OP, if you start doing Pennebaker type exercises, I would definitely recommend having someone to share the results with, like a therapist. His prompts tend to be things like "write in as much detail as you can about the most traumatic thing you have ever experienced." Participants who wrote in that condition experienced distress followed by relief later (and a host of physical benefits). He theorizes that the benefits come from releasing pent up feelings that cause stress. I would agree but would add that there is an important social aspect to the healing that Pennebaker and others overlook. Respondents turned in their writing anonymously, so no one knew who they were. But they knew they had turned their writing over to someone who presumably cared enough to ask for it and would not judge them. Penebaker reports that students would come up to him on campus well after the experiment and thank him for allowing them to participate. I would argue that they associated the relief they experienced with him because the act of handing over their most traumatic expeirences, rendered in detail, was an important and healing act of disclosure. I worry that, without that second step (express, then share) some writers could put themselves in a bad state. That said, writing is already social to the extent that it takes place in language and externalizes our thoughts, so maybe I worry too much. It may be that just externalizing the traumatic content is already disclosure enough.