“Dear diary…” and the journal that writes you back (maind Monday 1/5)
Have you ever been in a whirlwind of emotion, quite unsure of what exactly it is that you’re feeling? Or shared your thoughts with a friend, who helped you put your reaction into context, opening up a different perspective? Navigating imprecise emotions is a life-long journey with many twists and turns. When navigating through that jungle, it is vital to be able to identify your emotions and the reasons behind them. Eventually, it will all lead to a clearer perspective — and perhaps even better decisions along the way.
“Identify your emotions” — easier said than done. It takes time, reflection, and sometimes even an outside perspective to truly understand what’s going on. Especially when you are in the midst of experiencing negative emotions.
Negative emotions are known to cause tunnel vision — narrowing your view to overly focus on (negative) aspects, while ignoring all others. They can be sticky, too: Have you ever laid in bed, thinking about that one thing that was said — or should have been said — when everything else from that day was actually pretty great? It’s the negative thoughts that are often the stickiest in your head[1].
“Emotions are like a language you start to understand.”
— Daniel Kahneman
Last week I attended a talk by Camilla Tuominen about work-life emotions. In her speech she made an interesting parallel between learning languages to learning about your emotions. “Emotions are like a language you start to understand”, she quoted. This parallel really hit home for me.
As someone who has grown up abroad and lived across half a dozen countries, learning a new language has been a recurring theme throughout my life. A new language is extremely difficult to master, and even the ones where I feel I’ve already learnt a lot (over the past 20 years!) — there’s always more to learn: new words and expressions are always popping up, it’s like a never-ending story! It begs the question, why would anyone ever go through such a daunting, life-long journey? Surely, there’s something in it for you?
Well, of course there is!
Languages differ from one another. They hold different meanings, intonations, and cultures — they quite literally broaden your view to different perspectives. Whole new worlds open up when you learn a new language: a different way of communicating with those around you, a different way of seeing things, a different way of life, even. As much as learning a new language is hard, and time consuming, and never-ending, it’s also extremely rewarding, mind opening, and all in all, life changing.
The argument here is that the same exact thing applies to learning about your emotions, too.
So, how does one go about it all? How can I learn about my emotions — becoming better at identifying, reflecting on, and eventually even addressing them? There is one simple tool to get you started: journaling.
Journaling is the act of writing down your thoughts. This helps you to take a moment of pause… to reflect on your emotions and the underlying causes behind why you’re feeling how you’re feeling. By developing awareness of your thought patterns and feelings, you can more effectively identify symptoms of stress, depression, or anxiety. Or just simply declutter your mind and shift your mindset in a more positive and constructive direction.
Best done on a regular basis, journaling will help you learn more about yourself. It has been proven to alleviate all kinds of symptoms from stress to anxiety to depression — simply by reducing noise around your thoughts while giving you better clarity on your feelings[2]. It’s as simple as that. All you need is pen and paper, and most importantly: you, and a motivation to get better. Just the mere act of writing your thoughts down is, in itself, already beneficial for your wellbeing[2].
maind supports mental health and wellbeing through journaling. In preparation for the Mental Health Awareness Month in May, we are publishing a series of blog posts on the topic of journaling: “maind Mondays”. Next week we’ll hear from our in-house psychologists, Giouli and Kleopatra, on the more scientific background behind the benefits of journaling. Stay tuned for their tips on guided journaling and other tools that can help you along your journey!
We all want to live a healthier, happier life that consists of learning to navigate our emotions and manage our thoughts — but it is often difficult to get started, to make a habit out of journaling or know what to write about, and to really gain that outside perspective when we’re navigating our emotions. Therefore, we have created maind, a place to write your journal, prompting and guiding you to write on the regular, and even getting you that much needed advice from our licensed psychologists: It is a journal that writes you back.
You can already give it a go and see how it works for yourself. maind is available for download on Android and iPhone!
Meanwhile, we also take this opportunity to introduce our team: the great “mainds” behind the app! You’ve all already met Elaine, our AI expert behind maind through her article “maind your mental health — where does the “ai” in “maind” come from?”. This week‘s author is our very own Ines Vaittinen:
Meet the great m[ai]nds!
Ines is a lovely generalist, always looking to expand her T-shaped personality both vertically and horizontally. From architecture to innovation to human-centred design, her latest endeavours have led her down the rabbit hole of learning how to utilise AI, NLP, and NLQ in creating services of the future — whether in sales & marketing, research infrastructures or logistics, or (you guessed it!): mental health. Always out and about, she takes care of her mind through creative scribbles on her iPad… and daily ice coffees.
References
(1) Kanouse, D. E., & Hanson, L. (1972). Negativity in evaluations. In E. E. Jones, D. E. Kanouse, S. Valins, H. H. Kelley, R. E. Nisbett, & B. Weiner (Eds.), Attribution: Perceiving the causes of behavior. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press. Explained in https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/negativity-bias
(2) “Positive emotion, cognitive changes, and self-esteem changes increased over days while negative emotion decreased.” Donnelly, D. A., & Murray, E. J. (1991). Cognitive and emotional changes in written essays and therapy interviews. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 10(3), 334–350.
“Expressive writing did not affect the frequency of intrusive thoughts, but it moderated the impact of intrusive thoughts on depressive symptoms.” Lepore, S. J. (1997). Expressive writing moderates the relation between intrusive thoughts and depressive symptoms. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(5), 1030–1037.
“Results indicated that counting blessings was associated with enhanced self-reported gratitude, optimism, life satisfaction, and decreased negative affect.” Froh, J. J., Sefick, W. J., & Emmons, R. A. (2008). Counting blessings in early adolescents: An experimental study of gratitude and subjective well-being. Journal of School Psychology, 46, 213–233.
“The mere disclosing of the person’s problem may have tremendous therapeutic value in and of itself […] Translating important psychological events into words is uniquely human.” Pennebaker, J. W. (1997). Writing About Emotional Experiences as a Therapeutic Process. Psychological Science, 8(3), 162–166.
