Musings from the Ozone

It never fails. I put an article on my blog about confession, and now something new comes out to counter-attack the premise. My former article stated: "But if confession is "good for the soul," it is also good for the body. Why? What we hide inside eats us up."

Now, this new article which is on Bottomline's Daily Health News, today, published some research done by: Mark D. Seery, PhD, assistant professor of psychology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. It gives us yet another aspect of talk therapy. Granted, confession is different from talking, and we'll state that there is absolutely a big difference between confessing your faults and airing your feelings about a trauma. The article that will follow this little introduction will explain what talking about your feelings may do to you. (See my other page about what confession can do for you.)

However, where did I read that the more you discuss something or anything, you are doing a type of rehearsal? If your memory will focus on something and verbally repeat the event over and over, it will become embedded as a strong memory in your brain. If you desire to forget something, just quit talking about it. Focus on something else, and eventually--you said it---you will forget the incident. It becomes just too unimportant to think about!

Please continue on now, to the article:

Conventional wisdom has long held that the healthy way to deal with feelings about a trauma -- a collective one, such as a natural disaster or a bombing, or a personal one, such as a terrible accident -- is to talk about it... and talk... and talk. News reports after school shootings and other such tragedies tell how specially trained trauma psychologists flood into the affected area to encourage people to talk through their feeling and fears of what has happened. But a few experts have questioned whether this is really the best way to handle trauma. Perhaps some people don't want to talk about it... and maybe they cope better by keeping their thoughts private.

Now here comes a study concerning responses to the terror attacks of 9/11, with results that may surprise you. Researchers at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, invited 2,138 people, most of whom were not directly exposed to the event, to express their thoughts and feelings on the day of the attack and for several days afterward. Over the next two years the research team did follow-up online inquiries to investigate the correspondents' mental and physical health. They found that on average, those who chose to say little or nothing about their thoughts and feelings concerning the attack were actually better off than the people who talked about it. The measures of their well-being included physician-diagnosed ailments and levels of distress, including feeling helpless and symptoms of nervousness.

The lead author of the study, Mark D. Seery, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at the university, told me that researchers had made a point of recruiting people around the country, not just in New York. "Even just witnessing something this devastating on TV is enough to cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder," he said. While the impact on the trauma was stronger for study participants who lived closest to the site, the pattern of how people handled their feelings and the follow-up physical and mental distress they endured was similar among those who lived far away and those who were in close proximity to the attack.

The message here, says Dr. Seery, is that it is neither better nor worse to talk about feelings following a collective trauma -- most likely, the best choice is to do what feels right to you. "There is no single way to deal with something or one healthy way to respond," he says. Even professionals should be encouraged to respect the innate differences among people, says Dr. Seery. Pressuring a person to talk about a painful trauma can actually be harmful if it makes him or her worry their silence is unhealthy. "People are typically a good judge of what works for them -- if they are not inclined to talk, that is probably their best strategy," he says.

Source: DailyHealthNews@dhn.bottomlinesecrets.com