“Pour Out Your Heart Before Him”: Lament and Naming What Hurts

Roughly a third of the psalms are laments: honest, specific complaints addressed to God. They name the enemy, the sickness, the betrayal, the silence of heaven. Psalm 62 joins trust and pouring out, as if they were one act. Psalm 142, which tradition links to David hiding in a cave, does not tidy up his distress before bringing it. The lament psalms usually end in trust, but they get there by speaking the trouble, not by skipping it.

Writing about what hurts. Starting in the 1980s, psychologist James Pennebaker and others ran experiments in which people wrote for 15 to 20 minutes on several days about their deepest thoughts and feelings on a painful experience. Control groups wrote about neutral topics. Frattaroli (2006) pooled 146 randomized studies of this “experimental disclosure.” Disclosure had a positive and significant effect overall. The average effect was small (r = .075), and it varied with how the writing was done.

Naming a feeling quiets the alarm. The paper’s Section 5 cites an imaging study in which simply labeling an emotional image with a feeling word, such as “angry” or “afraid,” reduced the amygdala’s response and engaged a region of the right prefrontal cortex (Lieberman et al., 2007). That is one possible route by which naming trouble helps: words give the brain’s control systems something to work with.

What the studies cannot tell us. Expressive writing is not prayer, and the effects are modest. Writing about pain can also bring up distress in the moment. The imaging study was small. Lament also does something no study measures: it addresses a Person and expects to be heard. The convergence is with the form of the lament psalms. Honest, specific naming of distress tends to do more good than keeping it in.

Practice

Living it out

Five practices drawn from this passage. Each says how strong the research behind it is. What the labels mean.

1. 1

   Write a lament

   Once this month, write a page to God about a real trouble. Follow the psalms’ shape: address God, name the trouble specifically, ask for help, and end with whatever trust you can honestly say.

   ModerateRandomized studies of expressive writing show small but reliable benefits (Frattaroli, 2006). Lament prayer specifically has not been tested.
2. 2

   Name the feeling in one word

   When you notice strong emotion, say or write the word for it, like “afraid,” “ashamed,” or “furious.”

   ModerateLabeling feelings reduced amygdala response in imaging work (Lieberman et al., 2007; small sample).
3. 3

   Pray a lament psalm when you can’t find words

   Pray Psalm 13, 42, 62, or 142 aloud as your own prayer.

   ObedienceObedience. Commended by Scripture. Untested.
4. 4

   Write for several short sessions, not one long one

   Studies typically used 15 to 20 minutes on three or four days.

   ModerateModerate for that format (Frattaroli, 2006). Benefits varied with how the writing was done.
5. 5

   If the pain is trauma, don’t go it alone

   Writing helps many people with ordinary hard experiences. For trauma, abuse, or grief that won’t lift, work with a counselor.

   StrongStrong that disclosure helps on average, but the effect is small (Frattaroli, 2006). The paper recommends professional help for serious struggles.

Studies cited on this page2

1. ↗ Frattaroli, J. (2006). Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 823–865. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.823
2. ↗ Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421–428. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x