Pennebaker's journaling protocol involves writing about a difficult or traumatic experience for 15-30 minutes continuously and privately.

“they were to spend 15 to 30 minutes writing about the most difficult even traumatic or possibly non-traumatic but still very difficult experience that they can recall from their entire life the instruction included that they should write for the entire time that is because they were writing by hand in that particular particular experiment that they were to not stop moving their hand for the entire duration of the 15 to 30 minutes and in addition to that that no one besides them the person writing would see what was written at the beginning middle or even after the experiment”

“the way that that was initially researched by penne Baker and others was to have the same person of course write about the same experience four times on four consecutive days for 15 to 30 minutes each”

“it's a process that was developed by James pennebaker who is a professor at University of Texas Austin and he had his students write as part of an experiment for 15 minutes a day for just four days either consecu ive days or a week apart but about the same thing and the thing that they're supposed to write about is the most challenging upsetting or even traumatizing experience of their life”

“you sit down just let yourself go for 15 to 20 minutes a day for 1 to 3 days this is the penny baker this is the penny baker writing effect this is this is a just a remarkably wonderful um side effect free You could argue intervention for helping you deal with curveballs that life throws at you”