Benefits of expressive writing

The careful articulation of (their) experiences past, present and future decreases misery related to threat and uncertainty, and increases hope, which people experience when them progress to somewhere they really want to be. When complicated experiences are carefully put into words, the manner in which they are represented in the brain changes. They move from the areas associated with stressful emotion demanding constant physical readiness to the areas associated with detailed comprehension and understanding. This makes articulate people less stressed and more informed about how to be successful now and in the future.

Jordan Peterson

If you’ve had a bad experience at work recently, expressive writing is a good way of mentally processing your situation. Expressive writing is the act of writing freely to express your emotions. It allows you to confront what happened, reduce upset over sensitive issues (e.g., workplace conflict, redundancy, unfair dismissal, bullying) and provide you with a way of releasing tension surrounding the issue. It has been proven to increase the chances of reentering the workforce for people who’ve been laid off. The reason is that writing can help organise your thoughts, structure memories, and essentially make sense of the past. It reduces the weight of uncertainty — even years after traumatic events have occurred. On top of that, it’s said to increase happiness and hope which we experience when making progress towards a goal. That makes sense, right? In addition, it can also help create a coherent narrative of your past — which is obviously helpful when you need to explain your work history or a negative work experience to an employer. Double win!

EXERCISE: write a simple and consistent explanation of where you've come from in your career. If you've had an upsetting or traumatic experience, try expressive writing as a tool to process what you went through.