Building Resilience Through Reflective Writing: A Simple Exercise with Lasting Impact
Wednesday, August 14, 2024.
Feeling overwhelmed by life's challenges?
A quick and straightforward writing exercise could be just what you need to boost your psychological resilience.
Recent research has shown that spending just 15 minutes a week reflecting on how you've successfully coped with difficult situations can significantly enhance your ability to handle future stress.
A study conducted by Dr. Monique Crane and her colleagues highlights the effectiveness of this approach.
The study recruited over 250 Australian ministry workers, including chaplains, ministers, and pastoral support workers—folks who often confront grief and loss, both during and outside of their regular work hours.
How The Study Was Conducted
Participants were divided into three groups, each tasked with a different writing assignment. One group was asked to spend 15 minutes per week writing about a difficult situation they had successfully navigated.
Another group wrote about a difficult situation where they had not coped well, and the third group simply described a stressful event.
The results were compelling.
The group that reflected on situations where they had coped well showed the highest levels of resilience, both immediately after the exercise and at follow-ups three and six months later.
Insights from the Research
Dr. Crane, who has been studying coping and resilience for over a decade, explained why this method is so effective:
“Because these smaller difficulties happen frequently, they provide regular opportunities to consider how we have reacted, learn from that, and test possible new ways of coping for next time.
This insight doesn’t always develop quickly. It can take a few instances of the same thing happening, and reflecting on it, before you have the light-bulb moment.
We think this method is effective because it more closely mimics experiential learning, which is the way we learn many other things in life.”
One of the most significant findings of the study was the longevity of the benefits. Participants who engaged in reflective writing about successful coping reported feeling more resilient even six months after the exercise. Dr. Crane noted the importance of this outcome:
“This is quite significant, because with most resilience training, people initially feel they are prepared for future events, but within a month or so, the benefits have usually worn off.”
The Power of Trial and Error
At the core of resilience is the ability to recognize that you can cope with difficult situations, sometimes by discovering and experimenting with new strategies. Dr. Crane emphasized that resilient folks understand they can develop the right tools for each situation:
“…they feel confident they can […] seek out new strategies, perhaps by asking someone else for advice or by doing some reading, and then test them and assess whether they are effective.”
This approach differs from traditional resilience training, which is often based on cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT typically assumes that individuals have gaps in their knowledge and then provides strategies to fill those gaps. Dr. Crane's method, however, acknowledges that individuals who are generally well can be experts in their own experiences:
“This method of investigating options and trialing them for ourselves is different because it recognizes that for people who are generally well, they can be the experts in themselves.
And with the right techniques, they can judge the success of their coping and how coping strategies might be applied moment-to-moment depending on the goals in that context.”
The Therapeutic Benefits of Journaling
Writing about daily events can be a highly therapeutic practice, as Dr. Crane pointed out:
“The beauty of writing is you can go back and look at it again, and see patterns forming over time, which can help lessons from individual events inform broader insights. It also helps people get some distance from what is going on in their head.”
Reflecting on successful coping strategies can provide valuable insights that you can draw on in the future. Dr. Crane explained that recalling instances where you've coped well can bolster your sense of efficacy:
“Successful coping practice in our own lives gives us underrated gems that we can all tap into. If we have good examples of having coped well prominent in our minds, we can apply them in the future and help support our sense of coping efficacy.”
To maximize the benefits of journaling, Dr. Crane suggests asking yourself a series of reflective questions:
What happened?
How did I react and try to cope?
What are my goals in this situation?
Are the things I am doing getting me closer to my goals?
What would I do again to cope with a similar situation?
What else could I try next time?
Where could I go for some advice?
Consider engaging in this simple yet powerful exercise. You could build a robust foundation of resilience that will serve you well in the face of future challenges.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Crane, M. F., & Searle, B. J. (2016). Building resilience through exposure to stressors: The effects of challenging life events on coping and resilience in Australian ministry workers. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 21(2), 141-154. doi:10.1037/ocp0000032
