Blogging as therapy

I had an interesting lecture today (yes, even psychology students have lectures occasionally) which I thought was quite relevant to our discussion of whether to continue blogging...

The lecture was all about social emotions and the communication of emotion. We learnt about how and why when we experience emotional events we feel the need to share our experiences with others ( females tend to tell anyone who will listen, males will ususally own share their emotions with a very close friend) and the benefits there can be from doing this. Studies conducted - for example by Pennebaker et al (1990) - have shown that getting people to write about their negative emotional experiences has several benefits, including:

• boosting immune system activity
• benefiting physical health
• improving academic performance

There is controversy about why writing has such dramatic effects, perhaps turning a chaotic emotional experience into a narrative form increases insight and self-understanding, or perhaps it increases one's sense of personal control over a situation.

The obvious conclusion is keep blogging! It would be both physically and psychologically costly for us to stop doing so. (However a purely offloading of our negative emotional experiences may be quite depressing for our readers, so perhaps sharing a few positive experiences every now and then may be a good thing too.)

Mim xx