The Psychology of your 20s - 219. The psychology of journalling

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

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: [e-mail]   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. 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 20s. If you have ever had a brush with the self-help or 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 journaling has been for them. Whether you took them up on that or not, whether you decided to give it a go, whether you saw 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, 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? 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 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. 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 not how you necessarily have tended to process

your emotions. Everyone that likes it really likes it but it's kind of like reading or any, you know, 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 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, our memories, but also more

importantly, how to actually make it an enjoyable practice and one that is actually useful rather than a chore, how to actually want to journal and where to even start. I'm going to give you the four fundamentals of journaling and how to actually enjoy journaling 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. 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. So without further ado, let's 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 the people still 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, a very Victorian image of a Bronte character with an ink and a quill penning very beautiful poetry.

Not at all. Journaling can be as large or small as romantic or practical as you want it to be. And I think that's what makes it so incredible. It is just 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 peer directly into our lives. So sometimes we fixate on making it worth it. We fixate on it sounding good or using our neatest handwriting or not coming off as to, I don't know, to anything, not coming off as

too loud or too emotional, too 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 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 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 writing about these feelings? Have you tried articulating 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 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 moment when I think people really began to

recognize the benefits of this was from a landmark study in 1988. And in this study, students were randomly assigned to write about either very traumatic experiences or very superficial topics for four days in a row. Six weeks later, 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. This is when journaling really began to be recommended more.

I'm sure when this study was first proposed, back in the 80s, 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 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 long as humans had existed. But this study was when someone really said, hey, no, 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. 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. even by the researchers, I don't know if you can really, you know, measure how far someone gets over heartbreak, but there you go. There was another study published only a couple years ago that said journaling for 15 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 with your own emotions, of course, but also more in tune.

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 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 2013, which basically showed, maybe not showed, basically suggested that writing helped our body heal itself 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, 49 healthy adults aged. 64 to 97, they wrote about either a really upsetting event or just their daily activities for 20 minutes. After two weeks had passed to make sure that, you know, any initial negative feelings 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 their arm. They had a small wound. That wound was then photographed for the next 21 days while the group continued to keep journaling about either upsetting events or everyday events. On the 11th day, 76% of the group that did expressive writing had fully healed, with 42% of the control group having healed. So 42 versus 76%. How is that not talked about more? That is something.

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 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 20 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, the patients in the stressful writing group showed 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, their condition has had deteriorated less. So the research has basically concluded writing 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,

minimize a 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 it really comes down to in all of these instances is stress. Stress kills our cells. Stress reduces our immune system functioning. Stress shortens our life expectancy. 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 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 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 how we're basically functioning. The reason that I think journaling is so effective at managing stress or processing an emotion,

any emotion, is that it's an essentially, you know, 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 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.

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 heavy emotions in our brain alone. The more we practice journaling, obviously in a moment, it can just help us really break away from, you know, 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 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 was 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 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 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 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-analizing

and overthinking a problem. 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 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 to 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. But personally, I have never walked

away from writing, even just like a page or two, less than 500 words, and not felt better, not felt like something has been lifted. And I really, I don't think I'm not. I'm not. 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, 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 10 minutes to write about our feelings doesn't always 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 dopamine 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. But I'm going to stop us right there and kind of give you a hard truth. Life is full of excuses and there is an excuse for everything. You can go your whole life, which 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. In a lot of those studies we just spoke of, people only journaled for 10 to 20 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. The ratio of time and effort to breakthroughs and mental clarity is like one to 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 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. 2%.

That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry. We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong.

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Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, 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 journaling or into anything 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 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, 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 small or 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 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 80s on journaling, he basically said as much as what I just said. You don't need to journal every day. So his name is Dr. Penbaker, 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 he said that is because I will try and 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 point. write too much and you find yourself almost getting too over involved in the feelings associated with an event 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 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 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 17, 18, I don't know, I filled like two notebooks in the span of six months with with bad poetry and endless teary passages about, you know, the meaning of life and love. And it's those moments in those times when you really need it that you should lean in. Think of journal. 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, but sometimes I can make it really tedious, right when, as Dr. Penbaker 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 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 get around to having the time to sit down and write in our routine way, in our, like,

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 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, but writing big entries by hand every week,

not work for 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 scrapbook, even, a trash diary. Some people call them of receipts and pictures that you write on and 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 lists, diary entries, your favorite song, letters, dried flowers, brain dumps, gratitude lists, sticky notes, pictures, literally everything. And while in the process

of filling 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. It doesn't mean, you can't be 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 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 present day me really enjoys looking at 15-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 10 minutes putting pen to paper. It's not just about how I'm feeling in the moment and my motivations or my level of boredom or inspiration 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 20s in 2024 when they're reading them in 2084. 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, or 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 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 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 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 a day, books, these kind of structured journals take the thinking out of it. You have like a format upon which to write 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, what are you grateful for that day? What did you enjoy that day? Some positive affirmations and what you learned that day and it 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 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 called 500 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 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.

I'm trying to think some 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 just do one a week as you're getting. into it. It's an afternoon activity. It's a self-care activity. And you just write for as long or 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 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 do that 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 integrate journaling as 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 write quickly and without judgment.

I saved this for last, but it probably deserves to be first on this list. One of the biggest barriers I find for people who want to 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 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 there so many times, but there is no final grade.

I often think like one of the last times a lot of us write 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 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 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 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. No perfectionism, no overthinking. We do that enough elsewhere. So 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 who we are 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 in our early or our mid or our late 20s. 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 of writing. And not everyone gets to experience that 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. I don't really know how to explain it. Hopefully you're getting what I'm saying. Like I have this beautiful timeline. I'm going to 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 for certain people. And that is okay. Not everyone processes or imagines or 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 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 work for you and you don't have anything to say. What I really want you to do is just find your way of expressing, find your way of processing, find your catharsis, find a way of getting anything, everything that you're feeling out of your brain and 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, you know, you journal less, you journal more effectively, and that you really have kind of baby-grained 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, whatever 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 suggestion, if you just want to get in touch, if you want to 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, stay safe, stay kind.

Please be gentle with yourself. And we will be back on Friday with another episode. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you're not to be played with.

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