In grief, trauma, and loss, remember to home in on the good stuff.If you’ve taken my classes or followed my blog posts about essay writing, you’ve probably heard me talk about James Pennebaker. His writing exercises make an appearance in almost every course I teach — for good reason. Many of my students discover they can access subconscious memories by saturating their mind with painful and traumatic memories for days at a time.
The Pennebaker Prescription: Write about a trauma, heartache, loss, or whatever issue, gripe or grief that is preventing you from moving forward in your life. But don’t just do it once. Linger on the subject for 20-minutes on four consecutive days. With Pennebaker, we’re advised to sit in our own shit until the charge lessens.
I’ve used Pennebaker’s exercise for years, not only for healing but also in my essay writing, as a means of accessing memories that have lain dormant for decades. Fast forward to 2020: I’m wondering if there’s another, less painful way to gain invaluable insights.
Toward the end of last year, I began researching a story about “grief brain” for an upcoming issue of Discover Magazine. I interviewed Helen Marlo, Ph.D., Professor and Chair in the Department of Clinical Psychology at Notre Dame de Namur University. More than a decade ago, she published research suggesting that writing happy memories, gratitudes, and uplifting character sketches of loved ones who have hurt or left us can be even more healing than trying to write our way through trauma. And it makes logical sense. Countless studies extol the virtues of counting our blessings, making gratitude lists, and focusing on the positive.
Purging Pain
I was 20 when I first experienced a breakup. I remember reading a book about how to get over an ex. The tenets and exercises seemed ridiculous – things like imagine kissing your ex after he bathed in vomit, picture the person growing warts all over his chest that sting when you touch them, and make yourself believe your “beloved” tortured baby animals. The truth is, I don’t recall the specific exercises, but you get the gist. The idea, of course, was to train your brain to link this person you couldn’t seem to shake with the ugly, disgusting, and grotesque.
It’s the classic “Antabuse” drug for toxic human relationships. And it works. Turns out people become a whole lot less attractive when you attach them to repulsive thoughts and emotions. That’s essentially what Pennebaker asks us to do with trauma: re-live every horrifically shitty detail of our pain so we can hopefully purge it from our psyche.
If you’re writing an essay about trauma, Pennebaker’s approach probably leads to a more detailed, nuanced essay, but I suspect it also amplifies pain and suffering. Since my dad died, I have been writing almost obsessively about the 16 months between his angiogram on January 11, 2016 and his ultimate demise on May 14, 2018.
I have re-lived every horrible, unthinkable moment, from the visit when he thought my name was “Richard” to the horrible death rattle that played on a loop for hours before he died. I have chronicled what it was like to watch my personal hero wither away and die. I have committed to memory every wrinkle in his crepe-paper thin skin, every ball of ear wax so unwieldy it took more than a handful of Q-tips to fish it out safely, and every hacking, retching cough. The rub: In the process, I also forgot (or at least failed to recall) some of the good stuff.
So you can imagine how excited I was when Marlo offered me a much more palatable alternative. What if, instead of dissecting every detail of each harrowing moment, I shifted that same energy toward re-living the joyful memories?
Marlo isn’t the only expert touting this approach. David Kessler, grief researcher and author of Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief says that the brain is like Velcro for traumatic memories and Teflon for the sweet moments. The task then is to focus your mind on the things you want to remember so the good stuff can stick (more like Velcro).
“At first, a lot of people who are grieving struggle with this,” Kessler says. “They can’t even come up with one really great memory, and certainly not with any level of detail.” But over time and with intention, they can remember one, then two, then thousands of precious moments.
At this stage in the game, I’m much better equipped to home in on the sweet stuff, to begin “watering the garden I want to grow” as Kessler calls it. So instead of taking the Pennebaker approach, I started a “dad journal” of precious moments. For four days straight, and 20 minutes at a stretch, I searched the dark recesses of my mind for details that make me remember dad as my superman. Guess what? I feel better! And that, my friends, will be the topic for the next reported essay I pitch.
Happy writing folks!
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