Take that, therapists: journaling after a breakup makes it harder to move on, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Arizona thought that particularly “ruminative” patients could benefit from writing out all of their feelings in explicit detail like a 14-year-old LiveJournal poet. (More on those in a sec.) So they asked ninety recently divorced or separated men and women to journal for 20 minutes a day, over three consecutive days. From The Atlantic Health channel:
Some of them were instructed to “really let go and explore your very deepest emotions and thoughts;” others were asked to record the tale of their failed marriage as a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Those remaining kept an opinion and emotion-free log of their daily activities. The researchers assessed the participants’ emotional baselines before the journal-thon began, and then followed up 8 months later.
The researchers were shocked to find that the participants who were the most “ruminative” and “were judged to be actively engaged in the search for meaning,” (read: philosophers or neurotic?) actually made the least progress getting over the past when told to rehash it through journaling. But then when they really thought about it (maybe they journaled about it?), it made sense.
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