Writing helps with the consolidation process because writing (hand-thinking) slows and filters thoughts emanating from significantly affective experiences into coherent analytical structures. Put simply, we slow the mind down because we can’t write as fast as we can think and that slowing down helps us formulate our opinions, conceptualisations and assumptions.

Additionally, by doing so, we remind ourselves that the past is the past, not the present. The degree to which the past shaped or dramatically influenced our lives is open to interpretation and depends on our current emotional states. Expressive writing, therefore, is a call to cultivating greater self-awareness. “The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux and his colleagues have shown that the only way we can consciously access the emotional brain is through self-awareness, i.e. by activating the medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that notices what is going on inside us and thus allows us to feel what we’re feeling.” 

Writing helps integrate emotionally charged experiences and beckons (forces) us to contemplate our lives, and how they came to be. The future, once the past has been reconciled, is ours for the taking. We can end those shitty chapters and write new ones, akin to who we’d like to become.