Why Journaling Your Feelings Matter for HSPs and Introverts

Inside: Journaling your feelings helps highly sensitive and introverted women process emotions instead of avoiding or overthinking them.

Today, we’ll discuss why journaling should be part of your toolbox for managing and processing your emotions, especially as a highly sensitive and introverted woman.

If you’re here, it’s probably because you feel things very deeply. You are sensitive to the environment and the world around you, and you understand how quickly your feelings can pile up and become overwhelming. 

Journaling is a tool that can really help you stop, breathe, process, and begin to find some peace and clarity when things feel too big to handle—when your emotions are overwhelming. I’ll explain how it can help you stop feeling overwhelmed, reduce your stress, and embrace your God-given sensitivity.

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Why Journaling?

First, let’s take a look at why journaling is something you want to do as a highly sensitive introvert. Here’s what we know: one of the gifts of this heightened sensitivity that we have as HSPs and introverts is that we process emotions deeply. We feel things more intensely than others. 

You will be the person who walks into the room and can immediately read the temperature. You will know how you feel, and you will probably know how everybody else in the room is feeling as well. 

You also have this great strength and ability to be really reflective, to think deeply, to be introspective. You can think about things really deeply, and what that often leads to is overthinking, which is not always helpful. 

As you begin to think and think and think and think and think, you’re going to find yourself emotionally exhausted, or just feeling like, “You know what? This is too much. I cannot deal.” And then you sometimes have this tendency to go numb

It’s like, “You know what? I can’t handle everything that I’m feeling right now. It’s too much, so I’m just going to not feel anything.” Journaling is a great way to avoid falling into either of those traps. Here’s why: journaling is a safe space to process and feel all the things. 

Your Journal is Your Safe Space

The pages of your journal are where you can share what you’re actually feeling, what you’re actually thinking, without judgment. Your journal is a judgment-free zone, so if you are feeling really, really angry because of something nasty that somebody said to you, your journal is the place where you can let them have it. 

You can pour out every single insult and mean thought that you are having about that person, without running the risk of damaging relationships, or of saying something that you’re later going to have to go back and apologize for. 

That is your space to process all the things, and the key here is without judgment. When you are journaling, when you are writing down your emotions, when you’re trying to figure out what in the world is going on, it’s so important not to judge yourself, because what happens is we become our own worst critic

You’ve got to turn that editor and critic off who’s going to say, “Oh, you can’t say that because it’s terrible. What kind of a person actually thinks like that?” Listen, I know because I’ve been there.

I recently had a situation right before the holidays in which somebody I considered a good friend said something hurtful to me. I was angry for a long time, and I had to go to my journal to process it. 

I had to go to my journal and just write down every nasty thought that I was having about her, every ugly word that I wanted to say to her, to get it all out of my system so I could say, “Okay, LaToya, step back. Now objectively look at that situation.” 

I was able to separate certain things – things I needed to receive and take to heart and make some changes about, and things that led me to a place of peace where I could actually address what was bothering me in a healthy way, without being rude and nasty.

Does it feel like your emotions are a storm you can’t control? Do you long for peace, but instead, you’re stuck overthinking, overwhelmed, and unsure of how to move forward? Imagine waking up feeling calm, confident, and capable of handling whatever life throws your way. This transformation is possible—and I’m here to guide you there!
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Journaling Helps with Clarity

The other thing that you’re going to get when you’re journaling is that you will gain clarity. Here’s why: when you’re walking around trying to hold on to all of the feelings either in your heart, in your mind, or your head, you actually can’t see anything. I call it walking around in a fog. 

This is exactly how I felt after that incident. I was so emotional about all the negative things that I couldn’t see straight, think straight, or get a clear picture of what I was feeling or why I was feeling it so that I could process it, resolve it, and figure out what steps I needed to take. 

When you get all of these thoughts and emotions out on paper instead of just letting them ruminate in your head, you actually are going to gain clarity. You’ll be able to say, “Oh, actually, that was the correct emotion to have,” or “Actually, you know what? I kind of overreacted. I need to kind of step it back a little bit.” Having it out of your head on the page allows you to have that distance from it to actually make some sense of it.

Journaling Helps Curb Overthinking

Now, the other key here is that journaling helps you work through your tendency to overthink. Remember my example: I was feeling all kinds of things, and I was thinking and thinking and thinking about all sorts of things. 

I was not getting to the bottom of what was bothering me. It took me a solid week to figure out why I was so upset, that I wasn’t angry, that I was hurt, and that I felt betrayed because of something my friend said.

It took me a week of everyday journaling, talking with a friend, speaking with a coach who could help me sort things out, of actually doing that work, to begin to share those thoughts so I could stop thinking them. I could stop focusing on it, and eventually, I got to the bottom of what was actually bothering me. 

When I got there, I could say, “Okay, now I’m in a place where I can figure out my next steps. What are my options? What do I need to do? How am I going to move forward?” And I did. I did it without guilt or shame, with a clear heart, and peace of mind, and I want the same for you.

Long-Term Benefits of Journaling

Before we wrap up today, I want to discuss some of the long-term benefits of journaling. We’ve examined the challenges we face as HSPs and introverts, and I’ve also discussed how journaling helps. However, I want to discuss the long-term benefits because our ultimate goal is not simply to resolve the emotion we’re currently feeling. 

Building Emotional Resilience

The goal is not just about this moment, this one instance, this one situation “I’ve worked my way through that” – no, that’s not good enough. What we want to do with journaling is to use it as a tool to develop emotional resilience – the ability to bounce back when life kind of smacks us in the face. It’s what I had to do.

It took me a week to go through all of those steps and processes to work on my emotional resilience. Because of that one conversation, I was able to come back and be myself, live my life, and interact with people without being derailed. And that’s what I want for you. 

I want you to strengthen your emotional wellness and resilience by getting in the habit of journaling often—your feelings, thoughts, and emotions—so that you can process things and have everything you need to bounce back, make those choices, figure out how to take care of yourself in those situations and determine your next steps.

Learning to Recognize Patterns and Triggers

The second long-term benefit is that you’ll begin to recognize patterns and triggers so that you can change your response. I’ll use myself as an example: In the past, when I had hurtful or negative conversations and interactions with people, especially somebody I considered a friend, I would get mad, shut down, isolate, and just kind of stew. I wouldn’t actually take the steps I needed to resolve that.

Do you know how I realized this? It’s because I was journaling about what I was feeling, and what I was thinking, and I was able to make connections. “Oh my goodness, this reminds me of that one time, and this other time, and this other time, and all of those previous times. I did this, this, this, and this, and I didn’t really like that outcome.”

So I was able to say, “Okay, this is a trigger. Your trigger is feeling betrayed by somebody close to you, and when you do that, your behaviors, actions, and choices are this, this, and this. We don’t want that. We want to do something different.” 

That allowed me to take a moment to realize all of that and then find a better way to respond to what was going on. Instead of just reacting, lashing out, or cutting people off, I was able to sit, pause, process, and respond. And you know what? I did it a lot faster. 

Like I said, it took me a week, but in the past, it could have taken me months or years to actually get over something hurtful that somebody said to me. 

When you journal, you’ll see patterns and triggers in yourself, which is a good thing because once you recognize a pattern and know what the trigger is, you can plan for it. So now, in the future, when that happens again, I have a new plan. I will do what I did the last time because that worked out well for me and the other person.

Learn to View Sensitivity as a Strength

The final way that journaling will help you long-term is by helping you embrace your sensitivity as a strength instead of a weakness. I’m going to say this a lot, but you were made sensitive and extra sensitive on purpose. 

It’s not a mistake, it’s not a flaw, it’s not something that you have to overcome, something that you’ve got to turn off or ignore. No, you were intentionally given this extra sensitivity that people around you may or may not have. It’s part of who you are, and it’s a gift.

While journaling, you build the muscles of identifying your emotions, recognizing how they feel in your body, recognizing your triggers, and learning your patterns. Something amazing happens.  

You’ll be able to say, “When I feel angry, this is what it looks like, and here’s what I can do about it.” Once you have all that under your belt, you can say, “Oh my goodness, look at how far I’ve come. ” You’ll recognize that your sensitivity is a gift. 

It is a strength. Because I am sensitive, I can see what I’ve learned about myself, how much I’ve grown, and all the changes and positive things that are happening to me.

Journaling is not just about writing, it’s not about “Dear diary, I had this for breakfast, this for lunch, and so-and-so was cute, and so-and-so said this mean thing to me.” That’s not what it’s about, not here. 

We’re talking about giving yourself permission to feel what you’re feeling, to just sit with your emotions and thoughts. Think the thoughts, feel the feelings, process them, learn from them, and move forward. 

It is the best tool that I know of for managing your emotions as a highly sensitive person or an introvert. It’s just, hands down, the best. I haven’t found anything that works as well. I haven’t found anything that is as easy to implement, or that is as easy to be consistent with, other than journaling, and it’s so easy to get started. Something to write with, something to write on, and you’re good to go.

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