Disclosing Trauma Through Writing: Testing the Meaning-Making Hypothesis

Cognitive Therapy and Research volume 26, pages597–616(2002)Cite this article

Abstract

Salutary effects of writing about trauma on health are well documented, but little research has directly examined the underlying mechanisms by which these effects occur. The principal study in this article assessed the potential underlying mechanism of meaning-making, defined as changing situational meaning (appraisals of the traumatic experience) and global meaning (world views, personality, and coping styles) in order to reduce the discrepancy between global and situational meaning. Forty-one trauma-writing participants and 21 nontrauma-writing control participants completed 4 days of writing and a 4 month follow-up. Decrements in health were noted for the control group but not for the trauma-writing group. Over time, the trauma-writing group's appraisals changed to reflect less aversive situational meaning (e.g., less stressful, less threatening), and their cognitive processing, reflected by intrusions and avoidance, decreased. Less stressful appraisals and reduced cognitive processing were related to improved health outcomes. Results indicate that writing about trauma facilitates the making of meaning. A second study examined whether scores on several measures used in the first study changed across 4 months without a writing intervention. It was found that these measures did not change across time.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut

    Crystal L. Park

  2. Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Winona State University, Winona, Minnesota

    Carol Joyce Blumberg

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Park, C.L., Blumberg, C.J. Disclosing Trauma Through Writing: Testing the Meaning-Making Hypothesis. Cognitive Therapy and Research 26, 597–616 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020353109229

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  • disclosure
  • meaning-making
  • cognitive processing
  • emotional processing