The Science of Journaling: How 15 Minutes of Writing Can Free Up Your Brain, Improve Your Health, and Make You a Better Friend | Dr. James Pennebaker

**Dan Harris** (0:03)
This is the 10% Happier Podcast, I'm your host, Dan Harris. I will admit from the outset here that I've long had a bad attitude about journaling, which is weird because I've spent more than 30 years working as a journalist. I dismissed journaling as some sort of new agey thing though, but then I started to see a bunch of science that really changed my mind on this. This is, by the way, a pattern for me. I reflexively judge something only to have my mind change by the evidence. In the case of journaling, the evidence is quite abundant. According to research, journaling can be an effective way to reduce stress and anxiety. Too big is for me. That's not all. Various forms of journaling practice have been shown to increase immune response, sleep quality, memory, focus, time management, and decision making. Today, I'm going to talk to the guy who really pioneered the science around journaling. His name is Dr. James Pennebaker. He's a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He's published over 300 articles and written or edited 12 books, and he was recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences, which is a huge honor. I interviewed Dr. Pennebaker jointly with my wife, Dr. Bianca Harris, who has no skepticism about journaling.
We first aired this episode back in November of 2024, but we're re-airing it now because it's really, really good.
You're going to hear us talk about the specific form of journaling called expressive writing or therapeutic journaling that Dr. Pennebaker invented and then studied. We'll talk about other kinds of journaling, including to-do lists and gratitude lists, why writing things down helps shift your perspective on your stress and your trauma, how that can lead to a whole cascade of benefits, and why Dr. Pennebaker, who's a very laid back dude, is actually so laid back about how often we need to journal in order to get all of the advertised benefits. We'll get started with Dr. James Pennebaker right after this.
A few things before we hear from our sponsors, I just want to gently nudge you, if you haven't done it already, to go over to danharris.com and sign up for my newish meditation app 10% with Dan Harris. I am so proud of what we're doing over there. We've got all of these live video sessions at least once a week, where you can meditate with me or one of our amazing teachers and then get your questions answered. We've also got courses from legendary teachers like Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein. We've got a growing library of guided meditations from teachers like Sharon and Joseph, but also Semenay Selassie, Jeff Warren, and on and on. But really, the secret sauce is community. It is so hard to boot up or maintain a meditation practice. And one of the things that really helps is doing it in carpool lane and that's what we have set up over on the app. Go to danharris.com. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to check it out before you buy. We'll be right back after this.
Dr. James Pennebaker, welcome to the show.

**James Pennebaker** (3:01)
It's nice to be here.

**Dan Harris** (3:02)
And welcome back, Dr. Bianca Harris.

**Bianca Harris** (3:04)
Thank you.

**Dan Harris** (3:05)
Okay. So let me just start here. I'd love to hear a little bit of your origin story, Jamie, and by the way, just for the listeners, he told me I can call him Jamie. How did you get interested in the subject of journaling in the first place?

**James Pennebaker** (3:17)
I actually wasn't that interested in it. When it happened early in my career, I was doing work on physical symptoms and how people come to know how they feel. And I was writing a book on it. And I thought I should have a chapter on what kind of people report lots of physical symptoms. So I put together a questionnaire and I worked with my students to come up with what kind of questions should we ask? And we asked all sorts of things. And somebody said, how about this? Prior to the age of 17, did you ever have a traumatic sexual experience? This was 1979 I thought, yeah, that sounds good. So we threw that one on along with a dozen, maybe hundreds of other questions.
And we discovered that one question was associated with every kind of health problem imaginable. And we ended up doing a more national sample and found the same thing.
And I became fascinated by this. What was it about a traumatic sexual experience that could have been years earlier, that was associated with reporting symptoms, but also other objective health problems. And one of the things that emerged was it was secret. And we did later studies and we found that having any kind of trauma was bad for you. We'd always known that. But if you kept it secret, it was much more toxic.