41 | 3 Mistakes HSPs and Introverts Make When Journaling Their Feelings

In this episode, I'm tackling three common myths and three mistakes that highly sensitive people and introverts often make when journaling their feelings. 

As HSPs, we tend to overthink and process deeply, which can lead to emotional overwhelm or numbness. I bust myths like "journaling will make me dwell on feelings" and "I need to write perfectly," while addressing mistakes such as focusing only on negative emotions or stopping when emotions feel too big. 

I provide practical tips for moving past these roadblocks and using journaling as a tool to process emotions healthily. If you've been hesitant to start journaling or struggling to maintain a practice, this episode will help you transform journaling from an overwhelming task into a powerful tool for emotional resilience.

____________________________________________________________

🎁⁣Free gift: Journal Your Feelings Roadmap: https://latoyaedwards.net/guide

⭐️Join the FB community: https://latoyaedwards.net/community

☕️Work with LaToya:

Schedule an Emotional Check-In session: https://latoyaedwards.net/coaching

Ready to stop running away from your feelings or pushing them down because you don't know what to do with them? Break free from emotional overwhelm with step-by-step support to process your feelings in a way that actually works for you as an introverted HSP. Join the Journal Your Feelings small group program. ⤵️

https://latoyaedwards.net/program

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to day three of our Feel your Feelings series that we're doing here on the podcast, and today I'm going to talk about myths and mistakes that we often make as highly sensitive introverts when it comes to journaling our feelings.

Speaker 1: 0:16

So I'm going to talk about three myths and three mistakes, and I want to give you some practical suggestions and tips on how to overcome these things and to think differently. If you're tired of feeling like you're drowning in your emotions and want to stop walking around feeling numb and overwhelmed, you're in the right place. What's up? I'm LaToya, an emotional resilience coach and fellow highly sensitive introvert who learned how to manage all the feels with journaling, and I love helping women like you identify and work through your emotions. Embrace your God-given sensitivity so you can stop running away from your feelings in a way that feels authentic to you, ready to dig in? Grab your weighted blanket, get comfy and let's get it. So let's start talking about the myths and mistakes that often keep us from journaling our feelings so that we can process our emotions. So I'm going to give you three and three, and I actually have some bonus things, but you're going to have to listen all the way to the end of the episode to find out how to get them, because I'm not going to give them here on the podcast, all right. So when it comes to our emotions as highly sensitive people and as introverts, we often feel overwhelmed, right, because we feel and think and process things so deeply. It often leads to overwhelm, and that overwhelm can lead to emotional numbness, where we just turn everything off and say nope, not dealing with anything because it's too much, or where we kind of blow up and we over whatever because of what we're feeling. So this challenge of overthinking emotions instead of working through them really bites us in the booty y'all. Okay, because, like we might be replaying a situation over and over and over and over again and trying to analyze it, trying to figure out what we did wrong, what we could do differently if we understood this person, what if this happened? What if that happened? But we're not actually making any progress. We're just feeling more stuck or more overwhelmed, right, or more leaning into going numb. So journaling is actually a way to process your emotions instead of just thinking about them. Okay, as long as it's all going on in your head, you're not actually processing anything. And when you're not processing things, you're not gonna be able to move forward.

Speaker 1: 2:31

So myth number one when it comes to journaling your feelings, as an highly sensitive introvert, is that journaling will make you dwell on your feelings more and feel worse. Okay, so we just talked about our tendency to overthink and think deeply, which just kind of has us spinning our wheels. We're not actually processing our emotion. So here's what is going on here. We begin to think, well, I'm thinking about this over and over and over and over again, right, which we kind of think is actually processing. It's not, and I don't feel any better. So journaling is going to be the same thing. It's just going to have me thinking about it over, and over and over again and it's going to make me feel worse. Okay, that's not the case.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Journaling is not about having a pity party Like your journal is not your own personal private pity party. It's not about wallowing. It's not about remaining in all the junk over and over again. It is creating a safe space to acknowledge and validate all of your feelings and to release them and process them in a healthy way. Okay, writing your emotions down are going to help them feel less overwhelming, right, it's going to lessen the intensity of what you are feeling and what you are experiencing, which will prevent you from falling into overwhelm, because overwhelm is going to lead you to go numb, blow up, not deal, avoid, suppress all the things that we want to avoid, right?

Speaker 1: 3:58

Myth number two says I need to write everything out perfectly. As I need to write everything out perfectly Now, perfectionism is one of those things that is just par for the course when it comes to being highly sensitive and introverted. I don't know why, when we all got mixed up together, that God was like okay, extra sensitivity, introversion, oh, and like we're going to struggle with perfection as well, right? So even when it comes to journaling, it's not about creating something polished and perfect. Nobody is going to see the pages of your journal unless you want to show them, but nobody's grading it. It's not like for public consumption, and so it's just about being real and raw and vulnerable on the page, and I'm going to tell you from experience that oftentimes it comes out messy.

Speaker 1: 4:50

Okay, there are days I have lovely handwriting. Okay, if I toot my own horn right, I have excellent penmanship. I love writing. I love the way the pen feels gliding across the page, like all those things. But in moments where I am feeling really upset. I'm like really in despair, really sad, and I'm writing in my journal. I could barely read my own chicken scratch. Okay, because I'm just trying to get it out so fast. It comes out messy. I misspell words, I cross things out, I miss number pages. Like it's just, it's crazy, it's a mess, but that's okay. Like it's just, it's crazy, it's a mess, but that's okay.

Speaker 1: 5:23

What you want to do is to write however you feel right If you are not feeling whole sentences on a day when you want to journal great, write fragments, write bullet points, write lists, draw pictures Okay, it doesn't have to be right. The next American great novel. That's not what we're doing here. Myth number three says I should only journal when I feel really emotional. So we're talking about using journaling as a way to avoid feeling overwhelmed. It's really easy to think well, I should only journal when I feel overwhelmed. No, that's not the case. You want to get to a place where you're not constantly feeling overwhelmed.

Speaker 1: 6:02

Journaling during calm moments, when you're at peace, place where you're not constantly feeling overwhelmed Okay, journaling during calm moments, when you're at peace, when you're not in crisis, when you're not feeling overwhelmed, is a great way to build resilience because you can think clearer, right, without all that stuff hyping you up. Okay, when you're not pissed, that's a better time to think about what happens when you're angry. What patterns are going on when you're angry, right. When you're not feeling that, okay. So, and also like, consistency is key. So, if you're only journaling when you're feeling overwhelmed, um, right, you're not going to be consistent, because hopefully you're going to have days where you don't feel overwhelmed, and so you want to journal every day, even if it's just one or two sentences, right? Remember, yesterday I shared that five minute technique that you can do, right, it's easy to do so.

Speaker 1: 6:52

Myth number one journaling will make me dwell on my feelings and feel worse. Myth number two I need to write everything out perfectly. And myth number three I should only journal when I'm feeling emotional. All right, so we've busted those myths, so now I want to move on to mistakes that we sometimes make when it comes to journaling our emotions, and it might sound a little similar to our myths, because they do go together. So mistake number one is overthinking while journaling, and I think every single one of the myths that we talked about can fall under this bucket right here, and I think every single one of the myths that we talked about can fall under this bucket right here. So sometimes we get stuck trying to figure out the quote, unquote, right words to describe how we feel. Now that's great. I am all about helping you find the words and the language to explain how you feel.

Speaker 1: 7:43

Being able to identify and name your emotions is a very important step when it comes to emotional awareness and building emotional resilience. But you don't want to get stuck there. If you are spending all of your energy, all of your brain power, like all of your emotional energy, trying to figure out the right word, you're going to block the actual effort and the flow we're trying to do here. So just write it down. If you're like sad but not sad, right, sad but not sad, right, like I do this all the time, I'm like I'm feeling kind of frustrated, but a little happy, but a little hopeful, but a little bit excited. I'm not really sure what it is Like, just write it out. You can go back later and kind of massage it a little bit and figure out what it is you're trying to say.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Because often, once you've cleared your mind out and you've calmed down and you've got that on paper you're like oh, that's the word that I want. Okay, I want you to focus on writing the first thing that comes to your mind, even if it doesn't make sense. Like, don't worry about it making sense in the moment. If it makes you feel better, you can simply say right now I feel, right now I think or I don't actually know how I feel, but I think it might be this Okay. Or I don't know why I'm feeling such and such, but this is what's going on, so just get it out on paper first. All right, so don't make the mistake of overthinking, right, we're trying to stop overthinking by journaling, and so you don't want to overthink while you're overthinking.

Speaker 1: 8:59

Mistake number two focusing only on negative emotions. So we talked about a couple minutes ago, right, only journal when you feel overwhelmed. Well, that was a myth. Well, this is. The mistake is, sometimes we fall into the ditch of I'm only going to journal when I'm feeling quote unquote negative emotions. And here's the problem with that. We really.

Speaker 1: 9:17

I want you to get out of the mindset of good and bad emotions. Okay, there's no good emotions, there's no bad emotions, there's just emotions, okay. So I've talked about this before, so don't come for me saying, no, no, emotions are not good or bad, they just are. And hate is not an emotion, it's choice. Okay, somebody always brings that up, all right. So when you can wrap your mind around the fact that there's no such thing as like good or bad, it's just. This is how I feel it becomes easier to give yourself permission to journal.

Speaker 1: 9:49

Okay, because you think, well, I only need to journal if I'm overwhelmed, or I only need to journal if I'm really mad, or I only need to journal if I'm like, really really sad or really really upset. Okay, so you begin to make this association in your mind of journaling with negativity and then you're less likely to want to journal. Ok, and also, right, a lot of times, when you're really overwhelmed or you're really sad or you're really mad, you're not in a good place to journal and you don't want to. Ok. So we don't want to associate journaling just with negative things. We don't want to just journal when we're overwhelmed, right, we want to have balance. Journaling just with negative things? We don't want to just journal when we're overwhelmed, right, we want to have balance, okay.

Speaker 1: 10:28

Journaling your feelings is about exploring all of your emotions that you feel good, bad ugly in between. Okay, so you want to have your entries reflect your moments of joy and of happiness, of excitement and gratitude, right, things where you feel calm, because sometimes, like learning to process those as well, are going to give you keys and clues as you can process some of those other overwhelming emotions. All right. Mistake number two stopping too soon. All right, so this is what this looks like.

Speaker 1: 10:54

Sometimes we will stop journaling when emotions feel too big, and so we leave things unresolved. Too big, and so we leave things unresolved, right? I see this all the time in a lot of areas of life. Is that I do this myself. I will be journaling and I'm like, okay, I'm almost done, and suddenly I will write something that kind of releases the floodgates and I feel this well of emotion come up, right, and I might cry or I get upset or whatever, and I'm like you know what? That doesn't feel good, I don't want to go there, I don't want to deal with that. I'm just going to put my pen away and I'm done for the day. If you can, don't do that, right, lean into whatever it is that you're feeling, right, because usually on the other side of that too big emotion is what you're going after. So you can ask yourself, when this starts to come up, what do I want to feel after this? Like, yes, right now this doesn't feel good. It feels uncomfortable, maybe it feels painful, maybe it feels exhausting. But after that, what do you want to feel? Okay, and I will give you an example, I was, oh, it's probably about a year or so ago.

Speaker 1: 12:06

I was journaling and I can't remember what I was writing about, but all of a sudden, I wrote something that, just like I evoked tears and like sobs. Right, I was ugly crying over my journal and I was like I don't like how this feels, like I don't want to sit with this. But I took a deep breath. I reminded myself that it's okay to just sit with my feelings and feel what I felt, and I began to just dig into that and write about it. And what happened on the other side was that I was like, okay, I'm really lonely. I was, you know, faced with the lack of connection in my life and of, like, close relationships, and like I hadn't realized the effect that actually was having on me.

Speaker 1: 12:48

But in that moment, right, it was there, it came up and I took the opportunity to actually deal with it and process it. And on the other side of that, I wanted to have, like, some peace. I wanted to have some, some goals in mind of how to meet new people and build relationships and make connections, and I did All right. So push through. When you want to quit, push through it and keep at it, right to explore what steps can actually bring you closer to what you do want to feel. All right. So those are our three mistakes Overthinking while journaling, focusing only on negative emotions and stopping too soon.

Speaker 1: 13:28

So I'm going to wrap up our time today by giving you a prompt, okay, that I want you to start with, and it is what emotions tend to overwhelm me the most and how do I usually respond to them. Okay, so you can get started with that prompt and come on over to the Facebook group right at LatoyaEdwardsnet slash community and share your responses to that prompt. And while you are there in the group, you can find the bonus tips that I'm going to leave in there. Okay, I'm gonna give some three more practical exercises that you can do, some journaling exercises that you can do as part of this, and I'm also gonna give some journaling prompts that you can do to incorporate that and I would do it here in the podcast, but it was gonna be too long and too much and I know that somebody's gonna be like, I'm sorry, do you have that in print form somewhere? So, hop on over to the Facebook group If you are listening after the first week of January 2025, and you're like, oh, I can't find it in the group, look in the guides, it'll all be there, all right, I promise.

Speaker 1: 14:28

So today we've looked at just why we want to keep journaling. Okay, I know that your emotions might feel too big. Right, I get it Like we're super sensitive. Things feel too big often, but you know that's a lot of times. That's because you are super compassionate, you have this deep gift of empathy and you're really connected to the people in the environment around you. Okay, and journaling is a tool that's going to help you challenge that sensitivity into a strength. Remember, we're trying to learn how to embrace this God-given sensitivity, and journaling is a way to do that, because you're going to see it as a strength, the more consistent that you can be. All right.

Speaker 1: 15:07

So tomorrow I'm going to dive into some advanced tactics to take your journaling practice to the next level, and this is really helpful if you are working through something that's really stressful or some super tough emotion. So be sure to come back tomorrow morning right for day four. I'm going to share some of these advanced tactics with you, and these are tactics that I use with my coaching clients, and I don't usually share them publicly. So come on back. You're not going to want to miss that. Did you learn something new or have an aha moment from today's episode? I would love to hear from you. The best way to do that is to leave a five-star rating and review in Apple Podcasts. This also helps other women like us find the show. Thank you so much for joining me today.