If you want to power up your memory, try writing down your worries.
Researchers speculate that the cathartic act of expressive writing may
free up cognitive resources. This may be because writing about stressful
events frees your mind of the burden of avoiding thoughts about them.
Thus, mental energies once devoted to avoidant thinking become available
for other tasks, such as remembering things.

Writing about stressful events not only may help improve your memory, but
it also is a good way to take care of your emotional health. Writing about
your worries may help relieve stress. This, in turn, causes the body to
produce less cortisol, a major stress hormone that suppresses the immune
system. Express your worries in a journal, in a letter to family, or in an
e-mail to a good friend.

The effect of emotional disclosure through expressive writing on available
working memory (WM) capacity was examined in 2 semester-long experiments.
In the first study, 35 freshmen assigned to write about their thoughts and
feelings about coming to college demonstrated larger working memory gains
7 weeks later compared with 36 writers assigned to a trivial topic.
Increased use of cause and insight words was associated with greater WM
improvements.

In the second study, students (n = 34) who wrote about a negative personal
experience enjoyed greater WM improvements and declines in intrusive
thinking compared with students who wrote about a positive experience (n =
33) or a trivial topic (n = 34). The results are discussed in terms of a
model grounded in cognitive and social psychological theory in which
expressive writing reduces intrusive and avoidant thinking about a
stressful experience, thus freeing WM resources.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 2001 Sep;130(3):520-533.

Cheers!



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