How journaling can help you through hard times

0:01You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, it's Marielle. If I were to make a list of the things that scare a lot of people, a greatest hits list for our collective fears, here's what would be on it. Death. Rejection. Public speaking. Spiders. Showing up on the day of the midterm, two hours late and without a pencil. And the blank page. Yeah, I would put writer's block on that list of big scaries. So many of us are afraid to start writing because we judge ourselves, because we've been told we're no good at it, because we don't know what to say. But writer Suleika Juad is here to tell you it's worth your time to try.

0:45I've been keeping a journal for as long as I could hold a pen and have hundreds of journals from the time I was a kid. And I think from a really early age, the journal to me felt like a sacred space and a rare space where I got to show up as my most unedited, unvarnished self. And it wasn't for anyone. It was just for me. It became an especially sacred space when Suleika was diagnosed with leukemia. and in the moment since that she's been in cancer treatment or coping with its effects. She says there's something about journaling that allows for a transmutation, a sort of alchemy. Which is to say, by the end of writing my way through a journal, I felt that some small shift had been enacted.

1:47I felt a little lighter. It was the closest I felt and have felt to finding a direct line to my subconscious. Even if she thought she had nothing of interest or import to say that day, or even if she wrote in sentence fragments or lists. And researchers have found that journaling can have health benefits. For instance, when people write about traumatic or stressful experiences, they see a boost in their immune function and lower blood pressure. And they also make fewer stress-related trips to the doctor. So Lekha just wrote a book about journaling. It's called The Book of Alchemy, A Practice for a Creative Life.

2:25On this episode of Life Kit, we talk about journaling, why to do it, how to break through any resistance, and how to stay consistent, even when or especially when you're going through a tough time. Fold it into some non-negotiable part of your routine. For me, my one non-negotiable is my first cup of coffee in the morning. I sit down at my kitchen table each morning and I write in my journal with that first cup. And it always happens because the coffee always happens. So whatever that is to you, try to do it in tandem. them. We'll also share some prompts to get you started.

3:11Do you think there's value particularly in journaling during the difficult moments of our lives? I think especially in the difficult moments of our lives, there's great value in journaling. And to me, the journal is the space that I go to, to make sense of what has happened to me, to record the realizations, many of them painful, that come with having a scales falling from the eyes moment and the opportunity to reflect and to figure out how I'm going to choose my response. There are many days where I do not feel like journaling, where whatever comes out feels boring to me or petty or embarrassing even.

4:12But I think much like going to the gym, you do it consistently enough and you arrive to somewhere where you start to see something shift. You start to see its rewards. And I think in those moments in my life where I felt most laid bare, the journal has been a hiding place and a fighting place. What about you? Do you have a practice of keeping a journal? On and off. I also have some journals that I kept when I was 19. And I look back at them and I cringe a bit. I'm like talking about some guy that I'm upset about. And I'm like, I'm so mad or whatever. Like, I'm being dismissive of myself. But I think I'm like, wow, I had such overwhelming big feelings about something that I want to say doesn't really matter.

5:07Like some person whose name I've forgotten. you know it's hard to look at to see how obsessive you were totally I as a rule typically don't go back and reread my journals specifically for the reason that you're describing I tend to read them with great judgment and that then makes it difficult for me to keep writing in a journal without preemptively judging myself, whether it's the floweriness of the writing or the content. And I really try to approach the journal without expectation, without that sense of self-consciousness. Takeaway one. Sometimes we're afraid to start journaling because we get in our own heads.

6:03As soon as pen hits page, we're picturing some imaginary audience reading and judging our words. We worry we're not making logical sense, or that our writing isn't grammatically correct, or that our emotions will be cringy to look back on later. But there is no audience. You don't have to share your journal entries with anyone or even look at them again, unless you want to. So give yourself permission to start. And know that journals don't have to look a particular way. There's no structure you need to stick to. And you don't have to write this thing like it's a memoir. The entries can be lists.

6:35They can be poem fragments. They can emerge as fictional short stories featuring aspirational narrators. They can be accountings of various things. there's a great Mary Rufel essay called Pause where she talked about a cryologue that she kept in her journal when she was going through menopause and where she just had a tally of the number of times she had cried every day and I think that's what makes the journal feel so freeing to me. There's no right or wrong way to approach it. If it leads you to keeping, as Frida Kahlo did, a journal that was mostly visual diary entries with some written entries or a combination thereof, wonderful.

7:38And over the course of my life, I've tried to give myself permission to experiment with how I think about the journal. I love that idea because I feel like I have this instinct to write in a memoiristic way. And I feel like the entries have to be complete and all tied up in a bow at the end. And I actually found when I was going through treatment for breast cancer last year that I didn't have the energy for that, but I did want to write down some thoughts that I had. And so I started doing something a little more creative and different, like lists, because I was like, maybe I'll come back to this and this could be a little seed.

8:18But also just this list is enough. I just pulled it up. I kept them in on the notes app on my phone. One is the list of reasons that this is my fault. I drank too much in college. I forgot to knock on wood that time. I forgot to go to the guy in last year and I was too happy. and I had my lymph nodes removed on my left side and after the surgery I wrote a list of things I never realized I used my left armpit for because it like hurt too much like I couldn't do these things right after the surgery it's like opening jars you use your armpit for that you know sitting up in bed lying down in bed pumping soap from the dispenser holding my phone up in bed looking back at it it's evocative like it takes me right back to that moment and it tells such a story.

9:03I want to reach through the phone and hug that version of you who wrote that list of reasons why it was your fault and reach back in time and hug the version of myself that wrote a nearly identical list, except mine involved drinking too much, smoking Cleopatra cigarettes, which was, was I think Egypt's national cigarette during my semester abroad, which seemed perhaps like a reason to get leukemia. Every sin that I felt I'd ever committed, every lie I'd told, every promise I'd broken. I think similarly, my relationship to writing in my journal changed and the reason I found myself there changed.

9:55I remember I was 22 when I got sick, and I felt this need to record little fragments and snapshots of what I was seeing. So takeaway two, if you're feeling stuck or unsure of how to get started with journaling, here are some ideas. Try writing in lists or sentence fragments. Write in the second or third person to distance yourself from your inner critic. Write directly to whoever you imagine judging your writing. And experiment with what tools you use to write. Pen and paper, a typewriter, the computer. In one workshop, Suleika says, a participant said they couldn't keep a journal because they have terrible handwriting.

10:40And the second they start journaling, they start to judge how their handwriting looks. and I asked this man, you know, why not journal in the notes app on your phone? And he said, well, that just seems like the wrong way to journal. I feel like it has to be in a notebook with a pen. You know, we have all of these expectations that we bring that I think hinder our enjoyment of it. And so for me, really, you know, the simplest and most important piece of advice that I have to continuously remind myself of is keeping the barrier to entry low and remembering that there is no right or wrong way to keep a journal.

11:34And when I got sick at 22, I had no desire to do anything, let alone writing in a notebook. And I decided to do it because I knew I wanted to be in conversation with myself. Maybe more than that, I knew I needed to because I was sort of collapsing in on myself. And so I made one very important rule. And it was just that I had to show up in the notebook every day. It could be three pages. It could be a paragraph. It could be one word. And if I wrote one word, then I had done my journaling that day and it was a win. And when I freed myself from the expectation that there was a right or wrong way to do it, I found that I wanted to return.

12:28and inevitably I wrote more than one word. And I need to go on record and say, like, I'm not a person who is good at being consistent at anything. I am the person who joins the gym, goes every single day very intensely for a week, then maybe once or twice and never again. Very relatable. I know it's going to be hard to choose, but could you share a couple of your favorite prompts from the book? Absolutely. One of my very favorite prompts is called Just 10 Images by Ash Parsons Story. And she started doing exactly what the title suggests when her adopted son was in the NICU and she was exhausted and a young new mom and bleary eyed and did not have time to do much of anything, much less keeping a journal.

13:25and she decided that she was going to record 10 images from the last 24 hours. And she did this every day in list form. And I love the prompt because it's both so straightforward and it always yields something unexpected, especially if I'm having a really hard day or a hard week. I'll stream of consciousness, write 10 images down that pop into my brain. And often they end up telling a very different story to the one I've been narrating to myself about how my day or week has gone. Takeaway three, consider prompts. There are a lot of these in Suleika's book, and you can find journal prompts online too.

14:19And you can also come up with your own creative way to prompt yourself. Suleika gives an example of someone who put 100 paint chip cards in a box and then pulled one out every day and wrote something about that color. A poem, an essay, a word. You can also use other people's writing as a prompt. Their feelings and opinions might spark something in you, even if you take things on a tangent or in a totally different direction. Here's another prompt Suleika shares from the book. another prompt I write to a lot is when I actually very much resisted because it sounded hokey to me at first and it's called a day in the life of your dreams by Holly Jacobs who is a pediatric hospice nurse and the prompt is to write a day from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep in the life of your dreams a couple years out, but to do so in the present tense.

15:21And I was having a really hard time four years ago, right before I found out that my leukemia was back and that I had relapsed with imagining myself in the future. I was having so much anxiety about so many big questions in terms of my relationship to my now husband at the time with regards to home and where I should live and what I should be doing professionally and on and on and on and also this lurking sense that something was wrong which of course it was And I think that's the thing when you have had the ceiling cave in on you, it's hard to assume structural stability. And yeah, daydreaming about the future can feel really dangerous and risky.

16:24And so I like that prompt because it forces me not just to imagine myself in the future, but it also forces me to articulate what I want for myself in that future, which can feel equally scary. Yeah. I think it tells you also what you value and maybe is a pathway to finding even some small piece of that today. I honestly credit my marriage to it. I credit the place where we live now to it and not in some like manifesting miracles BS sort of way. but I think because I wrote to that prompt so much that it forced me to really clarify what it was that I wanted so that when I had the possibility of going for those things that I wanted or when they appeared, I didn't waste time.

17:28I could recognize them. Celica, I've loved talking to you. Thank you so much. I have loved talking to you. what a treat. I feel like I could talk to you for many more hours. Same. All right, time for a recap. Takeaway one, you don't have to share your journal entries with anyone or ever look at them again, unless you want to. So give yourself permission to start and also know that your journal does not have to look a particular way. Takeaway two, if you're having journalers block, here are some ideas. Write in lists or sentence fragments. Write in the second or third person to distance yourself from that inner critic.

18:10Write directly to whoever you imagine judging your writing. And mix up the way you write, in cursive or in print, with pen and paper, pencil and legal pad, on a typewriter, on the computer, in the notes app on your phone. Finally, takeaway three, consider using a prompt, the formal kind or the kind you create for yourself. And you can use other people's writing as a prompt too. And remember, this journal is for you and nobody else. So with that in mind, what do you want to create?

18:42For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have one on how to make creativity a part of your daily routine and another on growing your dating confidence. You can find those at npr.org slash life kit. And if you love Life Kit and want even more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash LifeKit newsletter. Also, if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, or you just want to say something nice to us, email us at lifekit at npr.org. This episode of LifeKit was produced by Claire Marie Schneider. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malika Garib. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer.

19:20Our production team also includes Andy Tegel, Margaret Serino, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Josephine Neonai and Simon Laszlo Jansen. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.