August 5, 2024 • 40 mins
Journalling is seen as one of the holy grails when it comes to trying to improve your mental health and emotional wellbeing, but what about it is so great? The people who love it, absolutely swear by it, but where do we even begin? How can we make it less like a chore, and more joyous? In today's episode, we break down the psychology and fundamentals of journalling, including:
- The history of journalling and writing therapy
- The physical, mental and emotional benefits
- How to find the right journalling technique for you
- The benefits of 'ugly' journalling
- Why journalling can be so difficult to start
- The FOUR fundamental principles for enjoying journalling
- My favourite journalling prompts
- Alternatives when writing isn't your thing
Listen now!
Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast
For business enquiries: psychologyofyour20s@gmail.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we of course break down
dive into explore the psychology of our twenties. If you
have ever had a brush with the self help or
(00:44):
the wellness community, the wellness space, which I'm assuming that
you have, considering you're listening to this podcast, someone somewhere,
at some stage has probably recommended that you journal or
told you about how amazing journal has been for them,
whether you took them up on that or not, whether
you decided to give it a go, whether you saw
(01:06):
the appeal but you've just never been able to get
into it. I think journaling is one of the holy
grails of the wellness community, of the therapy community. It's
one of the biggest pieces of advice that people like
to give to others when they are stressed, when they
are anxious, when they're grieving, heartbroken, even in good times.
(01:26):
Have you tried journaling? Why don't you journal about it?
And what is the deal with this? Why is it
so amazing to be able to write down your feelings?
Why does it always come up in these discussions? Well,
today I want to talk about it. By popular request,
by popular demand from so many listeners, what is the
magic behind journaling and how can we really embrace it?
(01:50):
I am going to admit I'm one of those annoying
people who has been journaling for years and who swears
by it. I feel myself getting I wouldn't say worse,
but more or detached from my life when I don't journal,
and I definitely feel the quality of my experiences and
my emotions improve when I do. Journaling for me makes
me very present, It makes me more reflective of my life.
(02:14):
I feel closer to my memories. I love it for
so many reasons, but I also get that it's kind
of hard to get into if it's not something that
you're a regular at or that you have done very often,
or if it's you know, not how you necessarily have
tended to process your emotions. Everyone that likes it really
(02:34):
likes it, but it's kind of like reading or any
hobby or exercising or eating healthy. We know we should
be doing it, we know that we will feel better
after doing it, but there are always so many mental barriers,
so many empty notebooks we promise to start writing in
at the start of the year, so many times that
(02:55):
we plan to journal in the evening, and then we
just never get around to it. So today, let's talk
about the fundamentals and of course the psychology of journaling.
Why it helps our brains process trauma, why it helps
our bodies heal faster, how it improves our intelligence, our friendships,
(03:15):
our memories, but also more importantly, how to actually make
it an enjoyable practice and one that is actually useful
rather than a chure. How to actually want to journal
and where to even start. I'm going to give you
the fundamentals of journaling and how to actually enjoy journaling,
(03:38):
and some fun journal prompts, and also really talk about
some of the myths and misconceptions about this method and
what it can actually do for our health. And notice
how I didn't just say mental health. Our health on
a holistic level, from physical to social to emotional. There
is a lot to talk about without further Ado, let's
(04:01):
get into the psychology and the fundamentals of journaling. Journaling
has a lot of different forms, you know, from the
tried and tested notebook to a structured gratitude journal or
a workbook, a blog, I don't know if people still
(04:22):
blog anymore, maybe an Instagram account, even your notes app.
Anything that causes you to express your thoughts in a
written form outside the confines of your mind. To me,
that counts as journaling. I think we have a very
narrow picture of what journaling looks like, and it's a
person at a desk writing page after page, or you know,
(04:46):
a very Victorian image of a bronze character with an
ink and a quill penning very beautiful poetry. Not at all.
Journaling can be as large or small, as romance, antic,
or practical as you want it to be. And I
think that's what makes it so incredible. It is just
(05:07):
so accessible and cost effective. Anyone can do it in
the way that works for them. It's kind of like
what running is for our physical health. If you have
shoes and you have your legs, you can run, and
if you have your brain and something to write on,
you can journal and you'll feel better afterwards. Hopefully. Most likely,
(05:28):
some people like to just like pour their heart out
every three months when they need it. There are people who,
like I said, write a page or more every day.
There is you know, list form. There is naming what
you're grateful for, what you know, what happened in your day,
your highlights and low lights. There is the kind of
journaling that is very structured and really keeps account of
(05:51):
what you're going through day by day. My point here
is that there are no rules. The only condition for
journaling is that you're finding some way to record your
personal thoughts, your feelings, insights, troubles or daily life. And
the final condition maybe not even a condition, maybe not
(06:12):
even a rule, but the beauty of journaling is that
it doesn't even need to be good. That's another thing
that I think sometimes holds us back from writing or
saying that we are someone who journals. When we put
something on a page, or we put it down in writing,
it feels so permanent and so sacred, and I don't
(06:32):
know if it's just me, but we can't help but
picture someone reading it back, maybe in the future, and
getting to essentially appear directly into our lives. So sometimes
we fixate on making it worth it. We fixate on
it sounding good or using our need as handwriting, or
not coming off as to I don't know, to anything,
(06:55):
not coming off as too loud or too emotional, true
sensitive in our own journal entries. But the thing is
is that journaling is strictly for you. There are no mistakes,
There are no bad entries except for the ones that
weren't written. There are no wrong thoughts. You know, no
one is going to give you a mark like it's
(07:15):
an assignment. As I said before, journaling is a self care,
self love practice. It's one of the only times that
everything gets to be about you and you get to
do it in the way that works best as long
as you are doing it. Journaling has an amazing reputation
(07:36):
when it comes to, I guess, healing some of our
biggest emotional afflictions, whether that is helping us with anxiety
and depression or grief, or even just managing everyday stresses.
I don't even think I would be able to count
the number of therapists that have been or have said
to me, Oh, have you tried journaling? Have you tried
(07:57):
writing about these feelings? Have you tried articu them in
written form. What exactly is so powerful about that, though,
because anyone can pick up a piece of paper and
a pen and write about how they're feeling, right, what
is the big secret here? Well, let's talk about it,
starting with the science and the evidence, of course, because
(08:20):
we're not going to be making any claims without some proof.
Journaling has basically been proven to have everything from psychological
to even physical benefits, which may surprise some of us.
It definitely surprised me, and we'll get to why in
a second. But starting with the more psychological side, the
(08:40):
moment when I think people really began to recognize the
benefits of this. What's from a landmark study in nineteen
eighty eight. And in this study, students were randomly assigned
to write about either very traumatic experiences or very superficial
topics for four days in a world. Six weeks later,
(09:02):
those who had delved into traumatic experiences, who had really
written pages and pages about how they felt, the meaning
they applied, how it impacted their life, they actually reported
feeling a lot better. They reported more positive moods, lesser anxiety,
fewer illnesses than those who were writing about everyday experiences.
(09:26):
This is when journaling really began to be recommended more.
I'm sure when this study was first proposed back in
the eighties, people were like, you want to measure whether
writing something down is good for people. But after this
study was published, I think it kind of said something
that everyone was already thinking. When you actually find an
(09:48):
outlet for what is going on in your brain and
the kind of emotional and cognitive affliction that your problems
are causing you the mental strain. I guess when you
find an outlet for that, you feel better. And I
think that was one of the first times that people
had put that into words. People had been obviously writing
journal entries and poetry and novels and stories for as
(10:12):
long as humans had existed, but this study was when
someone really said, hey, you know, this actually has a
really positive impact on mental health, and people started recommending it.
They were basically like, oh, I better get on board.
This is such a cost effective method of making people
feel better. Since then, it's become a huge topic of conversation,
(10:34):
and so many more studies have been produced around that.
One of my favorite ones is a study that shows
that people who journal regularly twice a week recover from
heartbreak faster than those who don't, sometimes even twice as fast.
That was one of the estimates given by the researchers.
I don't know if you can really measure how far
(10:56):
someone gets over heartbreak, but there you go. There was
another study published only a couple years ago that said
journaling for fifteen minutes a day can increase our IQ,
our literal intelligence, and also our EQ, which is our
emotional intelligence. That makes you a better friend, That makes
you a better partner, a better coworker, more in touch
(11:17):
with your own emotions, of course, but also more in
tune and therefore empathetic to others. This stuff I think
we all know. Writing about your feelings makes you understand
them better, which means you understand yourself better, but also
others people who are also members of the human race.
That's fairly simple. But when we start looking at the
(11:41):
physical health benefits, that's when it really starts to get
so interesting and almost a little bit insane for me,
and the case for journaling just becomes even greater. So
let me tell you about a pretty amazing New Zealand
study from twenty thirteen which basically showed, maybe not showed
basically suggests did that writing helped our body heal itself
(12:04):
faster from physical injury. So it's not just that it
helps people recover from trauma or become more intelligent or
feel less stressed. It has physical healing properties. So in
this study, forty nine healthy adults aged sixty four to
ninety seven, they wrote about either a really upsetting event
(12:28):
or just their daily activities for twenty minutes after two
weeks had passed. To make sure that you know any
initial negative feeling stirred up by recalling those upsetting events
had passed, all the subjects had a biopsy on their arm,
basically meaning that a piece of tissue was removed from
(12:48):
their arms. They had a small wound. That wound was
then photographed for the next twenty one days while the
group continued to keep journaling about either upsetting of events
or everyday events. On the eleventh day, seventy six percent
of the group that did expressive writing had fully healed,
(13:10):
with forty two percent of the control group having healed,
So forty two versus seventy six percent. How has that
not talked about more? That is such an astonishing study,
obviously small sample size, it would definitely need to be replicated.
But if you think that study was just a fluke
after it was released, even before people were really looking
(13:34):
into this, And there was another study that appeared in
the Journal of the American Medical Association, so not a
small journal, and it looked at patients with asthma and arthritis,
half of who were again asked to write for twenty
minutes each day about something that was bothering them a
stressor a past trauma, and the other half who were
asked to just write about their daily life. Four months later,
(13:57):
the patients in the stressful writing group increased improvement on
objective clinical evaluations about their symptoms of asthma, arthritis, and
emotional distress. They were less stressed, they had fewer negative
symptoms of their asthma, and their situation that condition has
had deteriorated less. So the research is basically concluded writing
(14:22):
about something that was stressing them out, really engaging their
emotions through this practice not only helped these patients get
better in a sense, but it also kept them from
getting worse. Why is this the case? How is it
possible that writing could heal a wound or minimize the
(14:44):
chronic illness? And I want to obviously just state here
that we're not trying to I'm not trying to claim
that journaling is going to replace modern medicine and magically
everyone will get better. But what really comes down to
in all of these instances is stress. Stress kills ourselves.
Stress reduces our immune system functioning, Stress shortens our life expectancy,
(15:08):
It puts our body under strain. All of these things
obviously have a very big physical impact and can contribute
to pre existing illness or make us more susceptible to
new illness. But controlling our stress that helps control the
physical burden placed on our body. And that is why
journaling is shown to have these really wonderful, if not
(15:32):
unbelievable healing properties for physical, not just mental ailments, because
it basically gets our brain to process heavy emotions and
experiences that would otherwise manifest in physical tension and physical turmoil.
I think it's just one of the many ways that
our mind and our body interact and impact each other,
and I think we don't explore that enough, especially in
(15:54):
Western medicine. We're so focused on treating symptoms rather than
holistically really thinking about the body and thinking about the
mind and how our psychology and our emotional state contributes
to how we're basically functioning. The reason that I think
journaling is so effective at managing stress or processing an emotion,
(16:16):
any emotion, is that it's an essentially an organizational system.
It's an organizational procedure. It's a way of cleaning things
up or making sense of things that we can't work
out by just thinking about them over and over again.
That's the curse of overthinking, something that I'm sure we
(16:37):
all do from time to time. It leads us to
believe that we are problem solving when actually we are
just making the issue more convoluted and getting further into
the labyrinth. And writing about it does something about the
thoughts and it kind of keeps track of where we've been.
But also, at a very basic level, it's a circuit breaker.
(17:00):
Generally gets us out of our mind. It kind of
removes us from the problem and allows us to write
about it, not in the third person, but almost in
a more detached way. We have some form of emotional
distance that we don't get when we try and process
all of our feelings about a situation, all of our
(17:22):
heavy emotions in our brain alone. The more we practice journaling. Obviously,
in a moment, it can just help us really break
away from going over and over unnecessary details, not being
able to find an exit to our thoughts. But the
more we practice it, the more it becomes a tool
(17:43):
to reprogram maladaptive thoughts, to reflect and remember our lives
more realistically, to actually be able to look back at
journal entries and be like, oh no, maybe my thoughts
about that situation were wrong. This is how I remember
it at the time, and it helps us organize our
life and our thoughts and provide emotional catharsis. That is
(18:06):
one of my favorite words, catharsis when we really need it,
you know, like this thing is bothering me, this breakup,
this heartache, this assignment, this moment when I embarrass myself.
Let me really spend time trying to think about this
in a way that my brain normally wouldn't think about
(18:27):
it by writing about it. And I'm not looking for
a solution. I'm not journaling to find an answer. I'm
journaling just to process what I've been through. And that
is something that we don't always do because we are
too stuck in our feelings to really detach from them
and distance ourselves from them for a moment and just
(18:49):
think about the situation in the grandest scheme of things.
So basically what I'm trying to say in the most
convoluted way possible. Journaling is valuable and helps us deal
with stress and distress because it forces you to put
complicated emotions about your future, about your family, your friends,
your trauma, your day, whatever it may be. It forces
(19:12):
you to put those complicated emotions into some form of
coherent sentence or paragraph, and through that act you get
more clarity and you feel like you're getting somewhere. Everything
else that comes along with that is basically a benefit
of not being consumed with over analyzing and overthinking a problem.
(19:32):
We have more space to begin to think about others,
to really listen to them, to be curious. Our memory
improves because we're not so caught up in ruminating. We
sleep better, we enjoy life more, and that is what
really helps us activate a better version of ourselves through journaling.
I think it's not just that we are writing about
(19:52):
something and somehow that makes everything feel a little bit
less heavy. Yes, that's a component of it, but it's
that we're using a new part of our brain, not
just a problem solve, but to really go deeper, to
apply meaning, to think about things in a different light.
And here's the thing. It may be hard to start,
it's really hard to find the time to feel motivated.
(20:15):
But personally, I have never walked away from writing even
just like a page or two, less than five hundred words,
and not felt better, not felt like something has been lifted.
And I really I don't think I'm the only one
who has had that experience. Okay, I feel like I've
gone on and on here about the benefits. Hopefully you're convinced,
(20:36):
but being convinced is one thing. Actually doing the thing
is a lot harder. Any of us could tell you
that so many of us want to be the person
who journals. We want to have this catalog of our
life and our feelings, but we feel like we don't
have the time. We feel like we don't know where
to start, we don't know what to write about. You know,
taking ten minutes to write about our feelings doesn't always
(20:58):
feel as enjoyable immediately in the moment as the instant
gratification and pleasure that we get from our phones or
from watching TV. That's how the fast Dope mean of
our entertainment cycle really works. Another barrier is perfectionism, you know, procrastination, boredom.
It's kind of tiring sometimes to write all the time.
(21:20):
But I'm gonna stop us right there and kind of
give you a heart truth. Life is full of excuses,
and there is an excuse for everything. You can go
your whole life is taking the easiest route. But the
thing about journaling is that it is such a small investment.
It's basically free. It can take as little as five minutes.
(21:42):
In a lot of those studies we just spoke of
people only journaled for ten to twenty minutes. That's shorter
than most TV episodes, and in comparison, the benefits are astounding.
From a strictly you know, like pro cons perspective, there
is no reason not to journal. Ratio of time and
effort to breakthroughs and mental clarity is like one to
(22:05):
two million. So how do we build this habit even
when it feels difficult. Well, I've got you, guys. It's
a message I get all the time from you. I
always get people asking me about how to actually get
into journaling, and I've thought about it a lot. So
we're going to discuss the four secret ingredients or foundations
(22:26):
to becoming a good journaler, how to make it feel
not like a chore, how to actually be excited, and
more importantly, how to actually integrate it into your identity
and as part of who you are. We're going to
talk about all of that and more after this short break.
(22:48):
Whenever someone asked me on tips about how to get
into journaling, how to really embrace it, how to enjoy it,
I always give the same answer, and you guys know me,
it's never a simple answer, but one that contains four parts.
So let's break down these four tips I have from
not only actually feeling excited to write and excited to journal,
(23:11):
but getting something out of it, getting what you want
out of it. So my first tip is to, in
the beginning, only journal when you really feel the need.
Some people will say the easiest way to get into
into journaling, or into anything it is through routine and
discipline and doing it every day and staying consistent. You know,
if you googled how to start journaling, that is probably
(23:35):
going to be one of the first tips that comes up.
But making it a mission to journal every day just
takes the fun out of it and it's just another
thing on your to do list. None of us want
another thing on our to do list, especially when I
think that journaling should be something that you feel relieved,
(23:55):
if not joyous, to be doing. So to start off, really,
journal when you feel like you have something to write about,
and journal as smaller as big as you would like.
It could be a single line, it could be something
you've thought about or overheard. That is where you need
to begin. Then go from there. When you get the
hang of it, and when you find out what's important
(24:17):
to you to journal about, that's when you really, I think,
start to pick up momentum. So here's my evidence for this,
here's my reasoning. The researcher who we spoke about before,
who conducted that first groundbreaking study in the eighties on journaling,
he basically said, as much as what I just said,
(24:37):
you don't need to journal every day. So his name
is doctor pen Baker, and he's basically the pioneer of
writing therapy as it was called, and he talks a
lot about recovering from trauma through creative expression. And he said,
and I quote literally what I just said, I am
not a big fan of journaling every day. The founder
of Writing Therapy, said that, and the reason said that
(25:00):
is because I will try and like reframe how he
said it. But one of the interesting things about journaling
is actually sometimes writing too much, especially when you find
yourself ruminating, and that's kind of one side of the going.
So you write too much and you find yourself almost
getting too overinvolved in the feelings associated with an event,
(25:22):
or when you're going through a really hard time and
someone says or recommends that you journal, you just don't
feel like you can do it every day, so you
don't do it at all. So his recommendation is to
think of journaling as like a life course correction, as
opposed to a really intense commitment or practice. The times
(25:46):
that I always write the most is when I'm going
through something really rough. You know, I think about my
first ever heartbreak when I was seventaying eighteen. I don't know,
I feel like two notebooks in the span of six
months with bad poetry and us teary passages about you know,
the meaning of life and love. And it's those moments,
(26:06):
in those times when you really need it, that you
should lean in. Think of journaling almost like a painkiller,
you know, you don't take aspirin or advil every day,
at least I would hope not. You take it when
you need it, and that is the premise of good journaling.
I guess some people might really benefit from writing every day,
(26:26):
but sometimes I can make it really tedious, right when,
as doctor pen Baker suggested, you need a life course
correction and a second component to this. When you feel
the urge to journal or to write, especially at the beginning,
please please, please just do it. Drop everything anything that
(26:48):
you're doing, and put those thoughts that are basically begging
to come out, put them down somewhere. That is the
secret to any to beginning kind of any creative or
expressive endeavor. Not ignoring inspiration when it randomly emerges, because
sometimes that desire is not something that we can consciously
call on. And so when we finally, you know, do
(27:10):
get around to having the time to sit down and
write in our routine way and our time that we've
put aside during our day to do it, you know,
sometimes the inspiration is gone and then it just feels
kind of boring. So take advantage of the moments, even
if they're just a second, when you really feel the
urge to write something down, even if it's in your
note app notes app, just like get in the habit
(27:32):
of letting that be expressed. And that kind of brings
me to my second tip. Experiment and find what works
for you, and beyond that, try and make it fun
or find you know, a reason, a story, a quote
that motivates you to see. Journaling is more than just
a writing exercise. So let me explain this a little
bit further. Firstly and quickly, because we spoke about this before,
(27:55):
but writing big entries by hand every week may not
work for you. You Instead, you may, like you know,
want to start an Instagram that you keep private and
you post photos or screenshots from your notes app, or
a scrap book, even a trash diary. Some people call
them of receipts and pictures that you write on and
(28:16):
stick them down into a notebook. That actually reminds me
of a quote I read the other day. Let me
pull it up because it's just so beautifully. It's just
so beautifully captures this for me. Here it is. If
you feel like you don't know yourself, I recommend keeping
one notebook that you put everything in. Thoughts, quotes you
like call postcards to do list, diary entries, your favorite song, letters,
(28:38):
dried flowers, brain dumps, gratitude lists, sticky notes, pictures, literally everything.
And while in the process of feeling this journal, you
will get a sense of who you are, of all
the things that you like, your sense of self, especially
when you get to look back in a few years
and you have this snapshot. Just because the image of
journaling is one thing, it doesn't mean you can't be
(28:59):
expressive in other ways and that you can't find a
way to make the suit how you like to express
your emotions basically right like, it doesn't have to be
typed line after line after line, and that is something
that I really stand by. Just find a way to
journal in a manner that suits you, and secondly, find
(29:22):
your reason that really came up for me at the
end of that quote, you know, the desire to have
a snapshot for your future self. One of the big
reasons I journal when I know I need to but
I don't really want to, is because I like to
think about how interesting it's going to be to read
back those old entries in the future, and how much
(29:44):
present day me really enjoys looking at fifteen year old
me's entries, and you know, I often contemplate how I
won't get that opportunity if every time I get the
urge to journal, I just do something else, and if
I don't just spend ten minutes putting pa and to paper.
It's not just about how I'm feeling in the moment
and my motivations or my level of boredom or inspiration
(30:07):
to write, but also it becomes about what my future
self is going to get out of it. And I
spoke to someone the other day that said, you know
what really inspires her when journaling feels tedious is thinking
about her journals ending up in a museum, or her
kids reading them when she's gone and learning about how
it felt to be in your twenties and twenty twenty
(30:27):
four when they're reading them in twenty eighty four. So
that's my second instruction for getting into journaling, is to
really think about why you want to get into it,
whether it is just purely the benefits for your mental health,
whether there's a fun story, a fun meaning that you
can attach to the practice that makes it a little
bit more romantic, I would say, or glamorous. Okay, moving
(30:50):
on to my third foundation, fundamental for good journaling. Let
someone else do the initial thinking for you, especially in
the beginning stages, and the way that you can do
that is by using journal prompts, by purchasing a structured
journal looking for inspiration online. One of the biggest barriers
(31:10):
to starting anything is the anticipation around how much effort
we think will go into it to begin with, and
that makes it so much harder to start if you're
not accustomed to writing down what you're feeling, to entering
that reflective space, and you're finding it daunting. Make it
(31:31):
easier for yourself by following how other people may be
doing it. One of my favorite journals I have ever
used was a five minute gratitude journal that was it
was really really popular a few years back. And what
was another example, like they had these one sentence a day,
one page of day books. These kind of structured journals
(31:53):
take the thinking out of it. You have like a
format upon which to ride in. You know, I'm trying
to think about what the Gratitude journal was structured at
as I think it was. It had four sections. It
was all you had to say was, well, you're grateful
for that day, what did you enjoy that day? Some
positive affirmations and what you learned that day, and it
(32:16):
made it so easy, and there's still like a depth
and wealth of knowledge in doing that, and it's a
really great place to start. Some of my favorite journal
prompts that work every time for me include just five
things that I'm grateful for, and I can expand if
I feel like it, or I can keep it in
that list format. Another one that I love is just
(32:39):
writing about just doing a brain dump about three things
that are really weighing heavy on my mind. And the
beauty of these is that you can make them as
short or as long as you like. And like I
said in the beginning, you want to make it work
for you. You don't want this to feel like a
chore or like it's tedious. There is also a book
(32:59):
called five hundred Journal Prompts. It's by Robert Duff, who's
a I think he's a psychiatrist, and it's amazing. Some
of the questions are so good and they're so unique,
and you just pick one and you reflect on that.
Some of my favorites were like what is your favorite failure,
what a great journal prompt that is? Or how well?
(33:20):
One of them was like write me the story of
how you and your friend became friends, Like how you
and your best friend became friends? Really reflective. It makes
you think about so many things what I'm trying to
think of others. One of them was like, what is
a question that you were really scared to know the
answer to? Which songs have the most vivid memories for you?
And you're just doing one a week as you're getting
(33:43):
into it. It's an afternoon activity, it's a self care activity,
and you just write for as longer, as little as
you want. This is kind of unrelated, but note how
I said do it in the afternoon. This is such
a random tip. But just don't journal before bed, or
don't say that you're going to journal before bed, because
you will eight out of ten times not end up
(34:05):
doing it, and you will get distracted or you will
fall asleep. So choose your prompt in the morning or
in the mid afternoon, and then find that moment when
you have a moment, not before bed. I know it
feels like the urge to that it is a natural one, right,
It's like when we're most reflective, it's when we have
the most free time. But if you really want to
(34:26):
integrate journaling is like a mental health or an emotional
practice for you try and find a time when you're
actually a bit more conscious and a bit more present.
So my final of the four ingredients, right quickly and
without judgment. I save this for last, but it's probably
deserves to be first on this list. One of the
(34:46):
biggest barriers I find for people who want a journal
it's not time, because we all have time. It's perfectionism.
It's perfectionism. It's getting caught up in our own head.
And when we write quick and we don't worry about
being succinct, but just about getting as much on the
page as possible, we have less time to worry about
how we're coming off. We don't worry about whether that
(35:08):
was exactly how we wanted to say it, how we
wanted to word it, because it doesn't matter. There is
no audience right now, there is no I've said this
so many times, but there is no final grade. I
often think like one of the last times a lot
of us right is when we're in school. You know,
that's probably one of the last times we really had
to write thousands of words or hundreds of words with
(35:28):
a pen and paper. So it can feel very much
like a task. But journaling is one of those beautiful
things where the simple act of doing it, even badly
in our minds, is still really really good. In fact,
I actually think sometimes doing it badly is better because
you aren't preoccupied with judging your emotions. You're just letting
(35:52):
yourself feel and reach that Catharsis and I think when
we journal badly is when we feel most in tune
with the need to express and the need to process.
Because we aren't waiting for the perfect time, or we
aren't waiting for when we think we're going to be
able to say things the best way. We're just writing.
We're just going for it. So let's do a little
(36:13):
summary of the four tips to journaling, our four journaling fundamentals. Firstly,
journal the way that works for you and when you
feel the urge. Make it fun, make it unique, make
it work for you, and find a deeper meaning to
apply to the practice. Let someone else do the thinking
for you. And finally, write fast, just get it out.
(36:34):
No perfectionism, no overthinking. We do that enough elsewhere, So
express in whatever form works for you. Something to remember,
journaling is honestly one of the biggest gifts that you
can give your future self because time goes by really
really fast, and sometimes we are not great at remembering
(36:57):
who we are the moment. You know, in this moment
right we feel very present right now maybe, but in
like two, three, five years, we kind of lose the
perspective of who we were on our earlier, our mid
or our late twenties. And that is a final blessing
that I think journaling really gives us, is the ability
to know us from the inside out at the time
(37:20):
of writing, and not everyone gets to experience. That's something
I'm really grateful that I have kept journals for so
long because I have this like beautiful, I don't know,
like beautiful timeline, this beautiful like family tree of myself,
like I don't know, really know how to explain it.
Hopefully you're getting what I'm saying, Like I have this
(37:40):
beautiful timeline. I'm gonna I'm gonna land on that. I'm
kind of like losing my words here, so yeah, I
just want to say one final thing here. I know
I feel like I've been talking about I'm in this
like cult of journaling. I'm one of those annoying people
who won't shut up about it. But in all honesty,
I do want to say, sometimes it just doesn't work
(38:01):
for certain people, and that is okay. Not everyone processes
or imagines or articulates and thinks in the same way.
You know. For example, I have friends who really need
a physical release and that's how they manage stress, and
that's how they process their emotions is through running and
through a physical expression. And some of my other friends
(38:24):
like something less cerebral, you know, they like art, or
they like talking rather than working through things in a
solitary way. So whatever it is, pick your poison, pick
your cure. I should say. If journaling doesn't work, that's fine,
you know, I've given it my gold style of approval.
But sometimes it's just too boring and it just doesn't
(38:45):
work for you, and you don't have anything to say.
What I really want you to do is just find
your way of expression of expressing, find your way of processing,
find your catharsis, find a way of getting any everything
that you're feeling out of your brain and into your environment,
(39:05):
into your environment or into some physical form. And that's
what all those ways of expressing, from physical to artistic
to verbal, have in common. It gets the thoughts and
the feelings and the worries out of your brain into
the open. So I just want to say that as
a final message, but I really do hope that you
have learned something. I hope this was up your alley,
that you journal better, that you journal more, or that
(39:28):
you know you journal less, you journal more effectively, and
that you really have kind of maybe greened, and your
appreciation for why it is so beneficial, and even some
of the history of this practice that you may not
have known. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please
give us a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
(39:50):
wherever you are listening right now. It really does help
the show grow and it helps us reach new people,
which is always delightful. If you have an episode's suggestion,
if you just want to get in touch, if you
want chat, if you have feelings about this episode, please
feel free to DM me at that Psychology Podcast. And
as always, we are going to talk soon. Until then,
(40:11):
stay safe, stay kind, please be gentle with yourself, and
we will be back on Friday with another episode.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we of course break down
dive into explore the psychology of our twenties. If you
have ever had a brush with the self help or
(00:44):
the wellness community, the wellness space, which I'm assuming that
you have, considering you're listening to this podcast, someone somewhere,
at some stage has probably recommended that you journal or
told you about how amazing journal has been for them,
whether you took them up on that or not, whether
you decided to give it a go, whether you saw
(01:06):
the appeal but you've just never been able to get
into it. I think journaling is one of the holy
grails of the wellness community, of the therapy community. It's
one of the biggest pieces of advice that people like
to give to others when they are stressed, when they
are anxious, when they're grieving, heartbroken, even in good times.
(01:26):
Have you tried journaling? Why don't you journal about it?
And what is the deal with this? Why is it
so amazing to be able to write down your feelings?
Why does it always come up in these discussions? Well,
today I want to talk about it. By popular request,
by popular demand from so many listeners, what is the
magic behind journaling and how can we really embrace it?
(01:50):
I am going to admit I'm one of those annoying
people who has been journaling for years and who swears
by it. I feel myself getting I wouldn't say worse,
but more or detached from my life when I don't journal,
and I definitely feel the quality of my experiences and
my emotions improve when I do. Journaling for me makes
me very present, It makes me more reflective of my life.
(02:14):
I feel closer to my memories. I love it for
so many reasons, but I also get that it's kind
of hard to get into if it's not something that
you're a regular at or that you have done very often,
or if it's you know, not how you necessarily have
tended to process your emotions. Everyone that likes it really
(02:34):
likes it, but it's kind of like reading or any
hobby or exercising or eating healthy. We know we should
be doing it, we know that we will feel better
after doing it, but there are always so many mental barriers,
so many empty notebooks we promise to start writing in
at the start of the year, so many times that
(02:55):
we plan to journal in the evening, and then we
just never get around to it. So today, let's talk
about the fundamentals and of course the psychology of journaling.
Why it helps our brains process trauma, why it helps
our bodies heal faster, how it improves our intelligence, our friendships,
(03:15):
our memories, but also more importantly, how to actually make
it an enjoyable practice and one that is actually useful
rather than a chure. How to actually want to journal
and where to even start. I'm going to give you
the fundamentals of journaling and how to actually enjoy journaling,
(03:38):
and some fun journal prompts, and also really talk about
some of the myths and misconceptions about this method and
what it can actually do for our health. And notice
how I didn't just say mental health. Our health on
a holistic level, from physical to social to emotional. There
is a lot to talk about without further Ado, let's
(04:01):
get into the psychology and the fundamentals of journaling. Journaling
has a lot of different forms, you know, from the
tried and tested notebook to a structured gratitude journal or
a workbook, a blog, I don't know if people still
(04:22):
blog anymore, maybe an Instagram account, even your notes app.
Anything that causes you to express your thoughts in a
written form outside the confines of your mind. To me,
that counts as journaling. I think we have a very
narrow picture of what journaling looks like, and it's a
person at a desk writing page after page, or you know,
(04:46):
a very Victorian image of a bronze character with an
ink and a quill penning very beautiful poetry. Not at all.
Journaling can be as large or small, as romance, antic,
or practical as you want it to be. And I
think that's what makes it so incredible. It is just
(05:07):
so accessible and cost effective. Anyone can do it in
the way that works for them. It's kind of like
what running is for our physical health. If you have
shoes and you have your legs, you can run, and
if you have your brain and something to write on,
you can journal and you'll feel better afterwards. Hopefully. Most likely,
(05:28):
some people like to just like pour their heart out
every three months when they need it. There are people who,
like I said, write a page or more every day.
There is you know, list form. There is naming what
you're grateful for, what you know, what happened in your day,
your highlights and low lights. There is the kind of
journaling that is very structured and really keeps account of
(05:51):
what you're going through day by day. My point here
is that there are no rules. The only condition for
journaling is that you're finding some way to record your
personal thoughts, your feelings, insights, troubles or daily life. And
the final condition maybe not even a condition, maybe not
(06:12):
even a rule, but the beauty of journaling is that
it doesn't even need to be good. That's another thing
that I think sometimes holds us back from writing or
saying that we are someone who journals. When we put
something on a page, or we put it down in writing,
it feels so permanent and so sacred, and I don't
(06:32):
know if it's just me, but we can't help but
picture someone reading it back, maybe in the future, and
getting to essentially appear directly into our lives. So sometimes
we fixate on making it worth it. We fixate on
it sounding good or using our need as handwriting, or
not coming off as to I don't know, to anything,
(06:55):
not coming off as too loud or too emotional, true
sensitive in our own journal entries. But the thing is
is that journaling is strictly for you. There are no mistakes,
There are no bad entries except for the ones that
weren't written. There are no wrong thoughts. You know, no
one is going to give you a mark like it's
(07:15):
an assignment. As I said before, journaling is a self care,
self love practice. It's one of the only times that
everything gets to be about you and you get to
do it in the way that works best as long
as you are doing it. Journaling has an amazing reputation
(07:36):
when it comes to, I guess, healing some of our
biggest emotional afflictions, whether that is helping us with anxiety
and depression or grief, or even just managing everyday stresses.
I don't even think I would be able to count
the number of therapists that have been or have said
to me, Oh, have you tried journaling? Have you tried
(07:57):
writing about these feelings? Have you tried articu them in
written form. What exactly is so powerful about that, though,
because anyone can pick up a piece of paper and
a pen and write about how they're feeling, right, what
is the big secret here? Well, let's talk about it,
starting with the science and the evidence, of course, because
(08:20):
we're not going to be making any claims without some proof.
Journaling has basically been proven to have everything from psychological
to even physical benefits, which may surprise some of us.
It definitely surprised me, and we'll get to why in
a second. But starting with the more psychological side, the
(08:40):
moment when I think people really began to recognize the
benefits of this. What's from a landmark study in nineteen
eighty eight. And in this study, students were randomly assigned
to write about either very traumatic experiences or very superficial
topics for four days in a world. Six weeks later,
(09:02):
those who had delved into traumatic experiences, who had really
written pages and pages about how they felt, the meaning
they applied, how it impacted their life, they actually reported
feeling a lot better. They reported more positive moods, lesser anxiety,
fewer illnesses than those who were writing about everyday experiences.
(09:26):
This is when journaling really began to be recommended more.
I'm sure when this study was first proposed back in
the eighties, people were like, you want to measure whether
writing something down is good for people. But after this
study was published, I think it kind of said something
that everyone was already thinking. When you actually find an
(09:48):
outlet for what is going on in your brain and
the kind of emotional and cognitive affliction that your problems
are causing you the mental strain. I guess when you
find an outlet for that, you feel better. And I
think that was one of the first times that people
had put that into words. People had been obviously writing
journal entries and poetry and novels and stories for as
(10:12):
long as humans had existed, but this study was when
someone really said, hey, you know, this actually has a
really positive impact on mental health, and people started recommending it.
They were basically like, oh, I better get on board.
This is such a cost effective method of making people
feel better. Since then, it's become a huge topic of conversation,
(10:34):
and so many more studies have been produced around that.
One of my favorite ones is a study that shows
that people who journal regularly twice a week recover from
heartbreak faster than those who don't, sometimes even twice as fast.
That was one of the estimates given by the researchers.
I don't know if you can really measure how far
(10:56):
someone gets over heartbreak, but there you go. There was
another study published only a couple years ago that said
journaling for fifteen minutes a day can increase our IQ,
our literal intelligence, and also our EQ, which is our
emotional intelligence. That makes you a better friend, That makes
you a better partner, a better coworker, more in touch
(11:17):
with your own emotions, of course, but also more in
tune and therefore empathetic to others. This stuff I think
we all know. Writing about your feelings makes you understand
them better, which means you understand yourself better, but also
others people who are also members of the human race.
That's fairly simple. But when we start looking at the
(11:41):
physical health benefits, that's when it really starts to get
so interesting and almost a little bit insane for me,
and the case for journaling just becomes even greater. So
let me tell you about a pretty amazing New Zealand
study from twenty thirteen which basically showed, maybe not showed
basically suggests did that writing helped our body heal itself
(12:04):
faster from physical injury. So it's not just that it
helps people recover from trauma or become more intelligent or
feel less stressed. It has physical healing properties. So in
this study, forty nine healthy adults aged sixty four to
ninety seven, they wrote about either a really upsetting event
(12:28):
or just their daily activities for twenty minutes after two
weeks had passed. To make sure that you know any
initial negative feeling stirred up by recalling those upsetting events
had passed, all the subjects had a biopsy on their arm,
basically meaning that a piece of tissue was removed from
(12:48):
their arms. They had a small wound. That wound was
then photographed for the next twenty one days while the
group continued to keep journaling about either upsetting of events
or everyday events. On the eleventh day, seventy six percent
of the group that did expressive writing had fully healed,
(13:10):
with forty two percent of the control group having healed,
So forty two versus seventy six percent. How has that
not talked about more? That is such an astonishing study,
obviously small sample size, it would definitely need to be replicated.
But if you think that study was just a fluke
after it was released, even before people were really looking
(13:34):
into this, And there was another study that appeared in
the Journal of the American Medical Association, so not a
small journal, and it looked at patients with asthma and arthritis,
half of who were again asked to write for twenty
minutes each day about something that was bothering them a
stressor a past trauma, and the other half who were
asked to just write about their daily life. Four months later,
(13:57):
the patients in the stressful writing group increased improvement on
objective clinical evaluations about their symptoms of asthma, arthritis, and
emotional distress. They were less stressed, they had fewer negative
symptoms of their asthma, and their situation that condition has
had deteriorated less. So the research is basically concluded writing
(14:22):
about something that was stressing them out, really engaging their
emotions through this practice not only helped these patients get
better in a sense, but it also kept them from
getting worse. Why is this the case? How is it
possible that writing could heal a wound or minimize the
(14:44):
chronic illness? And I want to obviously just state here
that we're not trying to I'm not trying to claim
that journaling is going to replace modern medicine and magically
everyone will get better. But what really comes down to
in all of these instances is stress. Stress kills ourselves.
Stress reduces our immune system functioning, Stress shortens our life expectancy,
(15:08):
It puts our body under strain. All of these things
obviously have a very big physical impact and can contribute
to pre existing illness or make us more susceptible to
new illness. But controlling our stress that helps control the
physical burden placed on our body. And that is why
journaling is shown to have these really wonderful, if not
(15:32):
unbelievable healing properties for physical, not just mental ailments, because
it basically gets our brain to process heavy emotions and
experiences that would otherwise manifest in physical tension and physical turmoil.
I think it's just one of the many ways that
our mind and our body interact and impact each other,
and I think we don't explore that enough, especially in
(15:54):
Western medicine. We're so focused on treating symptoms rather than
holistically really thinking about the body and thinking about the
mind and how our psychology and our emotional state contributes
to how we're basically functioning. The reason that I think
journaling is so effective at managing stress or processing an emotion,
(16:16):
any emotion, is that it's an essentially an organizational system.
It's an organizational procedure. It's a way of cleaning things
up or making sense of things that we can't work
out by just thinking about them over and over again.
That's the curse of overthinking, something that I'm sure we
(16:37):
all do from time to time. It leads us to
believe that we are problem solving when actually we are
just making the issue more convoluted and getting further into
the labyrinth. And writing about it does something about the
thoughts and it kind of keeps track of where we've been.
But also, at a very basic level, it's a circuit breaker.
(17:00):
Generally gets us out of our mind. It kind of
removes us from the problem and allows us to write
about it, not in the third person, but almost in
a more detached way. We have some form of emotional
distance that we don't get when we try and process
all of our feelings about a situation, all of our
(17:22):
heavy emotions in our brain alone. The more we practice journaling. Obviously,
in a moment, it can just help us really break
away from going over and over unnecessary details, not being
able to find an exit to our thoughts. But the
more we practice it, the more it becomes a tool
(17:43):
to reprogram maladaptive thoughts, to reflect and remember our lives
more realistically, to actually be able to look back at
journal entries and be like, oh no, maybe my thoughts
about that situation were wrong. This is how I remember
it at the time, and it helps us organize our
life and our thoughts and provide emotional catharsis. That is
(18:06):
one of my favorite words, catharsis when we really need it,
you know, like this thing is bothering me, this breakup,
this heartache, this assignment, this moment when I embarrass myself.
Let me really spend time trying to think about this
in a way that my brain normally wouldn't think about
(18:27):
it by writing about it. And I'm not looking for
a solution. I'm not journaling to find an answer. I'm
journaling just to process what I've been through. And that
is something that we don't always do because we are
too stuck in our feelings to really detach from them
and distance ourselves from them for a moment and just
(18:49):
think about the situation in the grandest scheme of things.
So basically what I'm trying to say in the most
convoluted way possible. Journaling is valuable and helps us deal
with stress and distress because it forces you to put
complicated emotions about your future, about your family, your friends,
your trauma, your day, whatever it may be. It forces
(19:12):
you to put those complicated emotions into some form of
coherent sentence or paragraph, and through that act you get
more clarity and you feel like you're getting somewhere. Everything
else that comes along with that is basically a benefit
of not being consumed with over analyzing and overthinking a problem.
(19:32):
We have more space to begin to think about others,
to really listen to them, to be curious. Our memory
improves because we're not so caught up in ruminating. We
sleep better, we enjoy life more, and that is what
really helps us activate a better version of ourselves through journaling.
I think it's not just that we are writing about
(19:52):
something and somehow that makes everything feel a little bit
less heavy. Yes, that's a component of it, but it's
that we're using a new part of our brain, not
just a problem solve, but to really go deeper, to
apply meaning, to think about things in a different light.
And here's the thing. It may be hard to start,
it's really hard to find the time to feel motivated.
(20:15):
But personally, I have never walked away from writing even
just like a page or two, less than five hundred words,
and not felt better, not felt like something has been lifted.
And I really I don't think I'm the only one
who has had that experience. Okay, I feel like I've
gone on and on here about the benefits. Hopefully you're convinced,
(20:36):
but being convinced is one thing. Actually doing the thing
is a lot harder. Any of us could tell you
that so many of us want to be the person
who journals. We want to have this catalog of our
life and our feelings, but we feel like we don't
have the time. We feel like we don't know where
to start, we don't know what to write about. You know,
taking ten minutes to write about our feelings doesn't always
(20:58):
feel as enjoyable immediately in the moment as the instant
gratification and pleasure that we get from our phones or
from watching TV. That's how the fast Dope mean of
our entertainment cycle really works. Another barrier is perfectionism, you know, procrastination, boredom.
It's kind of tiring sometimes to write all the time.
(21:20):
But I'm gonna stop us right there and kind of
give you a heart truth. Life is full of excuses,
and there is an excuse for everything. You can go
your whole life is taking the easiest route. But the
thing about journaling is that it is such a small investment.
It's basically free. It can take as little as five minutes.
(21:42):
In a lot of those studies we just spoke of
people only journaled for ten to twenty minutes. That's shorter
than most TV episodes, and in comparison, the benefits are astounding.
From a strictly you know, like pro cons perspective, there
is no reason not to journal. Ratio of time and
effort to breakthroughs and mental clarity is like one to
(22:05):
two million. So how do we build this habit even
when it feels difficult. Well, I've got you, guys. It's
a message I get all the time from you. I
always get people asking me about how to actually get
into journaling, and I've thought about it a lot. So
we're going to discuss the four secret ingredients or foundations
(22:26):
to becoming a good journaler, how to make it feel
not like a chore, how to actually be excited, and
more importantly, how to actually integrate it into your identity
and as part of who you are. We're going to
talk about all of that and more after this short break.
(22:48):
Whenever someone asked me on tips about how to get
into journaling, how to really embrace it, how to enjoy it,
I always give the same answer, and you guys know me,
it's never a simple answer, but one that contains four parts.
So let's break down these four tips I have from
not only actually feeling excited to write and excited to journal,
(23:11):
but getting something out of it, getting what you want
out of it. So my first tip is to, in
the beginning, only journal when you really feel the need.
Some people will say the easiest way to get into
into journaling, or into anything it is through routine and
discipline and doing it every day and staying consistent. You know,
if you googled how to start journaling, that is probably
(23:35):
going to be one of the first tips that comes up.
But making it a mission to journal every day just
takes the fun out of it and it's just another
thing on your to do list. None of us want
another thing on our to do list, especially when I
think that journaling should be something that you feel relieved,
(23:55):
if not joyous, to be doing. So to start off, really,
journal when you feel like you have something to write about,
and journal as smaller as big as you would like.
It could be a single line, it could be something
you've thought about or overheard. That is where you need
to begin. Then go from there. When you get the
hang of it, and when you find out what's important
(24:17):
to you to journal about, that's when you really, I think,
start to pick up momentum. So here's my evidence for this,
here's my reasoning. The researcher who we spoke about before,
who conducted that first groundbreaking study in the eighties on journaling,
he basically said, as much as what I just said,
(24:37):
you don't need to journal every day. So his name
is doctor pen Baker, and he's basically the pioneer of
writing therapy as it was called, and he talks a
lot about recovering from trauma through creative expression. And he said,
and I quote literally what I just said, I am
not a big fan of journaling every day. The founder
of Writing Therapy, said that, and the reason said that
(25:00):
is because I will try and like reframe how he
said it. But one of the interesting things about journaling
is actually sometimes writing too much, especially when you find
yourself ruminating, and that's kind of one side of the going.
So you write too much and you find yourself almost
getting too overinvolved in the feelings associated with an event,
(25:22):
or when you're going through a really hard time and
someone says or recommends that you journal, you just don't
feel like you can do it every day, so you
don't do it at all. So his recommendation is to
think of journaling as like a life course correction, as
opposed to a really intense commitment or practice. The times
(25:46):
that I always write the most is when I'm going
through something really rough. You know, I think about my
first ever heartbreak when I was seventaying eighteen. I don't know,
I feel like two notebooks in the span of six
months with bad poetry and us teary passages about you know,
the meaning of life and love. And it's those moments,
(26:06):
in those times when you really need it, that you
should lean in. Think of journaling almost like a painkiller,
you know, you don't take aspirin or advil every day,
at least I would hope not. You take it when
you need it, and that is the premise of good journaling.
I guess some people might really benefit from writing every day,
(26:26):
but sometimes I can make it really tedious, right when,
as doctor pen Baker suggested, you need a life course
correction and a second component to this. When you feel
the urge to journal or to write, especially at the beginning,
please please, please just do it. Drop everything anything that
(26:48):
you're doing, and put those thoughts that are basically begging
to come out, put them down somewhere. That is the
secret to any to beginning kind of any creative or
expressive endeavor. Not ignoring inspiration when it randomly emerges, because
sometimes that desire is not something that we can consciously
call on. And so when we finally, you know, do
(27:10):
get around to having the time to sit down and
write in our routine way and our time that we've
put aside during our day to do it, you know,
sometimes the inspiration is gone and then it just feels
kind of boring. So take advantage of the moments, even
if they're just a second, when you really feel the
urge to write something down, even if it's in your
note app notes app, just like get in the habit
(27:32):
of letting that be expressed. And that kind of brings
me to my second tip. Experiment and find what works
for you, and beyond that, try and make it fun
or find you know, a reason, a story, a quote
that motivates you to see. Journaling is more than just
a writing exercise. So let me explain this a little
bit further. Firstly and quickly, because we spoke about this before,
(27:55):
but writing big entries by hand every week may not
work for you. You Instead, you may, like you know,
want to start an Instagram that you keep private and
you post photos or screenshots from your notes app, or
a scrap book, even a trash diary. Some people call
them of receipts and pictures that you write on and
(28:16):
stick them down into a notebook. That actually reminds me
of a quote I read the other day. Let me
pull it up because it's just so beautifully. It's just
so beautifully captures this for me. Here it is. If
you feel like you don't know yourself, I recommend keeping
one notebook that you put everything in. Thoughts, quotes you
like call postcards to do list, diary entries, your favorite song, letters,
(28:38):
dried flowers, brain dumps, gratitude lists, sticky notes, pictures, literally everything.
And while in the process of feeling this journal, you
will get a sense of who you are, of all
the things that you like, your sense of self, especially
when you get to look back in a few years
and you have this snapshot. Just because the image of
journaling is one thing, it doesn't mean you can't be
(28:59):
expressive in other ways and that you can't find a
way to make the suit how you like to express
your emotions basically right like, it doesn't have to be
typed line after line after line, and that is something
that I really stand by. Just find a way to
journal in a manner that suits you, and secondly, find
(29:22):
your reason that really came up for me at the
end of that quote, you know, the desire to have
a snapshot for your future self. One of the big
reasons I journal when I know I need to but
I don't really want to, is because I like to
think about how interesting it's going to be to read
back those old entries in the future, and how much
(29:44):
present day me really enjoys looking at fifteen year old
me's entries, and you know, I often contemplate how I
won't get that opportunity if every time I get the
urge to journal, I just do something else, and if
I don't just spend ten minutes putting pa and to paper.
It's not just about how I'm feeling in the moment
and my motivations or my level of boredom or inspiration
(30:07):
to write, but also it becomes about what my future
self is going to get out of it. And I
spoke to someone the other day that said, you know
what really inspires her when journaling feels tedious is thinking
about her journals ending up in a museum, or her
kids reading them when she's gone and learning about how
it felt to be in your twenties and twenty twenty
(30:27):
four when they're reading them in twenty eighty four. So
that's my second instruction for getting into journaling, is to
really think about why you want to get into it,
whether it is just purely the benefits for your mental health,
whether there's a fun story, a fun meaning that you
can attach to the practice that makes it a little
bit more romantic, I would say, or glamorous. Okay, moving
(30:50):
on to my third foundation, fundamental for good journaling. Let
someone else do the initial thinking for you, especially in
the beginning stages, and the way that you can do
that is by using journal prompts, by purchasing a structured
journal looking for inspiration online. One of the biggest barriers
(31:10):
to starting anything is the anticipation around how much effort
we think will go into it to begin with, and
that makes it so much harder to start if you're
not accustomed to writing down what you're feeling, to entering
that reflective space, and you're finding it daunting. Make it
(31:31):
easier for yourself by following how other people may be
doing it. One of my favorite journals I have ever
used was a five minute gratitude journal that was it
was really really popular a few years back. And what
was another example, like they had these one sentence a day,
one page of day books. These kind of structured journals
(31:53):
take the thinking out of it. You have like a
format upon which to ride in. You know, I'm trying
to think about what the Gratitude journal was structured at
as I think it was. It had four sections. It
was all you had to say was, well, you're grateful
for that day, what did you enjoy that day? Some
positive affirmations and what you learned that day, and it
(32:16):
made it so easy, and there's still like a depth
and wealth of knowledge in doing that, and it's a
really great place to start. Some of my favorite journal
prompts that work every time for me include just five
things that I'm grateful for, and I can expand if
I feel like it, or I can keep it in
that list format. Another one that I love is just
(32:39):
writing about just doing a brain dump about three things
that are really weighing heavy on my mind. And the
beauty of these is that you can make them as
short or as long as you like. And like I
said in the beginning, you want to make it work
for you. You don't want this to feel like a
chore or like it's tedious. There is also a book
(32:59):
called five hundred Journal Prompts. It's by Robert Duff, who's
a I think he's a psychiatrist, and it's amazing. Some
of the questions are so good and they're so unique,
and you just pick one and you reflect on that.
Some of my favorites were like what is your favorite failure,
what a great journal prompt that is? Or how well?
(33:20):
One of them was like write me the story of
how you and your friend became friends, Like how you
and your best friend became friends? Really reflective. It makes
you think about so many things what I'm trying to
think of others. One of them was like, what is
a question that you were really scared to know the
answer to? Which songs have the most vivid memories for you?
And you're just doing one a week as you're getting
(33:43):
into it. It's an afternoon activity, it's a self care activity,
and you just write for as longer, as little as
you want. This is kind of unrelated, but note how
I said do it in the afternoon. This is such
a random tip. But just don't journal before bed, or
don't say that you're going to journal before bed, because
you will eight out of ten times not end up
(34:05):
doing it, and you will get distracted or you will
fall asleep. So choose your prompt in the morning or
in the mid afternoon, and then find that moment when
you have a moment, not before bed. I know it
feels like the urge to that it is a natural one, right,
It's like when we're most reflective, it's when we have
the most free time. But if you really want to
(34:26):
integrate journaling is like a mental health or an emotional
practice for you try and find a time when you're
actually a bit more conscious and a bit more present.
So my final of the four ingredients, right quickly and
without judgment. I save this for last, but it's probably
deserves to be first on this list. One of the
(34:46):
biggest barriers I find for people who want a journal
it's not time, because we all have time. It's perfectionism.
It's perfectionism. It's getting caught up in our own head.
And when we write quick and we don't worry about
being succinct, but just about getting as much on the
page as possible, we have less time to worry about
how we're coming off. We don't worry about whether that
(35:08):
was exactly how we wanted to say it, how we
wanted to word it, because it doesn't matter. There is
no audience right now, there is no I've said this
so many times, but there is no final grade. I
often think like one of the last times a lot
of us right is when we're in school. You know,
that's probably one of the last times we really had
to write thousands of words or hundreds of words with
(35:28):
a pen and paper. So it can feel very much
like a task. But journaling is one of those beautiful
things where the simple act of doing it, even badly
in our minds, is still really really good. In fact,
I actually think sometimes doing it badly is better because
you aren't preoccupied with judging your emotions. You're just letting
(35:52):
yourself feel and reach that Catharsis and I think when
we journal badly is when we feel most in tune
with the need to express and the need to process.
Because we aren't waiting for the perfect time, or we
aren't waiting for when we think we're going to be
able to say things the best way. We're just writing.
We're just going for it. So let's do a little
(36:13):
summary of the four tips to journaling, our four journaling fundamentals. Firstly,
journal the way that works for you and when you
feel the urge. Make it fun, make it unique, make
it work for you, and find a deeper meaning to
apply to the practice. Let someone else do the thinking
for you. And finally, write fast, just get it out.
(36:34):
No perfectionism, no overthinking. We do that enough elsewhere, So
express in whatever form works for you. Something to remember,
journaling is honestly one of the biggest gifts that you
can give your future self because time goes by really
really fast, and sometimes we are not great at remembering
(36:57):
who we are the moment. You know, in this moment
right we feel very present right now maybe, but in
like two, three, five years, we kind of lose the
perspective of who we were on our earlier, our mid
or our late twenties. And that is a final blessing
that I think journaling really gives us, is the ability
to know us from the inside out at the time
(37:20):
of writing, and not everyone gets to experience. That's something
I'm really grateful that I have kept journals for so
long because I have this like beautiful, I don't know,
like beautiful timeline, this beautiful like family tree of myself,
like I don't know, really know how to explain it.
Hopefully you're getting what I'm saying, Like I have this
(37:40):
beautiful timeline. I'm gonna I'm gonna land on that. I'm
kind of like losing my words here, so yeah, I
just want to say one final thing here. I know
I feel like I've been talking about I'm in this
like cult of journaling. I'm one of those annoying people
who won't shut up about it. But in all honesty,
I do want to say, sometimes it just doesn't work
(38:01):
for certain people, and that is okay. Not everyone processes
or imagines or articulates and thinks in the same way.
You know. For example, I have friends who really need
a physical release and that's how they manage stress, and
that's how they process their emotions is through running and
through a physical expression. And some of my other friends
(38:24):
like something less cerebral, you know, they like art, or
they like talking rather than working through things in a
solitary way. So whatever it is, pick your poison, pick
your cure. I should say. If journaling doesn't work, that's fine,
you know, I've given it my gold style of approval.
But sometimes it's just too boring and it just doesn't
(38:45):
work for you, and you don't have anything to say.
What I really want you to do is just find
your way of expression of expressing, find your way of processing,
find your catharsis, find a way of getting any everything
that you're feeling out of your brain and into your environment,
(39:05):
into your environment or into some physical form. And that's
what all those ways of expressing, from physical to artistic
to verbal, have in common. It gets the thoughts and
the feelings and the worries out of your brain into
the open. So I just want to say that as
a final message, but I really do hope that you
have learned something. I hope this was up your alley,
that you journal better, that you journal more, or that
(39:28):
you know you journal less, you journal more effectively, and
that you really have kind of maybe greened, and your
appreciation for why it is so beneficial, and even some
of the history of this practice that you may not
have known. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please
give us a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
(39:50):
wherever you are listening right now. It really does help
the show grow and it helps us reach new people,
which is always delightful. If you have an episode's suggestion,
if you just want to get in touch, if you
want chat, if you have feelings about this episode, please
feel free to DM me at that Psychology Podcast. And
as always, we are going to talk soon. Until then,
(40:11):
stay safe, stay kind, please be gentle with yourself, and
we will be back on Friday with another episode.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.