Opening Up by Writing It Down

By James W. Pennebaker, Joshua M. Smyth,

Book cover of Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain

Book description

Expressing painful emotions is hard--yet it can actually improve our mental and physical health. This lucid, compassionate book has introduced tens of thousands of readers to expressive writing, a simple yet powerful self-help technique grounded in scientific research. Leading experts James W. Pennebaker and Joshua M. Smyth describe how taking…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Opening Up by Writing It Down as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Dr. Pennebaker describes writing as a mechanism for wellness – highlighting the power of prose in solving puzzles, bringing secrets into the light, as we seek to understand ourselves and others.

Keeping secrets, according to Pennebaker, is physical work with negative implications (often across a lifetime) potentially impacting long-term physical and mental health due to stress.

I’ve returned to Opening Up by Writing it Down many times in my career in order to tap into the wisdom to write about my mother’s complicated life and to better understand the pain she carried into her adult years. It’s a terrific tool…

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Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

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