23. Why journaling is important and how to use it

In this episode of the Heal With Grace podcast, I dive into the importance and transformative power of journaling for personal healing. Covering its benefits in mental and physical health, the episode emphasizes journaling as a tool for self-expression and reflection, aiding in the process of bringing subconscious thoughts and emotions to the conscious level. I discuss the concept of expressive writing, share research evidence supporting its positive impact on various health conditions, and present different methods and tips for effective journaling practices. These include the expressive writing protocol by Dr. James Pennebaker and Journal Speak by Nicole Sachs, tailored for individuals dealing with chronic pain or seeking deep emotional healing. The episode aims to guide listeners on how to utilize journaling as a safe, private means to explore their inner world and facilitate a journey towards recovery and self-understanding.

Show Resources:

Nichole Saches Journal Speak

Dr. Pennebaker journal study

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Transcript

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Hey, hey, and welcome back to the Heal With Grace podcast. Today, we're going to talk about journaling, why it's important, the transformative power of it, and what to do. How do you do this in a way that actually helps you instead of just opening a journal with a pen, staring at the paper, wondering what am I supposed to do?

I know I've been there and I will say this, I don't call myself a journaler.that hasn't always been my thing where I, some people definitely has, which is wonderful, but you don't have to be a quote unquote journal or for this to help you. You can use it in a very specific way, especially when you're uncovering the parts of you that you're working through healing, whether that's working with.

Mental, physical health, you can use this for anything and I'm going to take you through it and also share with you actually the research behind it. So, okay. So journaling is more than just putting pen to paper. It's an act of self expression and reflection. so much, Jen. The whole point of journaling is to help you kind of unravel your inner world and shed light on your thoughts and emotions and experiences that aren't very conscious.

Basically, we're trying to get the unconscious to the conscious because about 90 percent actually, I think it might be a little bit more than that of our thoughts, emotions, experiences, memories are all subconscious. We don't consciously think of them. And so We know that when we're going through difficult experiences in life, when we've gone through negative patterns and we're healing through chronic pain and illness, a lot of those experiences and emotions that have been negative in our life are underneath the surface and they're wreaking havoc on our body.

So we want them to come out. Oftentimes chronic conditions leaves us feeling overwhelmed and disconnected and, really journaling offers you a sanctuary. It's this safe space where you can completely explore your inner world without judgment or fear. And it's so intimate and private. Even more so than talking to a therapist because you truly are on your own, even if you feel comfortable with say your therapist or coach, someone that you're working through and you think you feel so comfortable talking to them and expressing anything, which is wonderful.

Fabulous. That's I hope that's the case, right? There still can be a little bit of subconscious bias with how you express yourself or what you talk about. It's totally natural, totally human to censor ourselves, even if you're not fully aware of it talking with someone, or sharing something vulnerable.

So we know that. Your body is trying to protect you from difficult experiences, like emotions and thoughts and memories, because it seems dangerous. Your body, your brain is saying, I really don't want to feel that. I don't want to feel that difficult time, that experience, that emotion. So instead, your body starts to send you signals of pain or disease.

You often negate your thoughts or feelings because your subconscious has categorized them as dangerous. So journaling is a way to bring them to light and let your mind and body know that your thoughts and your feelings are okay. Even if they feel awful, it doesn't mean they're all going to feel great, right?

Hard emotions are hard. Working through past traumas is difficult. But we have to be able to bring them to the light and feel it and work through it so that they don't have so much hold and weight over us. So studies have shown that expressive writing can have a profound impact on your physical and emotional wellbeing.

So by putting your thoughts and feelings into words, you engage your prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that's right where your forehead is. And it's the part of your brain that makes responsible decision making and self regulation, the conscious mind. This is basically what makes us human, right?

This logical, decision making mind. So, although we don't always want to operate from this, because it can get into right and wrong, kind of ego minded place of thinking, and actually a lot of times healing happens in the body, but we do need both. And so by journaling, we can bring about emotions and thoughts into this part of the brain and work through it.

So I want to take you through a couple of different practices because journaling as a therapeutic practice has been explored in various contexts and research has actually shown that. The people who can benefit from expressive writing have been found to produce significant benefits for people with a variety of medical conditions, including lung functioning and asthma disease, severity and rheumatoid arthritis, pain and physical health and cancer immune response and HIV infection hospitalizations for cystic fibrosis pain intensity and women with chronic pelvic pain.

Sleep onset, latency, and poor sleepers post operative course. In addition, it can be helpful for assistance with specific life circumstances, like breakups with a partner, death of a loved one, unemployment, natural disaster, general stress events. Definitely specifically chronic pain, chronic fatigue, any kind of chronic condition that is mind and body rooted.

So there are two different ways that I've explored through research. And one is an expressive writing protocol developed by Dr. James Pennebaker, who is the most widely used in research method utilized in clinical practice. So this writing protocol has been linked to improvements in both physical and psychological health.

It's been used in nonclinical and clinical populations. And the expressive writing protocol consists of asking someone to write about a stressful, traumatic, or emotional experience for three to five sessions over four consecutive days. And each session. is supposed to last for about 15 to 20 minutes per session.

So Dr. Pennebaker is one of the first researchers in this area and found that writing about emotionally difficult events or feelings for just 20 minutes at a time over four consecutive days was associated with both short term increases in physiological arousal and long term decreases in Mental and physical health.

So, okay, how do you do this? Exactly. Let me give you a few tips. So, the whole idea is that you write about something that is deeply personal for you. Very important. And you write about the same event for all 4 days, or you can actually write about something different each day, but what you choose to write about is Is also very important.

They don't suggest that you write about a trauma that immediately happened because you might need some time. Your nervous system might need some time to kind of come down and to process through. So still write about something that is deeply personal, difficult for you, but it doesn't have to be something that immediately just happened.

It's also a bit more effective than writing for four days over the course of several weeks. So you want to make sure that you write for 15 to 20 minutes for four days. And when you're writing, you want to write continuously. Once you begin writing, don't stop. Don't worry about spelling or grammar. If you run out of things to say, simply repeat what you've already written.

Keep writing about the topic until the time is up. And after you complete the expressive exercise, you may want to destroy or hide what you've written because you don't have to go back to it. The whole point is for you to write about something and share everything you feel and think about it. And this might feel scary sometimes.

Some of your thoughts might sound so horrible. Some of your feelings might feel so bad. So horrible, you might use words like hate, you might feel like you want to hit or punch, or, you know, you, you hate someone when that's not truly actually how you feel, but you truly, you want to get all this out because you want to feel like.

Your feelings have really come out without any shame or judgment. That's why it's only for your eyes. And that's why you can rip it up afterwards. I know the first time that I did this, it actually was pretty difficult for me to write for the full time. Sometimes it's not. And sometimes it is. Sometimes I'm like, I don't know what else to say.

I'm pretty expressive. I know how to express myself, but I don't know what else to say. So I would just sometimes literally say that I would write. I don't know what to say. And I just keep going repeat myself. and then I also want you to recognize that sometimes this can be pretty exhausting. So give yourself some space and some time and flexibility around it so that you're able to.

Process through and have your body respond. So another practice that's actually very similar and has the same core components to it, just a little bit slightly different is called journal speak. And this practice was developed by chronic pain therapist, Nicole Sachs. She's a licensed clinical social worker.

And I'll link all of these and this information below also on the show notes. So, you can have all their information. So she suggests the same premise, but she says to start off before starting these practices with making three different lists, one of your past stressors, one of your current stressors, and one of personality traits.

So the past stressors can be any event that happened in your past that caused you stress, including your childhood, teen years, younger adulthood. Things that cause you to feel fear, anger, guilt, shame, or humiliate, humiliation, or any other big feelings. So, she mentions that this list might include anything like neglect, abuse, abandonment, moving home or schools, bullying, witnessing verbal or physical abuse, having a medical condition, difficulty with siblings, lack of affection, addiction in your family of origin, divorce or marital problems, relationship difficulties, mental illness in the family, stress of studying, leaving a job, experiencing a traumatic event, career stress, difficult with friendships, injury to yourself or a loved one.

Or being an energetic mismatch with a parent. So, again, this is truly anything that has caused you to stress. Doesn't mean whether it's caused someone else to stress, but something that has caused you stress in your life. And remember, everyone is different. So this could also, she even mentions, this could be something like as specific as that time on the playground in fourth grade when, or the girl from sports camp did X, Y, and Z.

These are the types of things that we want to get out, get out of our subconscious, bring it to the conscious. And then the current stressors are anything in your life that causes you stress now and is still ongoing. And this can be anything from the list included previously about the previous stressors, or really, I mean, truly anything that's going on in your life that's causing you anywhere from a tiny bit of stress to overwhelmingly amount of stress.

And then the third list is personality traits. So the aspects of your personality that may be contributing to your stress. And this is so interesting to me because it's known, it's shown that certain personality characteristics can lead to things like chronic pain, chronic illness, chronic symptoms, lots of stress in your life and examples of these are things like perfectionism, being a people pleaser.

Needing other people to like and approve of you, having a strong inner critic, setting very high standards for yourself, judging yourself harshly, putting other people's needs before your own, finding it difficult to set boundaries with other people, pessimism, low self esteem, or low self worth. Difficulty in feeling and or expressing emotions, hypervigilance and anxiety.

And so this is a list of suggestions, but be open to what makes sense for you. And so once you make a list of these, then you have topics that you can write about. And so her suggestion that is instead of doing this only for four days over a certain topic or just about really difficult topics. It's meant to help you really heal long term and this can be used forever.

It's a practice I often go back to. So the suggestion is to pick a topic and write for 20 minutes. Be honest, be very, very honest. Make sure that you're letting all of your feelings be known. So an example is instead of saying, like, I did this at one point, I was like, you know what, and this was a few years ago.

I was like, I'm really stressed out with being a therapist. I'm overworked and I'm feeling getting close to burnout. I'm just, it's just really hard right now. These days are difficult. And while that's true and honest, it's not the deep unconscious, what she actually calls rage that we want to get out. We want to get out the rage.

So instead, what I really needed to do and what I eventually did come out was saying, I effing hate being a therapist. I'm so over this. This job sucks. I don't want to do it anymore. I'm so over having all these clients during the week. All I want to do is just Is go lay on a beach and do nothing when while that might be true for that moment, that's not my truth, like my actual truth in life, but that is that unconscious rage that needs to get out.

I love being a therapist. I do love my job. if you've heard my story, I mean, I've wanted to do this since I was a teenager. So that whole feeling is not my whole truth, but I was burned out at that point in my career. And so I did feel some of those things that sometimes. Also, I don't feel that way about my clients.

I absolutely love my clients. But again, we go through burnout, we go through things. And so that was the rage that I needed to come out. So that's her suggestion. And then furthermore, after you write, you use a self compassion practice afterwards. So place a hand on your heart and do some deep breathing, use a self compassion meditation.

You can find this on any kind of meditation app or YouTube. You can write about three things that you're grateful for, about yourself. Remember to make it about yourself, not necessarily your life, but about you. So while Nicole Sachs originally created this for people going through chronic pain, this definitely can be used in a variety of different situations, but especially if you are working with chronic pain and chronic health.

There are people that say, do this journal speak practice every day for 30 days when you're really trying to heal and you will start to see some shifts. I also want to remind you that with either of these practices, Because you're bringing out a lot of unconscious, difficult emotions and feelings that your body, your mind has said, Think about it this way, like your, your brain, your body is bringing out these emotions, so it's automatically going to say, alert, alert.

We don't want to feel those. And so you might have an increase of symptoms for a little bit. You might have, like, your body might have more fatigue, have more pain for a while, but sometimes that actually means it's working. Right? So stick with it and keep moving through it. One of the ways that I've used this is when I'm, when I've been really, really stuck in the past.

So when I have been in a really deep state of chronic fatigue, I have used all the brain training practices. I've used the nervous system regulation practices. I've been resting, like I was doing all the things. And that's actually when I started to, when I found journal speak and I was like, Oh, I haven't done journaling in this way, let me try it and I started to do it.

And I'm serious. I mean, it, it was such a big transformation for me. Like it did lift my symptoms after just a few days. But again, that's me. Sometimes again, it might take a month or two of doing this or a week. Everybody is different, but it does work because the premise, I mean, the whole point of our chronic pain and illness is stored, stuck, repressed emotions and feelings and beliefs.

So we have to get those out. So when should you use these journaling practices? I just mentioned 1 example. but really, whenever you feel the need to untangle your thoughts, or you've been stuck in a negative symptom pattern or crash or. Whether you're grappling with pain or simply seeking clarity under honestly, like just needing that clarity amongst the chaos, it can be very helpful.

Like I said, when you're feeling stuck and you feel like nothing else is working, it's really helpful to incorporate this journaling practice and to your life and know that. It might be hard to do, like when I know that I need to do it, I often procrastinate on it for so long. I will do everything else other than sit down and journal.

And even when I sit down and journal, I'll have a wave of fatigue. I'll all of a sudden get really tired. I'll get maybe a little bit of a headache, but I know I'm like, no. No, no, we're not doing that today. I know what you're doing. I know what you're doing, body. I know what you're doing, nervous system. I don't need to get tired.

I don't need a headache. This isn't dangerous. This is completely safe and completely okay. And then I'll move forward and go through it. So I hope this was helpful. this is, this is one of the deeper practices that people really. benefit from when you're ready for it. The clients that I work with in the mind body healing method, we definitely use this, but it's not always appropriate.

Like right in the beginning, just depending where you are in your journey. So just remember that. Your journal is kind of like this sacred companion. Yeah, it's difficult to do it sometimes, but it's also a very intimate place. Embrace it, cherish it, allow it to guide you towards some deeper healing.

And if you have any questions, DM me, feel free to reach out. I'm here and I will talk with you next time.