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Blogging and the SWEE
The blog section of the Click is where you can write your online diary about anything you wish and if you choose, allow family and friends to comment on or respond to your blog entries.
It may be that your blog is a breast cancer or illness blog. This type of blog is created by individuals affected by the experience of illness. either personally or by the illness of a loved one. In these blogs individuals express their deeply felt emotions, reaching out to family and friends, sharing clinical details with readers and receiving solace (McNamara, 2007)
Research has found that writing about your feelings and emotions and your breast cancer experience may have positive health benefits such as improved psychological wellbeing, for both the person with the illness and their supporters. (Butcher & Buckwalter, 2002)
Therefore, when you first join the Click I encourage you to create a blog and spend time writing in your blog for a period of 15-20 minutes in the first week, expressing your feelings about your past and current breast cancer experience. This type of writing is also referred to as Structured Written Emotional Expression (SWEE)
Then try to make a habit of writing a SWEE for 15-20 minutes once a month for the next 6 months.
At the end of six months I will be asking you if you wrote a SWEE in your blog and whether or not you did this for the entire 6 month period.
If at any time during this process you feel you need to speak to counsellor please contact one of the counselling services listed in the Who to Contact information.
Thank you for your participation in this project.
Kind regards
Cynthia Witney
Researcher/PhD student
Edith Cowan University
(08) 9370 6560
c.witney@ecu.edu.au
Issued 02 May 2011
the Click Researcher 
