Who benefits from emotional expression? An examination of personality differences among gynaecological cancer patients participating in a randomized controlled emotional disclosure intervention trial

Zakowski, Sandra G.; Herzer, Michele; Barrett, S.; Milligan, Jessica Gerfen; Beckman, Nancy

doi:10.1348/000712610x524949

Cited by 22 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Sloan, Marx, Epstein, and Dobbs (2008) found just this result: People who reported a ruminative style characterized by a high degree of brooding —the tendency to focus on abstract aspects of one’s distress (e.g., Why me? )—reported the greatest decrease in depressive symptoms over 2 months when assigned to an EW condition (see also, Gortner, Rude, & Pennebaker, 2006; for an exception, see Zakowski, Herzer, Barrett, Milligan, & Beckman, 2011). Given these findings and the centrality of rumination in a broad range of poor emotional outcomes, we sought to replicate the Rumination X EW effect and to determine if there exists added benefit in asking highly ruminative people to create a coherent narrative about their separation experiences.…”

Section: Expressive Writing Mediators and Moderatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expressive Writing Can Impede Emotional Recovery Following Marital Separation

Sbarra

Boals

Mason

et al. 2013

Clinical Psychological Science

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Marital separation and divorce are common life events that increases risk for poor health outcomes, yet few intervention studies explore how to mitigate this increased risk. This study implemented an expressive writing (EW; see Pennebaker, 1997) intervention for adults who experienced a recent marital separation. Ninety participants (32 men) were randomly assigned to and completed one of three experimental writing tasks: traditional EW, a novel (narrative-based) type of EW or control writing. Up to nine months after this writing, participants judged to be actively engaged in a search for meaning concerning their separation reported significantly worse emotional outcomes when assigned to either EW condition relative to control writing. Within the control condition, those participants actively engaged in a search for meaning reported the lowest levels of separation-related disturbance. We discuss these results in terms of the factors that may limit and promote psychological recovery following marital separation.

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Section: Expressive Writing Mediators and Moderatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expressive Writing Can Impede Emotional Recovery Following Marital Separation

Sbarra

Boals

Mason

et al. 2013

Clinical Psychological Science

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“…First, we examined demographic, medical, and session‐related (i.e., session length) variables. Prior research on written emotional disclosure among gynecological cancer patients suggests that demographic and medical characteristics are not associated with emotions expressed . Therefore, we hypothesized that demographic and medical variables would not be associated with total emotion episodes.…”

mentioning

confidence: 93%

Emotion episodes during psychotherapy sessions among women newly diagnosed with gynecological cancers

et al. 2014

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Objective To describe emotion episodes during early and late psychotherapy sessions among women newly diagnosed with gynecological cancer and to examine whether the total number of emotional episodes during early and later sessions were associated with baseline psychological distress, dispositional emotion expressivity, and patient-rated therapeutic progress. Methods The study utilized data from an ongoing study examining the efficacy of two psychotherapy interventions, a coping and communication intervention (CCI) and a supportive counseling intervention (SC), for women diagnosed with gynecological cancer. Emotion episode coding was completed for the first and sixth psychotherapy session for each patient randomized to receive psychotherapy (N = 173). Patients completed baseline survey measures of psychological distress and dispositional emotional expressivity and post-session ratings of therapeutic progress. Results The average number of emotion episodes was 7.4 in the first session and 5.2 episodes in the sixth session. In both sessions, the majority of emotion episodes contained only negative emotions and focused on a cancer-related topic. A higher1number of emotion episodes in the first session was associated with higher psychological distress reported in the baseline survey (p = .02). A higher number of emotions episodes in the sixth session was associated with a higher number of emotion episodes in the first session (p < .001) and higher patient-rated progress as rated in the sixth session (p = .016). Conclusion The findings highlight the importance of expressed emotions, particularly negative emotions about cancer-related topics, in therapeutic progress during psychotherapy among women diagnosed with gynecological cancer.

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“…Several studies show that expressive writing involves the experience of painful emotions at the time of writing, as for example an immediate increase in negative mood or decrease in positive mood during each disclosure session (Murray and Segal 1994;Pennebaker and Beall 1986;Segal et al 2009;Smyth 1998;Zakowski et al 2011). Such activation of painful emotions is, according to Grawe and colleagues, one of four identified mechanisms of change in psychotherapy and is usually referred to as 'problem activation' (Grawe 1997;Grawe et al 1994;Orlinsky et al 1994).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facilitating Emotional Processing: An Experimental Induction of Psychotherapeutically Relevant Affective States

et al. 2015

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Psychotherapy research has shown that cognitive-affective meaning making is related to beneficial therapy outcomes. This study explores the underlying micro-processes by inducing specific cognitive-affective states and studying their immediate effects on emotional activation, the resolution of interpersonal grievances, and factors related to therapeutic progress, e.g., mastery experiences, clarification of meaning. Participants suffering from interpersonal grievances were randomly assigned to two conditions. A sentence completion task was employed to induce either the expression of emotional distress or cognitive-affective meaning making. Expressive writing was used to deepen processing. Findings of those participants adhering to the induction procedure (n = 85) showed no differences between conditions at baseline. During writing, participants in both conditions were equally emotionally activated. Directly after the writing task, participants in the meaning making condition (n = 50) reported less unresolved interpersonal grievances, and more mastery experiences, but, e.g., not more clarification, compared to those in the emotional expression condition (n = 35). Results suggest that engagement in specific states that promote meaning making of emotional experience facilitates emotional processing and is related to therapeutic benefit.

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Who benefits from emotional expression? An examination of personality differences among gynaecological cancer patients participating in a randomized controlled emotional disclosure intervention trial

Cited by 22 publications

References 51 publications

Expressive Writing Can Impede Emotional Recovery Following Marital Separation

Expressive Writing Can Impede Emotional Recovery Following Marital Separation

Emotion episodes during psychotherapy sessions among women newly diagnosed with gynecological cancers

Facilitating Emotional Processing: An Experimental Induction of Psychotherapeutically Relevant Affective States

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