This will come as no surprise to anyone who has listened to this podcast or followed what I do for any amount of time, but JOURNALING has saved my mental and emotional health more than anything else that I’ve ever done.
Writing the things that come up from my subconscious brain during stream of conscious journaling, and let whatever comes up, come out on the page, I get to see thoughts that I don’t usually allow to come out or push them back down if they do. They tend to come out differently when writing then when I’m just thinking because my brain tries to push it away or decides it’s not important or that I’m wrong for thinking it. Or it just tries to classify it as truth when it really isn’t.
But when I’m journaling, it comes out differently. It helps me slow down my thoughts. It kicks my brain from its normal mode of judgement so I can make more sense out of it. Having it come out of my hand and onto the page instead of swirling around in my head and I can work through it better.
Journaling has been a huge part of my healing.
Sometimes when I talk about journaling like this, I’m afraid that people may misunderstand and think that the first time you sit down to journal everything happens really fast.
I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t.
It’s a skill that you teach yourself through the process of just doing it.
You can’t expect it to make everything you’re dealing with better right away. That’s just not true.
Or because it doesn’t happen the first time, a beginning journaler may think that it’s a waste of time when they don’t feel automatically better.
Either way, people don’t give it a chance.
We definitely live in a quick results type of world now.
Which is great when googling for facts but when it comes to working through thoughts and emotions, we’re still dealing with the human brain here.
Today, I wanted to share a little bit different lesson that I learned from my jounaling practice that I recently saw happen.
I’ve been journaling for about twelve years, so I hope this shows you how there is always more to learn and that it’s worth sticking to it.
Last week I was in a bad place, even though I didn’t realize that I was until I sat down to journal first thing after I woke up like I always do. I sat down with my pen and started writing.
I saw that all these negative thoughts started showing up on my page.
Lots of feelings of frustration came out that weren’t new.
I’m used to feeling frustration about my business because there is a big gap from where I’d like to be from where I actually am.
Things aren’t moving forward as smoothly and as quickly as I had hoped and that can feel really bad.
I’m sure you can all relate to things you’d like to be doing better at than where you currently are.
So, I was letting it come out so I could work through it like I usually do.
Like I said, these weren’t new thoughts, they come up quite a bit.
My journaling sessions are a good time to say the things that bother me because it’s completely safe to do it in my journal.
This day it just keeps coming.
All this negativity and how I wished things were different and how I must be doing everything wrong and that nothing seems to work.
You know how you get when you get in one of those negative places.
I’m not afraid to admit that I get stuck in those negative spirals more often than others think I do but I also recognize that I’m not alone there either.
It’s a very common human experience and that’s why I’m not afraid to admit it to you.
And as you know, the more you get stuck there, the more evidence you find to back up those negative feelings.
That’s what was happening to me that morning in my journal.
During journaling times like this, what usually happens is the person who knows me best, the one I call my TRUE self, shows up for me and starts trying to show me the positive side of things and how things aren’t so bad.
She shows me how I’ve gotten back up in the past and that things will get better.
She usually tells me to keep trying.
That’s the side of me who starts filling my head with what to write instead of the negative side.
But she didn’t show up for me that morning.
Even after I had written my 3 pages like normal, the negative stuff was still coming out.
And then I stopped.
I left my morning devotional in that negative state of mind.
I felt horrible.
I don’t like to leave my journaling like that so I was pretty down about it.
So those were the feelings I took with me all through my day. Low and defeated.
Luckily for me, I just happened to have three different opportunities to see people that day that are really great to show up for me in my life.
The first was a dear friend who does Foot Zoning for me who I have been working with for over 10 years.
She’s become a very special to me.
She had recently lost her father in law and I wanted to show up and listen and support her.
What happened was that I opened up to her and just cried to her and told her what I had been feeling.
She just listened and helped me to see how normal my feelings were and how hard it is to try something new.
What I needed most was to feel heard and not to be told to snap out of it and stop feeling the way that I was.
I really appreciated that.
The next person I spent time with that day was my husband.
We had lunch together and he could tell something was bothering me and he just listened as I told him what I was feeling and how hard it is to keep trying when it doesn’t seem to be working.
He was so good to just sit there and console me without trying to push my feelings away.
I was so grateful for that.
Then, I have a business friend that I do Zoom calls with every Month that understands how hard it is to start a new business or change what you’re trying to do and getting it going well.
I was grateful to have the chance to talk to her as well that day and she listened to me and supported me in the way that only she could.
That’s why I have business friends.
She helped me work through some different aspects of what I was feeling and gave me some great advice.
Here’s what I learned from that experience.
Sometimes it’s not about me showing up for me when I journal.
Sometimes it’s about getting those feelings unburied and allowing myself to FEEL the feelings, which is what feeling the feelings all day did for me.
We have to process our feelings.
When we have an emotion and we think we’re just gonna solve it really quickly and then it’s going to be gone, we’re trying to control something we don’t have control over.
Sometimes it can happen quickly but this was something that I needed to process longer.
We have to allow our emotions to be felt through to the end.
When I got to feel those feelings by myself AND with each of those three people who showed up for me in different ways, helped me to process my emotions differently and more completely.
I didn’t go to bed feeling much better.
And the next morning I showed up for my journaling again and different things came up for me that I continued to work through as I wrote.
I showed up for myself again and was able to work through all of it a little bit more.
I continued to feel my feelings throughout the day where I had left off the day before, but I could feel them starting to shift, just a little, but it was a little better.
What I’m trying to share with you today is that journaling is more powerful than we give it credit.
It brings up feelings that maybe we wouldn’t identify any other way.
It helps you identify them but then you have to allow yourself to feel them until they have worked their way through you.
It’s not something you should rush if you really want to bring it to a conclusion.
So instead of pushing through the day those emotions came up and just working like I had planned, I was able to work through it in a healthier, yet slower than I wanted, way.
And now I can share that experience with you in hopes that you will use journaling as a way to help discover feelings YOU need to work through.
The journaling got me to a place so I could feel the feeling that I was trying to ignore.
Feelings need to be felt or they just get stuck in your body somewhere until they come out again, and usually intensified.
They can show up as a headache or a stiff neck or stomach problems.
They don’t like to be ignored.
That’s something that contributes to feeling overburdened.
When you let yourself feel them as they are, they don’t get harder to deal with later on.
So, I want to ask you a few questions:
Are you journaling?
Are you allowing a free flow of feelings to come out?
Are you allowing yourself to feel what comes up?
Journaling will bring these things up for you.
Let the hard things come.
If it doesn’t work itself out during your journaling time, let yourself continue to feel it throughout the day and be compassionate with yourself as you feel it.
By doing it in this way, you’re going to make more progress by slowing down and allowing yourself the time you need to work through those feelings.
I want to encourage you to keep working on it!
Keep showing up for yourself.
When you care for yourself, you can show up for others better.
That’s what I’m trying to do so I can show up for you here each week.
I love you and I want to be here for you.
I want to share things with you that will help you to show up for yourself and those you love too.
I want to be your teacher and helper and guide so that you can go out and do it on your own.
Then you can show up for YOUR people
My goal is to show up for women to help them show up for themselves and let go of the things that burden them so that they feel stronger!
When we love ourselves better, we love others better.
That’s a lot of feeling talk!
Thanks for being here today.
I’m so grateful that the things I share with you help you to let go of your burdens.
I’d like to hear how they are helping you.
It’s easy to do that by learning a review.
On the podcast app, go into shows.
Make sure you’ve clicked follow so my show page shows up in your library.
Then Click on the picture of my podcast.
Scroll down to where you see Rating and reviews.
Click on however many stars you’d like to give me. 5 would be great!
Then scroll down just a bit more where you’ll see Write a Review.
Click on that and tell me something you’ve learned from the podcast.
I’d really appreciate that! Thank you in advance for doing that for me.
Remember…
I see you. I understand how hard you’re trying, and I’d like to help however I can.
Have a wonderful day and I’ll see you back here next week.