Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

INSPIRATION
The eminent social psychologist, James Pennebaker in his book, Opening Up by Writing Down, writes that not fully expressing negative emotions, suffering in silence and keeping secrets—swallowing or pushing them down—affects your heart, mind and body for the rest of your life. By hiding your fears, anger, and hurt from the world, you hide from yourself.

In order to replace the mask of social “goodness” and “niceness” with authenticity you must first recognize the anger, hurt or fear buried deep inside you. The recognition must be followed by acceptance of your negative emotions. Some of us may require therapy or hypnosis to cleanse the system but most of us can do this by writing them down.

If you like, write a letter to the one who emotionally hurt you or pushed you to the limits and triggered your anger. You don’t have to mail the letter but just the writing of it fully and freely would do the work of expelling the feeling from your mind and body. This is the “magic” of journaling. It relieves the past suffering and keeps it happening in the present at a distance. Petty thoughts and feeling surface no matter what you do. Journaling gets the most intimate feelings, which are neither petty nor useless, out of the way.

What about journaling about a past event that left you deeply hurt and you never got a chance to purge. Now is the time to write about it and free you from that uncomfortable feeling. Journaling makes you witness yourself, makes you conscious of what you did wrong or right. It gives you an opportunity to mend yourself and come closer to your authentic self. The more you journal the more you value yourself and also reinforce your positive qualities.

Most importantly, you may be generous, kind and caring to others but you do not extend the same caring to yourself. At such moments journaling comes to the rescue. It nudges you to listen to yourself gently and lovingly.