Joanne Smith warns that journaling focused on negative thoughts can trap you in rumination, cycling through pain without resolution. Instead, note an insight, reflect on what you learned, and move forward rather than repeatedly revisiting the same issues.
But do be careful, because if you are literally focusing doom and gloom and just purely journaling and writing about all the things that are not, not good, then that's where some people can get really stuck by it. Some people, done and dusted, and they can feel brilliant for it. But it's just about— you're only feeling what you're thinking now in this moment, you know, you're not— it might not be the answer for many people. who go back, revisit, release something that they didn't realize was there, but yet they've still got symptoms and still got pain, and they're thinking, what am I missing? And then they get obsessed going over and over and over, and they can get really stuck in a loop there. So it's just about doing it in a— in the most safe way possible. So, like, once you've taken away an insight from that, what have we learned from that?
