CHICAGO (Reuters) – Brain scientists are starting to understand something poets, songwriters and diarists have long known: putting feelings into words helps ease the mind.
“It is a pretty well-established finding that this occurs, but we don’t know why,” Matthew Lieberman of the University of California, Los Angeles, said on Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.
“When you put feelings into words, you are turning on the same regions in the brain that are involved in emotional self-control,” Lieberman said.
“It regulates distress,” said Lieberman, who studies the brain using technology known as functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI, which highlights brain regions as they become active.
Lieberman’s findings are based on studies in which healthy subjects lie in an MRI machine and view emotionally evocative pictures, such as scared or angry faces. Study participants touch a button corresponding to a word that expresses that emotion.
When study subjects put feelings into words in this way, the researchers noted increased brain activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain region known for dampening negative emotions.
At the same time, they saw decreases in activity in the amygdala, the brain machinery responsible for processing feelings about relationships and emotions like fear, rage and aggression.
Lieberman said this may explain why many teenagers and others take up pen and paper when they are filled with angst.
“I think it certainly could play a role in why people of any age write diaries or bad lyrics to songs,” he said.
“That is certainly a possibility.”
Lieberman said he is now doing studies to see how putting words into feelings might help people who fear spiders or have anxiety disorders.
What I want to know is: how much difference would it make if you thought another person was hearing you/reading you? In other words, is it simply the action of forming the words (I think that’s what they’re trying to say) or would the effect be amplified by communicating the emotion, feeling heard? After all, this is, to some degree, what much talk therapy is based upon. But, ooh, wouldn’t it be interesting if the therapist simply didn’t matter?
I wrote bad poetry as a teen–but I gave it to my girlfriend. I don’t know if I would have bothered if I thought no one would see it. When I write these days, it’s for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s to answer a question (Slow River, Always, The Blue Place), sometimes it’s to have a blast with story and explore a world (Ammonite, Hild), sometimes it’s to play with a nifty notion (“Yaguara”). And I expect, intend and believe that all my fiction will one day be read–and enjoyed. It’s for me, first, but then, dear readers, for you. A gift.
But nonfiction is more complicated. There’s this blog, for example. It’s a gift, too: a thank you for being my readers. It’s also an experiment in community building. And, hmmn, okay, yes, very occasionally it’s a way to vent (all those rants–see sidebar for some of my favourites).
But the essays, what are they for? They’re not rants. I don’t get paid for them. (Or not usually.) They don’t soothe my emotions. They don’t answer questions. They do, however, help me organise my thoughts. And at some point soon I want to find time to write an essay about reading–the biochemistry and neurophysiology of it, the difference between reading non-fiction on the screen and reading novels, the fate of civilisation… But not today. Today I have to go play with Hild, then work some more on my chemical lurve movie outline.
Meanwhile, the sun is shining. Birds are singing. Life is good. May you all have a perfectly fabulous day.
Nicola Griffith 
My theory: writing is like dreaming. Putting your brain in order. Processing. Defraging.
Maybe that’s why, when full of worry about one thing or another, in the middle of the night, I get up a write something. Often it is email, but sometimes a story fragment.
Would there be a world if there were no words to describe it, form it, create it? Of course there would, but it would not be our world. I love the notion of writing as a kind of mastery, especially of ourselves. And yet when I write something down, especially an expression of my feelings, I always have the frustration of knowing I have left some part of it out. So words are love and power, but not absolute power. And it always is inspiring to test it out with a listener or a reader. I’ll be blunt. I don’t think god created the world. I believe language did.
Writing is the cure. Cure to what, I don’t know. It’s the panacea and that’s enough.
This was really fascinating. Perhaps this question is more than slightly off-topic, but have any of you had an idea you think is brand new, only to realize that it’s real, talked about and studied?A character in my new story has symptoms of cross-wired senses that I thought I made up, only to find that it’s a medical condition called < HREF="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/2/21/144256/437" REL="nofollow">synaesthesia<>.This is partially related to the article in this post because I wonder if it’s possible to have cross-wired senses, then does that have any impact on writing stuff down? My character actually has 25 sense perceptions that make life extraordinarily difficult…but rather than writing, she creates art. I wonder if that release eases the angst she has. So cool!
janine, I’m not sure that synaethesia would influence the emotion/language connection one way or the other. Or have I misunderstood?
It probably doesn’t, but the brain’s complexity seems to make anything possible. Life would be interesting if they did interact in some way, although I can’t imagine how. :)
Janine, what is synaethesia? Sounds fascinating. What gave you the idea?
I wrote a journal entry about some mood i was in and got pretty descriptive. I imagined the character in my book actually having a condition that would make it possible for all her five senses to be cross-wired so she actually experienced 25 of them. Sort of experiencing the world in multiple dimensions.I find out today that it’s actually real. I think I linked to a description of it in my first comment above. You should check it out–it’s really amazing stuff.
Interesting.I never kept a journal or anything in my youth. I wish I had. I wasn’t much for talking to people either. Still am not a big talker actually. But I did write some letters in the latter part of high school and later that I mostly never mailed.And now I write emails. :)I think writing/talking does all of the things you mention – soothing emotions, organizing thoughts. And that organization can lead to new perspectives – ideas, solutions, ways of changing.I also think it absolutely does matter if one is heard. It certainly does for me. And it matters if one is heard and understood at the same time. I’ve found that sometimes talking to someone who doesn’t understand what I’m trying to communicate makes me feel worse than before. Regrading the therapist angle: there is a reason people are trained to be therapists; in my experience there is a huge difference in talking to a friend vs a highly trained, objective, (but also) empathetic therapist. You will not convince me that writing accomplishes the same thing as direct human contact. Unless the human is not-so-smart and not-so-empathetic.But maybe I’m just too lazy to write it all down and analyze it on my own – without showing it to anyone.Still I think it is a pretty basic human need — the need to be heard. Connection.So it would be interesting to see that study taken further with the being heard aspect – whether it is written or oral. And the differences in being heard by someone who understands the message, and if that person is also someone who loves (and is loved by) the speaker.Looking forward to your next essay on reading.