The Abridged version:
- Some studies suggest that poetry can activate the brain’s reward system.
- Our experiences and how we interpret them contribute to creating our narrative identity, which psychologists say has a direct impact on mental health.
- According to research, writing poetry can build new neural pathways, while reciting it can trigger physical responses like goosebumps and chills.
Andru Defeye served as Sacramento’s poet laureate from 2020-2024 and is the driving force behind Sacramento Poetry Week. In this new regular feature, “The Great Joy Hunt,” he explores the science behind joy and shares strategies for adding more to our lives.
Poetry was a short unit in our English classes growing up. A few minutes to cover literary devices like rhyme and alliteration, count some syllables, write a quick haiku or cinquain, and that was that. Most of us never gave it a second thought until maybe a Valentine’s Day or an anniversary later in life. This is the experience most of us have with poetry.
Poetry has saved my life a few times.
From processing mental health challenges as a young person to reshaping the way I speak to myself through creative writing and repetition. Writing a story down so it lives somewhere outside of you. Refining your opinions and stories until they are as true and potent as they can be. Speaking and being heard. These are all spiritual practices as well as acts of neuroplasticity, memory reconsolidation, narrative construction, and ultimately reality rewiring. This is why I say poetry is how we speak ourselves into existence.
We see it time and again, whether it’s William Henley writing, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,” as the closing lines to “Invictus” or Lil Wayne and company being brazen enough to name themselves Cash Money Millionaires as a manifestation. Not after they became that. Before.
The elders say “Words are magic. Why do you think they call it spelling?”
Neuroscience is starting to catch up to what poets have always known. Studies show that poetry activates the brain’s reward system, engaging the same reward circuitry involved in pleasure, similar to what we see with music. Writing itself builds new neural pathways, strengthening memory, emotional regulation, and self-perception. When we create, we temporarily quiet the part of the brain responsible for self-censorship and engage the regions tied to identity and meaning-making. Over time, repeated language becomes encoded as expectation. And expectation shapes behavior. In other words, the lines we return to don’t just express who we are. They help decide who we become.
Joy isn’t a condition that happens to you.
It’s the way your brain tells the story about what’s happening.
And poetry is one of the tools we have to consciously rewrite that story.
The cost of unconscious narrative
The brain doesn’t treat your inner voice as commentary. It treats it as instruction. Things we repeat about ourselves become things we believe about ourselves. This means our self-talk isn’t just commentary, it’s architecture. Self-talk shapes our brain’s reward system (motivation), default mode network (self-identity), and executive function (focus and problem solving). When you repeat a thought you’re not just thinking it, you are literally rewiring your brain’s communication system.
While numerous studies highlight the benefits of positive self-talk, a study published by the National Library of Medicine in 2021 found short-term benefits to negative self-talk. For instance, statements like “don’t mess this up” can sharpen focus in the short term.
It is important to remember this sharpening is only short term. Long-term negative self-talk is linked to emotional distress and can be damaging to mental health. Criticism can push positive performance temporarily but over time it becomes a story that limits you.
Your brain is constantly reorganizing around your self-talk. The different ways you speak to yourself rewire brain patterns, connections and emotional states all the time. Repeated narratives become neural feedback loops. Eventually these narrative loops manifest in our behaviors as the brain starts to accept repeated stories as truth.
This process is what psychologists call narrative identity, and it actively shapes our mental health. Trauma, grief and pain people experience is incorporated into their narrative identity and become part of their larger internal story. If that story is one of helplessness, rejection, or lack of control it can increase vulnerability to mental illness. Narrative is a lens. Over time the lens begins to shape the outcome. The negative feedback loop happens when the lens affects mental health and then mental health affects the lens and this cycle continues.
Authoring your own story
If the brain is always writing a story, then the real question isn’t whether we have a story, it’s whether we are choosing it. Most of us don’t write our first stories about ourselves. They are handed to us by parents, teachers, systems and society. They are handed to us in moments we don’t have language to understand yet and we repeat them until they sound like the truth. The brain doesn’t care where the story came from or how much truth it is actually based in. The brain only cares how often the story is repeated. This means any story can be rewritten the same way it was learned; through repetition.
This is where poetry comes in.
Poetry is how we metabolize the human experience. Research published by the National Library of Medicine conducted by Eugen Wassiliwizky and colleagues found that recited poetry can trigger chills and goosebumps, activating the brain’s reward circuitry in ways similar to other pleasurable experiences in the brain. These moments signal to the brain that something meaningful is happening, making the language more memorable and more likely to shape how we think and feel.
Even more fascinating, the brain begins anticipating these emotional peaks before they arrive, building tension and expectation that prepares the nervous system for impact. In other words, poetry doesn’t just express meaning. It trains the brain to feel it, expect it, and remember it.
And what the brain remembers, it begins to believe.
We speak ourselves into existence all the time. The problem is that most of us don’t realize we’re doing it. We inherited words. Repeated them. Built identities around them. And then called it reality. But the brain doesn’t care where the story came from. It only cares how often it’s told. Which means you can change it the same way it was built. One line at a time. Not as a performance but as practice. We are always telling a story. The question is whether we’re choosing it. Poetry gives us a way to choose.
The great joy hint
Watch how you talk to yourself when things go wrong.
Look out for the sentence(s) you return to.
“I’m not good at this.”
“I don’t understand this.”
Channel your inner poet and write a new sentence or two.
Start with “I am” and write a few short lines you can remember.
Not a fantasy. A direction. Something to grow into.
“I am learning” or “I am growing.”
Say it out loud. Write it down. Put it somewhere you’ll see it every day.
Your bathroom mirror. Your fridge. Your phone’s lock screen.
Practice it intentionally.
The brain believes what it hears most often.
Make sure it’s hearing something worth becoming.
Andru Defeye is the former poet laureate of Sacramento and a regular contributor, writing The Great Joy Hunt for Abridged.