Well, I'm narrowing the hypothesis a bit: I'm stating that instead of talking to a math professor for some period of time, I'm guessing that you could cut the process a lot shorter by just getting straight to the damaging admissions. ;-)

Of course, there is also good evidence that simply writing about such things is beneficial, such as the study showing that 2 minutes of writing/day (about a personal trauma) improves your health.

I'm just seeing if we can narrow down to a more precisely-defined variable with greater correlation to positive results. That is, that the specific thing that needs to be included in the writing or talking is the admission of a problem and one's worst-case fears about it.