Hello everyone, welcome to the Said in Therapy Podcast. Have you ever considered going to therapy and you ended up not going? My question is why. In my humble opinion, I believe everyone can benefit from therapy. In fact, I believe everybody should go at least once in their life. My name is Iman Tohami and I'm a psychologist. This podcast tells you all about everyday cases with everyday people who have everyday problems and difficulties, and sometimes they can run really deep wounds. These are their stories. Between me and you, I was going through a very rough patch. It was that bad, actually, that I decided to reach out to my old therapist. And we rekindled our old work relationship. And in fact, I'm still talking to him right now. Not in this very moment, I'm still talking to him. A lot of you may not know this, but therapists are actually obliged to go to therapy themselves. And trust me, it helps so much to be A on the receiving end of therapy and B to put a pin on your life and just breathe. Full disclosure, this season is monetized, so every single episode is going to be sponsored, but not this one. I opted for this because I wanted the content of the podcast to remain free for all my listeners. But I promise, I will only take sponsors which I believe in. They will be all related to mental health or offer tools that enhance mental health. All of them I have either tried myself or I recommended them to my patients. But let's jump into today's episode. I'm going to answer a question from one of my listeners. And I want this to be a thing, so please send in your questions. Everything will be confidential, and nothing you share with me will be shared unless you absolutely want me to. You can send me an email to setintherapy at gmail.com or reach out on my socials, which I will mention at the end of the episode again. So let's start. What do you write about? Is there any direction, or do you just write what's on your mind? What if your mind goes blank? Thank you so much. Well, what a great question. I have journaled for as long as I can remember. When I learned how to read and write, I journaled immediately. I was born in the 80s. Well, yes, I know, that's a long time ago. But I used to watch a cartoon back then. I remember it was called Inspector Gadget or something like that. Anyway, the inspector wasn't really that inspiring. All I remember is how clumsy he was, and he used to mess up everything. But he had a niece, and that niece basically helped him out all the time. She carried out all the important missions, and I remember she had some sort of electric book. You have to remember, this is the end of the 80s, beginning of the 90s. So that's long before the first cell phone came out. I was so in awe of this girl and all her tools, especially that book. So I took a notebook that belonged to my mom. And I remember I just used the middle part of the book, and then I drew some sort of screen, a keyboard, and I scribbled some sentences, and I used to carry around this notebook everywhere. I was obsessed with it. And I also remembered that I wasn't really able to write just yet. And yet, this was my very first journaling experience because I used this notebook all the time and I used to scribble in it so many things, even though it was all gibberish. So why am I telling you this story? I realize I talk about journaling a lot in my sessions, but also in my private life. So my friends always hear me say, well, use a book and write it down, but use a pencil and use real paper paper and stuff like that. So yeah, this is actually a thing I always recommend people to journal. I believe in the power of writing, so much so that I sometimes forget that so many people actually do not. So today I want to talk you through journaling and how you can actually use it to improve your daily life. I think the most common misconception is that it has to be like a diary. So we have to know what we want to write about, it has to be a storyline, some sort of plot. But the reality is this is not what journaling is all about. You can easily write down things using the bullet point technique. And I think lately, in the most recent years, people even started calling it bullet journaling. I don't know if it's really a thing now, but I know that people use this term a lot. I want to tell you a little bit about the benefits of journaling. First, uh, you have a place to vent, and second, you have a place to process things that happen in your daily life. And believe it or not, that is actually very powerful. Some people really prefer to write out in full detail everything. They write letters, they write short stories. There are actually so many ways to journal, but you know, if you are not one of those people who like to write down a lot of things, it's totally fine to write a few sentences or a few lines or a few keywords that remind you of how you felt during the day. What's also important is it doesn't need to be very neat. So if you read a page that you have written 20 years ago, you are not supposed to remember what that day looked like. This is not what journaling is for. It could be, but that's not the main reason. So you can actually keep it super simple. For example, you write down like this. First point, today was a good day. Second point, I got to try this new recipe that I like. Third point, I miss, fill the blank, and so on and so forth. Basic stuff like that. But it could be something as simple as tracking your mood or symptoms. So a lot of my patients who always express how much they hate writing, they will only write down how they felt. So they will write down, I felt sad, I was anxious, I felt confused, I feel nauseous, I am tired. And you know, this is especially important if you are on a new medication. I always have my patients track their symptoms for a couple of weeks. And sometimes that can be very intense. But in order to track side effects, for instance, writing down your symptoms for a couple of weeks is very crucial. Otherwise, we will not know if it helped or not. I know this type of journaling is a bit silly and time consuming, but when you think about it, it's the only way to track how you have been feeling and if therapy tools you learned worked for you or not. That's basically the labor you have to put into getting better. That's one way to work towards a goal to get better. I often even ask my patients to share their bullet points with me so I can see where they are emotionally and mentally. I don't want you to feel pressured to journal or feel pressured that you have to write down a full story. In reality, journaling is so much simpler. It's a snapshot of a moment in your day, nothing more, because we never stop thinking, and so many thoughts reoccur and they're actually worth writing down, but then again, we have so many random thoughts, and actually they're worth writing down too. Journaling doesn't need to make sense for the reader who doesn't know anything about you. The power of journaling is the writing itself. I want to highlight though that journaling doesn't work for everybody. For some people, it doesn't work at all. And that is actually fair, and it's okay because we are not all the same. If that is the case for you, there is always art, there is always music, there are always so many ways to express yourself. Important is that you sit still for a moment and you figure out how you feel. You can play music or doodle or actually craft and create amazing artwork. I had a songwriter in therapy once, and he actually wrote, as he puts it, one of his best songs during the time of therapy. What I want you to take from this episode is you have to find a way to check in and find out how you feel. Life is very fast-paced and hectic and sometimes scary, especially during the pandemic. And yet, the world will never stand still. We have to be mindful of where we are in life in order to get to where we want to be. So I think with that, I want to leave you today, and I want to encourage you to send me your questions. I will make sure to cover them in future episodes. Take care. Hey, thank you so much for tuning in. And hopefully, you will tune in again next week. It will be another episode talking to or about clients of mine, and you can find us on social media on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. The handle is always @saidintherapy. Thank you so much.