Coping With Cancer Through Healing Words
The Benefits of Writing Therapy While Recovering from Illness
Oct 18, 2009
In 2003, David Sumrell was diagnosed with inocular melanoma, an unusually aggressive and fatal disease that attacks the eye. Doctors placed radioactive plagues behind his left eye. It was a procedure that seemed to be successful at the time. However, a year later, he returned to the hospital; the cancer had spread from his eye to both liver and lungs. He had stage four melanoma – literally a kiss of death, as no known treatment was available to help him.
It was at this point that Sumrell told God he was ready to die; but, if he were given the opportunity to live just a bit longer, Sumrell vowed that he would write three books in the Lord's honor.
Six months later and well into his second book, Sumrell made another trip to the hospital. There, his surgeon told him the surprising news : the X-rays were negative; there was no evidence of cancer in his body.
What cured David Sumrell?
Sumrell believes he was cured by healing words. Research shows that writing about inner fears and anxiety can change the way patients think about their illness and help them initiate decisions and actions that improve their quality of life.
What is Writing Therapy?
A form of journal writing, writing therapy allows cancer patients to verbalize his deepest fears and thoughts regarding cancer. In the process of jotting down his anxiety and terror, the writer moves away from the role of "victim" or "enemy," as they adopt the role of a creator.
Julia Cameron puts this transformation most succinctly in her book, The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life (New York: Putnam, 1998). Through healing words, one "[metabolizes] the injury into art." For this reason, she claims that "writing is medicine....Writing allows us to rewrite our lives."
What Research Demonstrates about Healing Words
Evidence abounds showing a direct relationship between words and healing. James Pennebaker, professor of Psychology and author of Writing to Heal: A Guided Journal for Recovering from Trauma and Emotional Upheaval ( Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications), is a pioneer in the study of expressive writing as an avenue towards healing. His research suggests that simply verbalizing life challenges can have a positive effect on health.
The reason is that putting the experience into words allows one to understand the traumatic events that happen in life. Writing makes the difficult experience tangible; even if one does not arrive at a solution, the process of putting the experience into words contains it. In this process of containment, healing begins.
Pennebaker has also observed that words allow patients to structure their experience into a story, providing a coherent framework for what has been a life-shattering event. Often, this kind of story-telling is accompanied by a change in perspectives. In the process of structuring their narrative framework, patients experience self-discovery and healing.
In his research, Pennebaker has found that patients who write about their illness feel less depressed and anxious, they visit their doctors less frequently, sleep better and experience positive changes in their immune functions. He also maintains that expressing trauma has been part of healing rituals in virtually all cultures.
Research at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center
Another research study conducted by Nancy P. Morgan at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center showed that one twenty-minute expressive writing exercise produced significant changes in cancer patients. Seventy-one leukemia or lymphoma patients were asked to write about the changes they had experienced with cancer and how they felt about these changes. Most of the patients wrote about feelings regarding family, spirituality, work and thoughts about the future.
Fifty-four percent of these patients reported that the writing therapy exercise changed their thoughts about their illness; thirty-eight percent reported that writing changed the way they felt about their illness. These changes in attitudes were also significantly correlated with reports of better quality of life at ensuing follow-ups.
If illness is caused by a sense of separation, writing re-establishes the lost connection between man`s inner and outer selves. Writing healing words allows the exiled aspects of one`s psyche to return to the collective self. It is this return to coherence that is thought to generate healing in the body.
 |
