Let Me Tell You How I Feel: Writing about Cancer is Therapeutic

I am doing the right thing. Or, I could be clever and say I am doing the write thing. Or that I chose the right rite.  Or I could just get to the point, which is: Writing about your emotions can help improve your physical quality of life after cancer, according to research in the February 2008 issue of the The Oncologist.

Some details:

• 49.1 percent of participants said writing changed the way they thought about their illness;

• 35.2 said writing changed the way they felt about their illness.

Representative quote from a participant: “"I felt a lot calmer and more able to move on after writing about it and being forced to think about it. I loved writing about my experience."

• Those who said writing made them think about their disease differently also reported a better physical quality of life.

• A great majority of the participants wrote that cancer transformed their lives positively, and those writers focused on issues of family, spirituality, work, and the future.

Representative quote from a participant: "Don't get me wrong, cancer isn't a gift, it just showed me what the gifts in my life are."

Interestingly, just writing about the facts did not have any effect.