground without finding new ground (Watkins, 2008). Rumination feels like reflection. It is not. It is more like a record skipping.

Then there is another kind of thinking. You picture the same moment, but you are not inside it. You are next to it. You can see yourself there. You notice things you did not notice when you were in it. You ask different questions. The thinking moves.

This second kind has a name too. The researchers Ethan Kross and Özlem Ayduk have spent more than fifteen years studying it. They call it self-distancing — looking at your own experience from a small step back, like a friend would (Kross & Ayduk, 2017). When people reflect on hard moments from this small distance, they ruminate less. They problem-solve more. They feel less reactive to the same memory weeks and months later (Ayduk & Kross, 2010).

The Pronoun Trick

The strange thing the research keeps finding is that you do not need much to make this shift.

A pronoun is enough.

When you write I am furious about a fight, you are inside the fight. When you write Sulabh is furious about the same fight, you are next to him. The fight is still there. The fury is still there. But you have stepped back just a little. You can see the whole picture. You can ask why he is so furious. You can wonder if he is also tired, or hungry, or scared.

A 2023 study showed that this kind of small linguistic distancing reduces rumination across many situations, not just grief (Orvell et al., 2023). The earlier work that started this whole line of research found that people in distancing mode showed less reactive emotion, slower heart rates, and clearer thinking when handling charged topics (Kross & Ayduk, 2010).

It is a strange finding. But I think it makes sense if you sit with it.

Two Modes of Memory

There is a theory in the trauma research literature about why this works. Some memories are field memories — you are inside them, looking out through your own eyes. Others are observer memories — you can see yourself in them, like watching from outside (Brewin, 2015).

Field memories carry more emotion. The body responds. The chest tightens. Observer memories carry less. The body breathes.

For most warm memories — a wedding, a child laughing, a quiet morning — field is the right mode. You want to be inside it. You want to feel the full feeling.

For some hard memories — a loss that loops, a fight that replays, a regret that will not settle — observer mode might be a kinder place to do the work.

The pronoun shift is one of the simplest ways to nudge a memory from field to observer. That is what I keep coming back to.

What I Notice About My Own Writing

I have started paying attention to the pronouns in my own journal.

When I write I am angry, I am tired, I am sad, the writing keeps me inside the feeling. Sometimes that is what I want. To be inside it. To feel it fully.

But there are some things I have been writing about for years that have not moved. Loops I know by heart. The same fight. The same regret. The same fear.

For those, I notice now, I might not be the right word. The page can hold them differently if I let it.

The Bridge

The next chapter is about what this means in practice. Not as a rule. Not as a fix. As a small option you can keep in your back pocket on the days when the page feels heavier than usual.

References

Ayduk, Ö., & Kross, E. (2010). From a distance: Implications of spontaneous self-distancing for adaptive self-reflection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(5), 809–829.

Brewin, C. R. (2015). Re-experiencing traumatic events in PTSD: New avenues in research on intrusive memories and flashbacks. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 6, 27180.

Kross, E., & Ayduk, Ö. (2010). From a distance: Spontaneous self-distancing and adaptive self-reflection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(5), 809–829.

Kross, E., & Ayduk, Ö. (2017). Self-distancing: Theory, research, and current directions. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 55, 81–136.

Orvell, A., Vickers, B. D., Drake, B., Verduyn, P., Ayduk, Ö., Moser, J., Jonides, J., & Kross, E. (2021). Does distanced self-talk facilitate emotion regulation across a range of emotionally intense experiences? Clinical Psychological Science, 9(1), 68–78.

Watkins, E. R. (2008). Constructive and unconstructive repetitive thought. Psychological Bulletin, 134(2), 163–206.

Writing About Hard Things Helps

This is the part the research is most clear about. Across decades of studies, on many kinds of struggle, expressive writing helps people feel better (Frattaroli, 2006; Sohal et al., 2022). It is not a cure. It is small and slow. But it is real.

So the first thing is: keep writing. If you have a habit, keep it. If you do not, the research suggests that even short sessions help — fifteen minutes, a few times a week, is enough to start showing up in studies (Pennebaker & Beall, 1986). Five minutes a day, kept up over weeks, builds the same muscle a different way.

This is what Daily5 is for. A small daily writing habit. Something you can do on the train, before bed, in the gap between meetings. The page does not need to be long. It needs to be there.

Most Days, Write the Way You Already Do

For ordinary days — the small frustrations, the warm moments, the things you are noticing — write the way you naturally write. I felt this. I did this. I am wondering about that. That is the honest, full-feeling mode. That is where most of the warmth in journaling comes from.

Anything that asks you to feel what you feel — savoring a good day, sitting with gratitude, working through a small irritation — belongs in this mode. Sol is built for this kind of reflective journaling. Quiet prompts. The page asking you a question you might not have asked yourself.

On the Hardest Days, Try the Small Shift

For the heaviest days — a loss that loops, a regret that will not soften, a fight that replays at 3 a.m. — the 2025 research suggests that one small experiment is worth trying.

Use your name. Or he/she. Write about yourself the way you might write about a friend going through the same thing.

Sulabh has been thinking about this for two days. He is tired. He keeps returning to the same moment.

That is a different sentence than I have been thinking about this for two days. Both are true. They sit in the body differently. The research suggests that on a heavy day, the second one — the one with your own name — might give the part of you that is hurting a little room to breathe (Park et al., 2016; Travers-Hill et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2025).

You do not have to do it. But you can. It is one option in the toolkit.

A Caveat I Want to Be Honest About

If you are reading this and any of it resonates, please remember that this is not therapeutic guidance. It is a reflection on research, written from outside the clinic looking in. If grief or prolonged sadness is something you recognize in yourself, especially if it is severe or persistent, the people qualified to help with it are mental health professionals. A journal is a good companion. It is not a replacement.

What I Am Taking From This

I am not changing my whole practice based on a single study. The research on grief and self-distancing is still small. The samples are small. The effects are real but modest.

But I am taking something. The next time I sit down to write about something that has been looping in my head, I want to try writing about myself the way I would write about a friend. Just to see what happens. Just to give the loop one more chance to soften.

Most days, I is the right word. Some days, my own name might be kinder. Both are journaling. Both are the practice.

The page has been there for a long time. The research is just catching up to what writers have known for centuries.

Keep writing.

References

Frattaroli, J. (2006). Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 823–865.

Park, J., Ayduk, Ö., & Kross, E. (2016). Stepping back to move forward: Expressive writing promotes self-distancing. Emotion, 16(3), 349–364.

Pennebaker, J. W., & Beall, S. K. (1986). Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(3), 274–281.

Sohal, M., Singh, P., Dhillon, B. S., & Gill, H. S. (2022). Efficacy of journaling in the management of mental illness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Family Medicine and Community Health, 10(1), e001154.

Travers-Hill, E., Dunn, B. D., Hoppitt, L., Hitchcock, C., & Dalgleish, T. (2017). Beneficial effects of training in self-distancing and perspective broadening for people with a history of recurrent depression. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 95, 19–28.

Zhou, N., Ren, F., Cao, C., She, Z., Smith, K. V., & Xi, J. (2025). Can self-distancing benefit adjustment to bereavement? A multi-method investigation. Social Science & Medicine, 367, 117743.