The Pros And Cons Of Expressive Writing

Flaws of Expressive Writing
Scientific studies have steadily demonstrated that expressive writing, or writing about one’s emotional state of mind, can have many benefits regarding one’s health (as cited in Freda & Martino, 2015). But does it for everyone? Is expressive writing really such a valuable tool in dealing with traumatic events?
Several studies show that expressive writing can have some limitations. Freda and Martino (2015) examined whether expressive writing could help parents of children with leukemia cope with such a serious illness. The study assessed the psychological states of the parents numerous times. Freda and Martino (2015) found that expressive writing mainly worked for parents who indicated “a good psychological outcome (GPO)” (p. 351). On the other hand, the researchers discovered that the caregivers with a “low psychological outcome (LPO)” did not profit from expressive writing (Freda and Martino, 2015, p.351). Freda and Martino (2015) found that, “The LPO parents showed severe distress at baseline, which only worsened after their writing. Narration did not lead them to transform their traumatic experiences; it did not function as a stimulus to build a new event framework” (Freda & Martino, 2015, p. 356). Hence, expressive writing seems to not be beneficial

for everyone.
Another study, by Smyth, Hockemeyer, and Tulloch (2008), examined the effects of expressive writing on individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Smyth et al. (2008) found that while participants were in a better mood post expressive writing, they did not indicate an improvement in PTSD symptoms. Thus, expressive writing was not helpful in assisting with the specific PTSD related issues.
A study by Stockton, Joseph, and Hunt (2014) can furthermore offer some insights into the limitations of expressive writing.

Stockton et al. (2014) aimed to find out whether expressive writing could lead to posttraumatic growth. This concept refers to the positive psychological improvements that individuals can experience when working on processing trauma (as cited in Stockton et al., 2014). These researchers found that while expressive writing could lead to considerable progress in posttraumatic growth, it did not lessen the disturbing thoughts that are associated with traumatic experiences (Stockton et al., 2014). Again, this demonstrates that expressive writing has

restrictions.
The above mentioned studies should be regarded with caution as they all have some methodological issues. All these studies had small sample sizes. Freda and Martino (2015) only included 23 participants, Smyth et al. (2008) involved 25 individuals, and Stockton et al. (2014) merely incorporated 24 people. Furthermore, the study by Stockton et al. (2014) contained mostly females between 19 and 63 years old. This sample was biased towards one gender and had a very large age range. The research by Smyth et al. (2008) on the other hand was imperfect because all writing sessions were done within a day. This brings to mind whether their conclusions are convincing, since only one day of writing might not be effective.
Nonetheless, while expressive writing seems to have certain flaws and limitations, it is still a useful tool in many ways. However, more research needs to be done to account for the flaws associated with this technique.