YES!!!
Let me tell you why.
But first, a bit about all those emotions that come with TTC...
Infertility comes with a whole heap of emotions. My fertility journey brought everything from frustration, overwhelm, guilt, disappointment, envy, jealousy, fear, grief, a tonne of sadness, and even shame.
When we’re struggling to conceive, it can feel like our emotions are taking over. TTC is an emotional roller coaster and the emotions are relentless. Even when we do conceive, the emotions can stay with us. We carry them into pregnancy, motherhood, and beyond.
All these emotions need to be processed. Unfelt emotions don’t just disappear. Unacknowledged emotions don’t just heal with time. Instead, they wait until we are ready to feel them.
Our emotions want to be felt. They want us to notice them.
I know this goes against our natural instinct. I resisted my emotions for years. I mean, who wants to deal with uncomfortable emotions?
But if you’re feeling overwhelmed, if you’re feeling stuck, or your emotion is spilling out at the most inappropriate and inconvenient times, journaling can be one tool in your kit to help you find more ease and calm. Journaling helps!
There are lots of benefits
The process of writing about overwhelming emotions is a remarkably effective means of creating calm, clarity, and perspective on your fertility journey. It’s a way to connect with and manage our emotions. Journaling helps us make sense of what’s going on.
This technique costs nothing, it’s private, can be done anywhere, and doesn’t have to take lots of time.
Journaling is simple but can be transformative. It’s a powerful life tool.
Journaling helps to:
Clarify your thoughts and feelings - It helps make sense of all the noise in your head. It helps you become clear about what you feel, think, and want to do next.
Reduce stress and feel better- Writing about frustration, sadness, and other painful emotions help to release the intensity of these feelings. You feel less overwhelmed, less stressed, more able to stay in the present, and better able to cope with your experience.
Gain unexpected insights - Journaling can help discover information about yourself that you didn’t know.
Why it works so well
When we’re TTC (and just living our life in general) we tend to take a logical, left-brained approach. This is natural and has an important benefit – it helps us survive! But the problem when we live from our left brain too much is that we miss out on the juicy benefits of activating our right brain. The right brain is where things like creativity, intuition, memory, and emotions live. Journaling helps us bypass the dominant left brain and access the wisdom of our right brain. This opens up surprising and unexpected solutions and insights.
Most of us can benefit from a more right-brain perspective at times. Our right brain is yearning to be heard. It contains so much insight for us and journaling is an effective way to unlock its power.
How to journal
It’s so simple – you just start writing! Just give it a go. Even a few minutes a day can be beneficial.
I like to have a special journal to use for writing, but you can use anything.
To get the most out of journaling, it's best to:
Write without censor. No one needs to read this except you.
Write quickly to encourage flow and eliminate the opportunity for judgment.
Forgot about spelling and punctuation.
Keep going! It may take some practice to get into a good flow.
Like anything, journaling is something that gets easier the more you do it and the more you start to see the benefits.
Need some help to get things started? Take advantage of the energy and momentum of a journaling challenge. It’s just 10 minutes a day for five days. Easy!