For the last decade, Pennebaker has pioneered research on the role of confession in health. He found that not only
talking but also writing about traumas can be healing. “Just putting upsetting experiences into words,” he explains, “has
profound psychological and physical benefits for our participants.”
Trauma, it seems, is the great leveler. Few of us escape it, even in our first two decades of life. Moreover, the recovery
movement of the 1980s and 1990s has taught us that we as a society have kept a smothering blanket of secrecy over our
traumas, covering up the truth in order to protect others and protect ourselves from pain. We’re learning that speaking out
often ends the cycle of abuse and liberates us from both pain and isolation. Pennebaker’s writing method, while not a public
form of confession, is a personal form of acknowledgment, emotional expression, and completion. Pennebaker says that
the writing method works because people confide both to others (namely, the psychologists who read the essays) and to
themselves. In fact, he believes that confiding one’s deepest thoughts and feelings to one’s self is perhaps the most healing
aspect of his technique.
【題組】46 According to the passage, trauma is “the great leveler,” because _____.
(A) it makes people calm down (B) it is a common experience
(C) it leaves painful memory (D) it can never be predictable