A Science-Supported Journaling Protocol to Improve Mental & Physical Health

Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are discussing journaling for mental and physical health. I want to emphasize that today's discussion is not a general discussion about the value of journaling. Rather it is a discussion about a particular form of journaling that the scientific peer review data says is especially powerful for improving our mental and physical health. In fact, what I will describe today is a journaling method that is supported by over 200 peer reviewed studies in quality journals and I frankly was not aware of this journaling practice prior to researching this episode, but in researching this episode have come to discover that this practice should easily be placed among some of the other critical so called foundational pillar practices in terms of its impact on improving mental and physical health, including things like lowering anxiety, improving sleep, improving immunity to things like colds, flus, et cetera, as well as reducing the symptoms of autoimmune disorders such as arthritis, lupus, and also providing some relief for fibromyalgia, which is a condition of excessive pain. The particular journaling method and protocol that I will describe has also been shown to improve various metrics of everyday living, including improved memory, decision making, and on and on and on. So much so that again, I was very surprised that I had not heard of this particular journaling method. One would think that if such a powerful method existed that everyone would know about it. But it turns out that this particular journaling method has been somewhat cloistered within the fields of psychology and psychiatry. It's not that nobody was aware of it. In fact, I learned about it for the first time from our Associate Chair of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, my colleague and collaborator, Dr. David Spiegel, who as some of you may know has been featured as a guest on this podcast previously, and upon hearing about it, I decided to explore the primary research, that is the studies that demonstrate the power of this particular journaling method and was absolutely blown away by the positive impact this particular journaling method can have. What's wonderful about it, you'll soon discover, is that it takes a relatively small amount of time. In fact, it's something that you could do during the course of one week or even across one month, and then never do again. And the data say that it would still have lasting, positive benefits both for body and mind. So while it's rare to feature one particular protocol as an entire huberman Lab podcast. That is indeed what I will do today. It is important that we go into some depth about the specific protocol because there are some important details that everyone should know if they want to apply it and make it as effective as it can be. And in addition to that, we'll talk about some of the underlying science that's been published explaining why and how this protocol is so effective for mental and physical health. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of electrolytes, sodium, magnesium and potassium and no sugar. The electrolytes are absolutely essential for the functioning of every cell in your body and your neurons. Your nerve cells rely on sodium, magnesium and potassium in order to communicate with one another electrically and chemically. Element contains the optimal ratio of electrolytes for the functioning of neurons and the other cells of your body. Every morning I drink a packet of Element dissolved in about 32 ounces of water. I do that just for general hydration and to make sure that I have adequate electrolytes for any activities that day. 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Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com Huberman Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up. Waking up is a meditation app that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, Yoga Nidra sessions and NSDR Non Sleep Deep rest protocols. I started using the Waking up app a few years ago because even though I've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I started doing Yoga Nidra about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an app turned out to be the Waking up app which could teach you meditations of different durations and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the brain and body into different states and that he liked it very much. So I gave the Waking up app a try and I too found it to be extremely useful because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate, other times I have longer to meditate. And indeed I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain and body into lots of different kinds of states depending on which meditation I do. I also love that the Waking up app has lots of different types of Yoga Nidra sessions. For those of you who don't know, Yoga Nidra is a process of lying very still but keeping an active mind. It's very different than most meditations and there's excellent scientific data to show that Yoga Nidra and something similar to it called Non Sleep Deep Rest or NSDR can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy even with just a short 10 minute session. If you'd like to Try the Waking up app. You can go to wakingup.comhuberman and access a free 30 day trial. Again, that's wakingup.comhuberman to access a free 30 day trial. Okay, let's talk about this particularly transformative form of journaling that initially was researched by Dr. James Pennebaker. James Pennebaker was a professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University when he first started researching this form of journaling and its positive impacts on the body and mind. But he has since moved to the University of Texas, Austin, where he still runs a laboratory and has continued his studies on the role of journaling and other forms of language, both spoken and written, in terms of their impact on one's mental and physical health. So the origins of the research into this particular form of journaling started in the mid-80s, and it was really in 1986 that the first published manuscript about this form of journaling was published. Now, I want to be clear that prior to James Pennebaker studying this form of journaling, clearly others had used the form of journaling that I'm about to describe. However, it was Pennebaker that really started attaching measurements of the specific types of changes that occurred in people when they did this journaling in a particular way, and indeed came up with the precise protocol that we'll talk about today. So Pennebaker and colleagues, and James Pennebraker in particular, really deserves credit for the discovery of this method. As you'll soon learn, Pennebaker was absolutely meticulous in figuring out exactly how long the method should be carried out, what exact forms of change occurred in the body and mind. He was careful to explore the method in the context of students as well as in the general population, in veterans, in elderly, in kids, and on and on. So it's really that incredible attention to detail and that scientific rigor that makes the protocol so incredibly powerful. So that first scientific study of this particular form of journaling, as I mentioned, was published in 1986, and I provided a link to that study in the show. Note captions but what that study essentially consisted of was inviting undergraduate students into the university laboratory one at a time, and they were to spend 15 to 30 minutes writing about the most difficult, even traumatic, or possibly non traumatic, but still very difficult, experience that that they can recall from their entire life. The instruction included that they should write for the entire time. That is because they were writing by hand in that particular experiment, that they were to not stop moving their hand for the entire duration of the 15 to 30 minutes. And in addition to that that no one besides them, the person writing, would see what was written at the beginning, middle, or even after the experiment. In fact, the students were invited to tear up the paper at the end of the writing exercise, if they so chose. Okay, so the first key instruction is that they take a moment to think about what is the most difficult, perhaps even traumatic experience of their entire life. The second instruction was that they were supposed to write for 15 to 30 minutes. And the third instruction was that they were supposed to write for the entire time, that at no point would they take a pause unless somehow, emotionally or physically, they were unable to keep moving their hand on the paper. In fact, they were told to not pay attention to accurate grammar, to not pay attention to rereadability. They were told, in fact, that their writing could be replete with spelling errors or grammatical errors that didn't matter. What was most important is that they tap into a particularly negatively charged memory of their prior life experience. Now, of course, because this was an experiment carried out in a university laboratory, there was a quiet place where the students could write undisturbed. But since we're taking this particular protocol and we're exporting it to the real world through this podcast, so it's important that if you decide to implement this protocol in your own life, that you carry out the writing in a place where you will not be disturbed for that entire 15 to 30 minute duration. It's also important that you know that even though that first 1986 study was done having students write out these memories by hand with a pen and paper or a pencil and paper, there have been many subsequent studies that have explored whether or not the pen and paper was particularly important. It turns out it's not. The exact same magnitude of positive effects are observed regardless of whether or not people write out their passage of words by hand or type it out on a word processor or any other form of writing. Now, just to make sure that everyone gets the exact same protocol that was provided in that first initial study from Pennebaker and colleagues, and that has been used really over and over and over again for more than 200 peer reviewed studies that demonstrate the power of this protocol, I'm going to read to you some of the specific instructions from that first study. So the subjects were instructed to, quote, write about something that you are thinking about or worrying about way too much, or if you're not thinking about or worrying about something way too much, perhaps you've deliberately tried to not think about this series of events or event something that you've been Dreaming about at night, perhaps in disturbing dreams, or something that you feel is affecting your life in an unhealthy way, either internally or externally. So it could be in your emotional state, your inability to calm down when you want to be calm. Maybe you're ruminating, maybe even compulsive thought, maybe it's leading to addictive or compulsive or habitual behaviors. Or perhaps you can identify a specific trauma or set of traumas that you know are really plaguing your body and mind. The specific instructions that were given to the subjects in those experiments are the specific instructions that I'm going to give to you now should you decide to implement this journaling protocol. And those instructions are as follows. I want you to write down your deepest emotions and thoughts as they relate to the most upsetting experience in your life. Really let go and explore your feelings and thoughts about it as you write. You might tie this experience to your childhood, your relationship with your parents or siblings, people you have loved or love now, or even your career or schooling. How has this experience related to who you have now become, who you have been in the past, and who you would like to become? The instructions then continue to say, many people have not had a truly traumatic experience in their lives, but everyone has had major conflicts or stressors. And you can write about the most dramatic or stressful experience you've ever had. Okay, so those are some of the key instructions that subjects in these experiments were given before they do the exercise. And of course they were given a few minutes to think about what they wanted to write. But once they selected what they wanted to write, they started writing. There was a timer going in the background for 15 to 30 minutes. And the reason, by the way, I keep saying 15 to 30 minutes is that some experiments employed a 30 minute period. Other experiments employed a 20 minute period, others employed a 15 minute period. Turns out there were no major differences between the 15 minute and the 30 minute writing blocks in terms of the positive impact that they had on mental and physical health. But for some people and their particular experience that they're writing about, 15 minutes is simply going to be too brief a time in order to capture the entire experience and as many thoughts and feelings about that experience as one would perhaps put down onto paper or type out if they had a full 30 minutes. So you can allow yourself 15 to 30 minutes and feel welcome to stop before the 30 minute period is over. Or perhaps you're going to restrict yourself to 15 minutes and you're going to force yourself to get out as Much as possible in that time, it really doesn't matter. Or so say the data. Okay, so before I continue to detail the specifics of this writing protocol, you've probably already noticed that what I'm describing is a very different form of journaling than say, morning notes, which is a form of journaling that writers often use in order to quote, unquote, clear out the clutter. This is a process of sitting down and writing down in stream of consciousness whatever's on your mind for the first five to 15 minutes, maybe even 30 minutes every morning as a way to sort of clear out your mental processes and get ready for the day, perhaps a day of other forms of writing or other activities entirely. What I'm describing is also distinctly different from so called gratitude journaling. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It's not writing about things that you're grateful for necessarily. It's writing about things that are extremely unfortunate that happened to you and that you have very charged negative emotions about. In addition, the form of journaling that we're talking about today is distinctly different from the form of journaling that I and many others have undertaken. Perhaps not on a daily basis, but perhaps on a daily basis where you essentially are writing out the contents of your daily life. A so called diary. And I mention that because I think many people do journal and some do so on a consistent basis. I would put myself into that category. Although the last few years I have not been journaling too much. I have literally stacks and stacks of journals dating back to the early 90s. I brought a few of them along today. And no, I'm not going to read them to any of you. In fact, when I was looking at these last night. And by the way, these are from the late. So this is summer of 1997, so I would have been late in my undergraduate career. This is fall of 96, 1992. Always done on the same composition notebook at that time and always done by hand. I'm surprised that my handwriting was as legible as it was. It's gotten worse over the years. I don't know what neural process that reflects. But in any event, in reading over these journal entries, it was clear to me that just as I had recalled that each and every one of them was essentially an update about what was happening lately. What I was hoping for, some challenges, you know, basically a diary of sorts. And these are kept in the second drawer of the second. No, I'm just kidding. The idea for me is also that no one will ever read these besides me. It was quite an interesting exercise to go back and read those. And yeah, there were a few cringe moments, but there were also a few moments where I found myself smiling. Because in certain ways, so little has changed between the person I was then and the person I am now. And fortunately, in so many ways, certain things have changed between the person I was then and the person I am now now. I mention all of that simply because I think the form of journaling that I've been doing for some years, this sort of autobiographical approach to daily entries or pseudo daily entries, is far and away different than the type of journaling that we're talking about for sake of improving mental and physical health during today's episode. Which is not to say that gratitude journaling or autobiographical daily entries, AKA diary type journaling is not useful. In fact, there are data to support that. Gratitude journaling in particular can be very beneficial for both body and mind, everything from improving general states of happiness to reducing anxiety, improving relationships, and on and on. But to get back to the protocol that we're talking about today, you probably noticed that it is not a protocol that's likely to feel very good, at least not at first. And indeed, that's what the research shows. And this is something that you really need to be aware of, that when subjects are given this research assignment, during the assignment, they are often quite distraught, oftentimes they cry, oftentimes they find themselves holding their breath and anxiety. Oftentimes they'll finish that 15 to 30 minute writing block and they'll feel as if they had run a mental marathon. And therefore, the subjects were given a period of 5 to 15 minutes post writing to settle down and transition back into their day. So I highly recommend that you incorporate that into your protocol as well. So. So if you're going to allow yourself, say, 20 minutes to write, you'll want to give yourself probably 10 minutes of quiet time to, you know, bring your composure back and reset yourself so that you can reenter daily living. Because the writing that you're going to do for this particular protocol is designed to tap into very negative, if not the most negative experiences of your life. And so that's something to be taken seriously. And it's an entirely unreasonable expectation that you could write about something as difficult as the most difficult experience in your life and then simply pivot and go back into everyday life right away. So you'll want to designate a time of day or night, perhaps, when you can do this writing and still allow yourself some time to, you know, settle down your autonomic system. You know, return your breathing to normal, perhaps, you know, wash your face with some cool water, remind yourself that the rest of the day continues, that you're doing great. In fact, you made it through this first installment of the journaling exercise. So you're probably starting to get the impression that this form of journaling that Pennebaker and colleagues really researched and pioneered the evolution of is quite different than other forms of journaling. And in fact, it's very different. I've already told you that the idea is to sit down and write for 15 to 30 minutes, write continuously, write about something that really to you is one of the most, if not the most difficult experiences of your life. In addition to that, for this form of journaling to be most effective, that is to bring about the greatest positive shifts in mental and physical health, you're actually going to write about that exact same thing four times. Now, the way that that was initially researched by Pennebaker and others was to have the same person, of course, write about the same experience four times on four consecutive days for 15 to 30 minutes each. So students or people from the general population, or veterans, were literally coming into the laboratory and sitting down and writing about the most difficult experience of their life that they could recall for 15 to 30 minutes on one day and then again on the next day, and then the next day and the next day. So much of the data on this particular journaling method reflects that four consecutive days of 15 to 30 minute writing bouts of the most difficult experience that you can recall. However, there have been variations on this protocol such that people selected one day per week, and it doesn't even have to be the same day, like every Monday. It could be Monday of one week and then Wednesday of the next week and so on, such that you write only one day per week about the most difficult experience you can recall, and then you write about that Same difficult experience one week later, and then again one week later, and then again 1 week later across the course of a month, or any four week period for that matter. Now, I don't know about you, but when I hear that that I'm going to need to write about the most difficult experience of my entire life that I can recall for even 15 minutes, let alone 30 minutes, let alone two times. And here we're talking about four times, perhaps even on four consecutive days, that actually speaks to some intensity, some demand. In fact, I find myself kind of leaning away from that experience a little bit. But as we'll talk about later, that's exactly the point of this type of exercise, which is that we are harboring these stories, these experiences, and in some cases, partial recollections, in another case, detailed recollections of the difficult thing that happened to us, perhaps even the most difficult thing that happened to us. And those narratives exist in our nervous system. These are not necessarily traumas as we talked about before, although they can be traumas now. We hear a lot about trauma, and these days people call all sorts of things trauma and traumatizing and say that they've been traumatized by this or traumatized by that. There's actually a specific definition of trauma that was provided by Dr. Paul Conti, who as some of you know, is a medical doctor and psychiatrist. He's been a guest on this podcast, first to talk about trauma. He wrote a excellent book about trauma. I provide a link to that book in the show. Note captions, by the way. And he and I did four episodes of the Huberman Lab podcast, a so called guest series specifically aimed at mental health. What it is, how to build mental health specific protocols. And Dr. Paul Conti is really truly a world expert in trauma. And he defines trauma as any experience or experiences plural, that modify our brain and neural circuitry. So it could be brain or body or both, such that we do not function as well emotionally, behaviorally, or cognitively going forward from that experience. Okay, so not everything constitutes a trauma, but many things do. So applying that definition, I think it's fair to say that many, if not most people have some form of trauma stored in their nervous system. And other people perhaps don't have such traumas. But everyone has had stressors. In fact, I think it's fair to say that everyone has had major stressors in their life, provided that they've lived it all. That's just part of life, unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, maybe it makes us who we are in positive ways if we are able to transmute those negative experiences and stressors or traumas into particular forms of learning that allow us to do better. And indeed, that's possible. And that was discussed with Paul Conti in that forum episode series on mental health. But the particular form of journaling that we're talking about today was really designed to have people focus on those difficult experiences. And then for four episodes total. Yes, total. There's no ongoing every week or, you know, it's not like having to seek out sunlight every morning and getting sunlight in your eyes or trying to get the best possible night's sleep at night, like I'm always encouraging people to do. This is really A short term protocol, but it's one that is indeed very intense. Okay, so along those lines, that deliberately journaling about a particularly distressing experience or set of experiences is likely to bring some degree of, you know, sadness, anxiety, frustration, anger, perhaps other emotions as well. It's important that you know some of the data that have been collected about this journaling protocol. One of the more important features of this protocol is, is that when people do it, they tend to bin out into two different groups. And these two groups have been described as low expressors and high expressors. Now, low expressors and high expressors have nothing to do with introversion and extroversion. That's actually been looked at and they have no relationship. Okay, so some people who are very talkative and very extroverted, they could be a low expressor. Somebody who's very introverted, tends to only, you know, share when they really have something to say and maybe doesn't have a lot of interest in social interactions. Or as some of you who heard the episode on relationships know, an actual introvert is somebody who really enjoys social interactions, but they are very sated, they are very satisfied by less social interaction than our extroverts. Okay, if you want to learn more about that, check out the episode I did on relationships. But in any event, when people sit down to do this exercise and when they consent to having their writing analyzed, and when they undergo a number of other different tests, turns out there are two different groups that segment out. The first are these low expressors. The low expressors tend to use less descriptive language in their writing. They tend to get less emotional during the first bout of writing that first day of 15 to 30 minute writing. Whereas the high expressers tend to be people that use a lot of negative language to describe their negative emotions about the negative experience. So that means more negative descriptor words were used at higher frequency. These people, when they have their physiology measured, also tend to have higher amounts of distress and upset in the first bout of writing that first 15 to 30 minute episodes. So we've got two different groups, the low expressors and the high expressors. The low expressors on day one are sharing a bit less. They're expressing less on paper of their particular emotions that they can recall from that traumatic or very distressing event. And overall, based on physiological measures as well. So cortisol increases as well as skin conductance, changes in heart rate and blood pressure. The lower expressors are effectively relatively more calm, less distressed as they write about this very stressful event in their lives relative to the high expressors, who have higher blood pressure, higher heart rate, they tend to be the ones that cry more or hold their breath more or sob more, have higher levels of cortisol during that first round of writing. Now, for the protocol to be effective, it doesn't matter if you're in the low expressor or high expressor group. Here's what's interesting. I just mentioned that on day one, the low expressors are less distressed physiologically and psychologically as they write about this for them, very distressful, eventually. Whereas the high expressors are much more distressed, significantly more so, in fact, when these are measured in laboratory studies on both mental and physical dimensions of stress. Now, that's on day one. But then what's observed is an opposite pattern of progression, such that the low expressors become more and more distressed as the writing exercise continues from day two, three and four. Whereas the high expressors, these people that use a lot of language to communicate their distress and are experiencing a lot of physiological and emotional distress as they're writing on day one, their amount of distress from day one to two to three to four actually goes down more dramatically. So you can expect that you fall into one or the other group. This was truly a binary distribution where people binned out into one or the other based on a number of different measurements. But here's the good news. Turns out it doesn't matter whether or not you're a low expressor or a high expressor. You want to use the form of writing that's most natural for you, and that for you communicates what that negative experience was like and how it has affected you and perhaps how it's affected others as well. The important thing to know is that both groups, both the low expressors and the high expressers, benefit from this journaling protocol, such that three weeks later and even three months later and even years later, both groups are experiencing far less distress and baseline levels of stress than they did prior to embarking on the journaling protocol at the very beginning. Now, the reason I mention these two groups, the low expressors and the high expressers, is that it's a non trivial detail of this writing protocol because some people are very familiar with communicating their emotions, both in writing and perhaps in speech as well. And this actually has been looked at. There's a wonderful study also by Pennebaker and colleagues. And I should mention that even though he studied these journaling protocol for a good number of years, his laboratory has evolved now to studying all sorts of things related to how the particular language usage Patterns that people use in everyday speech as well as in their writing, how that reflects their underlying psychological tone and emotions. But also, and I find this so interesting, how the particular words that we use in writing and speech actually shape, in a causal way, our emotional state. So I'll talk a little bit about that later. But the important thing to focus on now is the results of this study entitled Natural Emotion Vocabularies as Windows on Distress and well Being. And this again is a study that was done by Pennebaker and colleagues I've linked to in the show note captions. And it essentially examines people's natural language usage patterns. Now, what do I mean by natural and why is that important? Well, there have been many, many studies of people's vocabulary and assessing whether or not people have more knowledge of negative words to describe negative emotions or positive emotions. These studies are varying in their form, but generally consist of having people circle words they recognize or maybe writing out the definitions to. And it turns out that people that have more extensive knowledge of words that describe negative emotions themselves tend to have a lower affect or negative emotional state as compared to people who have more extensive knowledge of vocabulary words that pertain to positive emotions. So a crude example of what I just described is somebody that has fairly limited knowledge of words that describe positive emotional states. So perhaps they recognize the word happy, they recognize the word ecstatic, they recognize the word joyful, but they have a fairly limited word set that pertains to positive emotions. Whereas, by comparison, this is always relative within the same person. Right? By comparison, the person knows four times more words that pertain to a negative emotional state. Okay. In general, those people tend to be more depressive, tend to have higher levels of anxiety and so forth, as compared to somebody where the reverse pattern is true, where they have knowledge of far more words that pertain to positive emotional states as compared to negative emotional states. Now, on the face of it, that result probably seems straightforward, right? People that have a lot of words to describe happiness are more happy. People that have a lot of words to describe sadness and negative emotions are more sad. But it didn't necessarily have to be that way. And it turns out that it's not always that way. What do I mean by that? Well, the particular study that I've been describing here, this Natural Emotion Vocabularies as Windows on distress and well being, is an important paper because it explored not the words that people have knowledge of, but the word patterns that people tend to use in their natural speech, either spoken or written. And what Pennebaker and Others showed is that people that tend to use a lot of negative words tend to have more negative emotional states, whereas people that naturally tend to use words that describe positive emotional states have more positive emotions. And this related to both mental and physical metrics of negative emotions and positive emotions. So this is a significant result because what it says is that our knowledge of vocabulary words is, while interesting and perhaps important for other things, is not nearly as important as which particular words we use on a frequent basis. And so whereas before I said, okay, if you're going to embark on this protocol of four writing sessions, 15 to 30 minutes each, that you should not monitor your writing, that you want to sit down, start writing and just don't stop, you don't want to pay attention to grammar or spelling or anything else. And then after the fourth writing session, you don't look at what you've written for at least a week, but then a week or more later, you go back and you read what you've written, paying careful attention to the number of words that you use that reflect a negative emotional or affect, as it's sometimes called, state in the first versus the second versus the third versus the fourth journal entry. Now, this might seem a little bit detailed and reductionist for protocol that we would discuss on this podcast here. We're really talking about you doing your own data analysis of self. But if you think about it, a practice like this, both can be very quick and highly informative. So, for instance, you can go back and simply circle all the words that at first, first blush to you, appear to reflect a negative state and put a square around all the words that just by your read, seem to reflect a positive state and then compare them across those four journal entries. And of course, you can opt to not do any of this. But what people find, that is what was discovered in the research literature is that on average, the patterns of language use from the first to the fourth entry shift dramatically, such that by the fourth entry, people, even though they're still writing about the same negative experience, are writing about that experience in a very different way. Not only are they naturally using fewer negative words to describe their recollection and experience of that negative event, but the number of positive words is also increasing. Now, this is important because when Pennebaker and colleagues gave the instruction to people to do this protocol, they encourage them to think about three things before they ever start writing. The first is, of course, to write about facts about that difficult experience. I think that's sort of obvious that when people are going to recall a difficult Experience, they're likely to write down facts about that experience. The second thing that they want to remind them to include were emotions that they felt at the time of the experience, as well as emotions that they happen to feel now about that experience. And third, that people include writing about any and all links that come to mind about the negative experience and things that may be happening today, or plans for the future, people from the past, present, or future. Really, any link, no matter how distant it might seem or how random it might seem, to include that in the writing. Okay, so just to repeat the three things that they were instructed to include before they ever set their pens to paper or started typing out their negative experience. First, facts about the hard experience. So whatever they can recall that happened in that hard experience, or perhaps it was something that didn't happen and that was why it was a hard experience, but facts related to that hard experience, Facts of the hard experience. Second, that they include writing about emotions felt at the time of the experience as well as emotions felt now while writing about that prior experience. And third, to include any writing about any links that spring to mind about the negative experience and anything that's happening now or perhaps happened in the past or things that you have planned for the future. Now, that third category of links between the experience and other things may be direct and obvious. Maybe these are real aha. Moments where you go, oh, my goodness, I realize now that, you know, what's been happening for the last six months is a direct mirror of what happened in that earlier traumatic or very stressful episode. Or perhaps the links are more opaque. Maybe the link is, you know, I don't know why, but I keep thinking about this one experience that I had, and I keep thinking about this one person, and I don't know how they're linked. That's fine, put those down on paper. You can even draw a diagram. But I should mention it is important that you try, to the best of your ability, to. To write things out in complete sentences. Again, they don't have to be perfect grammar or even pseudo perfect grammar. The spelling can be off. Your handwriting can be a mess. Although if your handwriting is truly a mess, it might be hard to read later. By the way, folks, my older sister always teases me that my handwriting is frozen in the third grade. Actually would like to show her my journal entries. My handwriting was actually quite a bit better than it is now, which basically speaks to some degree of cognitive decline for me. But in any case, the point is that this third category of establishing links between the prior negative experience and whatever else is an important component of the writing protocol. So whatever it takes to include those links, they are worth including. Now, I want to re emphasize that even though I pointed to the positive health benefits of using more positive words in one's writing or speech, as opposed to negative words which tend to be associated with with worse health outcomes, both in terms of physical and mental health, it is important and it's central to this writing protocol if you're going to get the positive consequences of it, that you're not monitoring the words that you're using too closely. You're not trying to write this so someone else can see it. You're not trying to write the great American novel. You're not writing your eulogy, you're not writing your autobiography. You're really writing this for you. I can't emphasize that enough. You're doing this writing protocol so that you can work through something that is stressful or traumatic, that resides in your nervous system and that is not serving you well. Indeed. Next we're going to talk about what happens when these narratives of our prior negative experiences are not worked through, that they have not been put either to speech or to pen, to paper or typed out. And perhaps more importantly, we're going to talk about the incredibly positive benefits, both at the level of neural changes, so called neuroplasticity, which is the literal rewiring of neural connections, as well as psychological benefits, reduced anxiety, improved mood, improved sleep and improved immune function that are the consequence of doing this. Four bouts of 15 to 30 minute writing protocol. As we all know, quality nutrition influences, of course, our physical health, but also our mental health and our cognitive functioning, our memory, our ability to learn new things and to focus on.