The Writing Practice That May Change Your Life - Ep 53

In this episode I explain how stream-of-consciousness writing or "release writing" provides instant stress relief, mental clarity, and helps you drop into a feeling of peace and presence when you need it the most. 

It's also an amazing practice to use before bed! 

Listen to find out how you can better handle life's challenges through this simple writing habit.


Links:

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The 4 Step Process To Release Emotional Stress Course

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Transcript

0:26

Hey, it's Annabelle here. Welcome back to the podcast. In this episode, I'm going to be sharing about a writing practice that may well change your life. It's a simple practice, but it can have a profound impact on how you feel every day. And also how you process things that come up in your day and week that feel challenging, stressful, triggering, whatever it might be. So this is an incredible practice. It's so simple and I'm going to take you through it so that you can pick up, pick it up and use it in your own life and experience the same kind of results. So if you're new here, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here. Take some time after this episode to browse through the other episodes, see which ones are jumping out at you. Subscribe to the podcast so that you don't miss more episodes. And if you enjoy these episodes, if you get value from them, I would so appreciate if you could leave a rating or a review for the podcast that just helps support the work that goes into the episodes and also. Help the episodes and the podcasts reach more and more people to be able to help them too. So let's talk about this writing practice that can change your life. So I was doing this, practice the other day and as I was doing it, when I came out the other side and experienced such a relief and such a release from doing it, I just knew that I needed to create an episode about it and to share it with you. So it's a practice that I call release writing and really what it is, is it's a form of journaling, but it's an amazing way to be able to process heavy emotions, to process things that have come up in our day that have caused us to worry or stress that might've caused us to feel frustrated or angry or triggered in some way. And here's the thing, it's so important that we take the time to process these things when they come up in our day. Because for a lot of us, what happens is things occur in our day and we can't not go through our week and not have things that trigger us in some way. Cause an emotional response or reaction in us. That's just part of being human and kind of walking through this life. But if we don't process those things, what happens is that stress gets like suppressed in our body and it will show up in ways that we often don't attribute to stress. So. If we don't process the things that are happening in our day, what happens is we will end up doing things like procrastinating on stuff. We will freeze, we will numb out a lot, spend a lot of time on social media, kind of use like food and other things as a way to numb out. We might find it really hard to be present. Like we're always thinking into the future and planning. We might find that we go into people pleasing tendencies or you know, there's all sorts of things that we can do when when we have. A stressful feeling, a stress response in our body that we, we don't process. So I just kind of want you to think about like when stuff happens in your day, like your, maybe you receive some news, some unexpected news. There's something that might happen in your work day, like an outcome of a meeting or a colleague that you have to deal with or a family member thing that comes up. How are you processing that stuff? And when you don't process it, what typically happens for you in your body? I know for me, I can go into, we talk a lot about the nervous system responses on this podcast. I can go into like the flight response. So I start getting this like raciness and this anxiousness in my body. And I find it hard to like be really grounded and to be present. And I start to worry. So I know when that's coming up for me, I need to sit down. And use a practice like release writing. So essentially what this is, is you just get out a blank piece of paper and you do like a stream of consciousness onto the page. So you just allow anything and everything that is in your mind to flow out of your mind and onto this piece of paper. And you're not judging what's on there. You don't even have to go back and look at it. And I always say, if it helps you be more honest, Rip it up afterwards. If you're worried about someone reading it, rip it up afterwards or burn it, you know, in a safe way. If that helps you kind of get more honest about how it is that you're feeling and what's coming up for you. So, So what can be helpful as well if you find that you sit down and you look at a blank piece of paper and you don't know what to write? Starting with some journaling prompts can be really great. So maybe you start with a question and you write a question on the top of your page. How am I feeling today? What's triggered me today? What am I worried about today? Starting with questions like that kind of helps get, like, that first lot of, of thoughts and feelings to come out. It kind of gets the ball rolling and then you'll find that you're away and that momentum has started and that you'll just keep writing and writing and writing. And what this does is when we're, when we're living up in our heads a lot, constantly thinking about something that happened during the day, Constantly worried about something like those same thoughts are racing through our mind. It's like those thoughts are looking for a way to come out. They're being recycled over and over again in our mind. But what they're really wanting is to, is to find an outlet, a way to be released. And that's what this process does. It means we take all of those thoughts. Thoughts, those frustrations, whatever it might be, those worries that are swirling around in our mind and we give them an outlet onto the page. And so that's why it's called release writing, because it gives us this huge release, it gives a place for these thoughts and feelings to go to so that we feel a release and, and it's quite amazing, quite profound, the relief that you do feel once you do this. So trust yourself as to how long you need to do this. Sometimes it might just be a few minutes. You might really go for it and it could be sort of 10 or 15 minutes of writing. This is also a really great practice to use before you go to bed. If you find that when you start to get into, into bed, your mind starts racing, thinking about what's happening tomorrow, what you need to do. What happened today, this can be a great process to use just before bed to get into bed or just before you get into bed, get out your piece of paper and do your release writing so that those thoughts don't need to keep circulating when you, you know, put your head on the pillow. So what's really cool about this process is. Just by doing it, you're going to just feel this instant relief because, because all of those thoughts and feelings have come out of your mind. But what's also great is it helps us process the stress response. It helps us come out of the stress response. So when we come out of the stress response, now we start to see things a bit more clearly. When we're in the stress response, so when we're in the worries, when we're in, in the anxiousness, when we're in the fear, when we're in the frustration, it's so hard to see things clearly. It's so hard to access an alternate perspective. It's so hard to see solutions. When we're in that space, it's why it's so important to process that and be able to come out the other side of it. And when we come out the other side of it, now we can see clearly. So when I was doing this the other night, when I was processing something that I felt worried about, once I'd done my release writing, I felt the relief and then I was able to access much clearer thinking about this thing that I was worried about. I was able to see like a different perspective. I was seeing it from one angle when I was in the stress response, but by processing that stress response and coming out the other side of it, I could access a whole different way of looking at this thing. And that was awesome. That felt really powerful. So that's a cool thing that it does is it gives us the ability to see things more clearly. Access more creative thinking, see solutions, access solutions, to see things differently the way we couldn't see it when we were in the stress. So, it really is a practice that if you used this regularly, has the power to completely change your life. Not only in how it makes you feel in that moment, the relief, the peace that that introduces in that moment from processing the stress, but by actually processing the stress and actually getting comfortable and familiar with processing your feelings on a regular basis. You're going to just going to find that you live life in a really different way. You can move through life just feeling so much more present and in your body, feeling much more at ease, more calm, more grounded, more trusting, more open. These are all the things. Thank you. that are created through processing our stress. So I really hope that you give this a go and I would love to hear how you find it. So when you use this practice and you experience the benefit, love to hear about your experience. Send me an email. You can find that on my website below. You can reach out to me on Instagram or Facebook. Those links are below in the description as well. And if this kind of work is stuff where, you know, like, I want to get better at this. This is, this is an area of like development for me, an area where I want to learn more about this. Coming to work with me in a one on one program would be an amazing option. Links to that are below. And also I have a self paced digital course called the four step process. To release emotional stress and actually release writing is one of the techniques that I teach inside that program. There's a whole bunch of other ones as well, but essentially this is like a simple four step process to kind of teach you how to Process stress, process feelings and emotions that are coming up in your life so that you can let them go so you can release the heaviness and actually live life in a much lighter, more peaceful way. So it's the four step process is something I teach every client I work with because I just think it's it's something that I developed. Personally for myself and it's just been so life changing for me and for those that I've shared it with so you can just learn that it's a self paced digital course so you can just purchase it when you like go through it when you like and I'll leave a link to that below if you'd like to check that out. So. As I said, if you're new here, subscribe to the podcast, or if you haven't already, make sure you check out some of the other episodes, have a look over them. If you know someone who would benefit from learning about release writing, please do share this episode with them. Come over to my website to learn more about me. I also have a really wonderful. Audio called the, I am audio. It's free to download on my website. It's a fantastic audio to listen to every morning, and it will just give you like an instant boost of energy, positivity, motivation. It's about, I think it's less than 10 minutes long. Just press play, listen to it while you get ready in the morning on your commute. And it will just. Pretty real difference in how your day plays out. So that's free to download on my website, check that out. And I'd love to hear how you find release writing, get in touch with me. I always enjoy hearing from you and I'll connect with you in the next episode.