---
title: "James Pennebaker's expressive writing"
url: "https://steps.org/templates/james-pennebaker-expressive-writing/"
type: "journal template"
attributed_to: "James W. Pennebaker"
era: "1986, and studied ever since"
minutes: "20"
updated: "2026-09-02"
source: "Steps — steps.org"
---

# James Pennebaker's expressive writing

Expressive writing is fifteen to twenty minutes of continuous writing about your deepest thoughts and feelings on a single difficult experience, repeated on four consecutive days and then stopped. James Pennebaker devised it in the 1980s and has written about it ever since.

## Whose words these are

Two changes, and the first matters most. Pennebaker's method is a COURSE, not a habit: four consecutive days on the SAME subject, then stop. A prompt arriving every morning forever is a different thing. If you use this, use it for four days on one subject and then switch back. Second, his sessions were in the evening; this asks in the morning. The wording below is close to his instruction rather than exactly it — his full version invites you to tie the experience to your childhood, your relationships, and who you want to become.

## The prompts

1. Write your deepest thoughts and feelings about the thing weighing on you. Don't stop to tidy it up.
   > Pennebaker's standard instruction, shortened. His asks you to 'really let go and explore your very deepest emotions and thoughts' about the experience, and says spelling and grammar do not matter.

## Whose it is

Pennebaker designed the protocol and ran the first trials at Southern Methodist University in the mid-1980s. The instruction below is his, closely paraphrased from the standard wording used across the studies and reproduced in Opening Up by Writing It Down, the book he wrote with Joshua Smyth.

## Who it suits

People carrying one specific difficult thing they have never written down, who want to put it into words once, properly, rather than return to it every morning.

## What it is not for

This is the one method here that can genuinely upset you, and it is meant to be hard — Pennebaker is candid that people often feel worse immediately afterwards. It is not therapy and it is not a treatment. In the middle of a crisis, or with something you are not already supported around, please talk to a person rather than a text thread. See steps.org/safety. It is also not a daily habit, however easy it is to turn it into one.

## The write-up


## What he actually asks for

Fifteen to twenty minutes. Four days running. The same difficult subject each time. Write
continuously, and do not stop to fix the spelling.

Pennebaker's instruction is to really let go and explore your very deepest thoughts and
feelings about the experience — and he invites you to tie it to the rest of your life: your
childhood, your relationships, who you were, who you would like to become.

That is the whole method. There is no chart, no streak, and nothing to keep.

## A course, not a habit

The thing most often lost when this gets turned into an app is that it was never meant to be
daily and forever. Four days, one subject, then stop.

Use it as four mornings on one thing. Then go back to whatever you were doing.

## Be careful with this one

Pennebaker says plainly that people often feel worse straight afterwards. That is not a sign
you are doing it wrong, and it is also a real reason not to start it in the middle of
something you are barely holding. Nothing here is treatment. If that is where you are, talk
to a person.


## Sources

- **James W. Pennebaker and Joshua M. Smyth**, *Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain* (2016 (third edition)) — https://www.guilford.com/books/Opening-Up-by-Writing-It-Down/Pennebaker-Smyth/9781462524921

---

From Steps, a journal that texts you first, in iMessage: https://steps.org/templates/james-pennebaker-expressive-writing/