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

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.260 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.900 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.660 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.900 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.980 | Today, we are discussing journaling

00:00:17.920 | for mental and physical health.

00:00:20.220 | I want to emphasize that today's discussion

00:00:22.660 | is not a general discussion about the value of journaling.

00:00:26.380 | Rather, it is a discussion

00:00:27.740 | about a particular form of journaling

00:00:29.900 | that the scientific peer-reviewed data says

00:00:32.300 | is especially powerful

00:00:34.140 | for improving our mental and physical health.

00:00:36.540 | In fact, what I will describe today is a journaling method

00:00:39.800 | that is supported by over 200 peer-reviewed studies

00:00:42.980 | in quality journals.

00:00:44.660 | And I frankly was not aware of this journaling practice

00:00:48.260 | prior to researching this episode,

00:00:50.180 | but in researching this episode,

00:00:52.080 | have come to discover that this practice

00:00:54.500 | should easily be placed among some of the other critical,

00:00:58.100 | so-called foundational pillar practices

00:01:00.500 | in terms of its impact

00:01:02.100 | on improving mental and physical health,

00:01:04.500 | including things like lowering anxiety,

00:01:07.660 | improving sleep, improving immunity

00:01:11.300 | to things like colds, flus, et cetera,

00:01:13.980 | as well as reducing the symptoms of autoimmune disorders,

00:01:16.700 | such as arthritis, lupus,

00:01:18.940 | and also providing some relief for fibromyalgia,

00:01:22.340 | which is a condition of excessive pain.

00:01:24.620 | The particular journaling method and protocol

00:01:26.360 | that I will describe has also been shown

00:01:28.580 | to improve various metrics of everyday living,

00:01:31.060 | including improved memory, decision-making,

00:01:33.580 | and on and on and on.

00:01:36.020 | So much so that, again, I was very surprised

00:01:38.740 | that I had not heard of this particular journaling method.

00:01:41.660 | One would think that if such a powerful method existed

00:01:43.840 | that everyone would know about it,

00:01:45.740 | but it turns out that this particular journaling method

00:01:48.560 | has been somewhat cloistered

00:01:50.280 | within the fields of psychology and psychiatry.

00:01:52.540 | It's not that nobody was aware of it.

00:01:54.240 | In fact, I learned about it for the first time

00:01:56.760 | from our associate chair of psychiatry

00:01:59.540 | at Stanford University School of Medicine,

00:02:01.100 | my colleague and collaborator, Dr. David Spiegel,

00:02:03.460 | who, as some of you may know,

00:02:04.660 | has been featured as a guest on this podcast previously.

00:02:07.500 | And upon hearing about it,

00:02:09.060 | I decided to explore the primary research,

00:02:11.300 | that is, the studies that demonstrate the power

00:02:13.180 | of this particular journaling method,

00:02:15.020 | and was absolutely blown away by the positive impact

00:02:18.780 | this particular journaling method can have.

00:02:21.700 | What's wonderful about it, you'll soon discover,

00:02:24.180 | is that it takes a relatively small amount of time.

00:02:27.560 | In fact, it's something that you could do

00:02:29.480 | during the course of one week, or even across one month,

00:02:32.920 | and then never do again.

00:02:34.620 | And the data say that it would still have

00:02:36.600 | lasting positive benefits, both for body and mind.

00:02:39.820 | So while it's rare to feature one particular protocol

00:02:43.140 | as an entire Huberman Lab podcast,

00:02:45.220 | that is indeed what I will do today.

00:02:47.380 | It is important that we go into some depth

00:02:49.660 | about the specific protocol,

00:02:51.140 | because there are some important details

00:02:52.680 | that everyone should know if they want to apply it

00:02:54.600 | and make it as effective as it can be.

00:02:56.920 | And in addition to that,

00:02:57.980 | we'll talk about some of the underlying science

00:02:59.740 | that's been published,

00:03:00.580 | explaining why and how this protocol is so effective

00:03:04.280 | for mental and physical health.

00:03:06.020 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:03:08.960 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:03:11.680 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:03:13.840 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:03:16.600 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:03:19.260 | In keeping with that theme,

00:03:20.340 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:03:23.180 | Our first sponsor is Element.

00:03:25.120 | Element is an electrolyte drink

00:03:26.700 | that has everything you need and nothing you don't.

00:03:29.120 | That means plenty of electrolytes,

00:03:30.520 | sodium, magnesium, and potassium, and no sugar.

00:03:33.660 | The electrolytes are absolutely essential

00:03:35.360 | for the functioning of every cell in your body,

00:03:37.200 | and your neurons, your nerve cells,

00:03:38.660 | rely on sodium, magnesium, and potassium

00:03:40.860 | in order to communicate with one another

00:03:42.500 | electrically and chemically.

00:03:44.000 | Element contains the optimal ratio of electrolytes

00:03:46.180 | for the functioning of neurons

00:03:47.700 | and the other cells of your body.

00:03:49.140 | Every morning, I drink a packet of Element

00:03:50.960 | dissolved in about 32 ounces of water.

00:03:53.600 | I do that just for general hydration

00:03:55.800 | and to make sure that I have adequate electrolytes

00:03:57.920 | for any activities that day.

00:03:59.440 | I'll often also have an Element packet,

00:04:01.280 | or even two packets, in 32 to 60 ounces of water

00:04:04.800 | if I'm exercising very hard,

00:04:06.320 | and certainly if I'm sweating a lot,

00:04:08.220 | in order to make sure that I replace those electrolytes.

00:04:10.760 | If you'd like to try Element,

00:04:11.920 | you can go to www.drinklmnt.com/huberman

00:04:15.840 | to get a free sample pack with your purchase.

00:04:17.720 | Again, that's www.drinklmnt.com/huberman.

00:04:21.620 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.

00:04:24.480 | Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers

00:04:26.140 | with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity.

00:04:28.900 | I've spoken many times before in this podcast

00:04:30.780 | about the fact that getting a great night's sleep

00:04:33.180 | really is the foundation of mental health,

00:04:34.900 | physical health, and performance.

00:04:36.480 | One of the key things to getting a great night's sleep

00:04:38.640 | is to make sure that the temperature

00:04:40.020 | of your sleeping environment is correct.

00:04:41.760 | And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep,

00:04:44.340 | your body temperature actually has to drop

00:04:46.000 | by about one to three degrees.

00:04:47.720 | And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized,

00:04:50.840 | your body temperature actually has to increase

00:04:52.780 | by about one to three degrees.

00:04:54.480 | With Eight Sleep, you can program the temperature

00:04:56.160 | of your sleeping environment in the beginning, middle,

00:04:58.480 | and end of your night.

00:04:59.760 | It has a number of other features

00:05:00.920 | like tracking the amount of rapid eye movement

00:05:02.760 | and slow wave sleep that you get.

00:05:04.160 | Things that are essential to really dialing in

00:05:06.360 | the perfect night's sleep for you.

00:05:07.960 | I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover

00:05:09.560 | for well over two years now,

00:05:11.080 | and it has greatly improved my sleep.

00:05:13.120 | I fall asleep far more quickly.

00:05:14.920 | I wake up far less often in the middle of the night,

00:05:17.120 | and I wake up feeling far more refreshed than I ever did

00:05:19.920 | prior to using an Eight Sleep mattress cover.

00:05:22.500 | If you'd like to try Eight Sleep,

00:05:23.900 | go to eightsleep.com/huberman.

00:05:26.920 | Now through November 30th, as a special holiday discount,

00:05:30.440 | Eight Sleep is offering $500 off their bundles

00:05:32.880 | with a pod cover.

00:05:34.280 | Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, the UK,

00:05:37.320 | select countries in the EU, and Australia.

00:05:39.760 | Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman.

00:05:42.860 | Today's episode is also brought to us

00:05:44.520 | by Waking Up.

00:05:45.880 | Waking Up is a meditation app

00:05:47.660 | that includes hundreds of meditation programs,

00:05:49.800 | mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions,

00:05:52.240 | and NSDR, non-sleep deep rest protocols.

00:05:55.260 | I started using the Waking Up app a few years ago

00:05:57.560 | because even though I've been doing regular meditation

00:06:00.300 | since my teens, and I started doing yoga nidra

00:06:03.360 | about a decade ago,

00:06:05.000 | my dad mentioned to me that he had found an app,

00:06:07.480 | turned out to be the Waking Up app,

00:06:09.240 | which could teach you meditations of different durations

00:06:12.280 | and that had a lot of different types of meditations

00:06:14.760 | to place the brain and body into different states,

00:06:17.280 | and that he liked it very much.

00:06:18.660 | So I gave the Waking Up app a try,

00:06:20.960 | and I too found it to be extremely useful

00:06:23.400 | because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate,

00:06:26.420 | other times I have longer to meditate.

00:06:28.160 | And indeed, I love the fact

00:06:29.320 | that I can explore different types of meditation

00:06:31.880 | to bring about different levels of understanding

00:06:34.080 | about consciousness, but also to place my brain and body

00:06:36.660 | into lots of different kinds of states

00:06:38.280 | depending on which meditation I do.

00:06:40.280 | I also love that the Waking Up app has lots of different

00:06:42.640 | types of yoga nidra sessions.

00:06:44.480 | For those of you who don't know,

00:06:45.620 | yoga nidra is a process of lying very still,

00:06:48.200 | but keeping an active mind.

00:06:49.480 | It's very different than most meditations,

00:06:51.640 | and there's excellent scientific data

00:06:53.720 | to show that yoga nidra and something similar to it,

00:06:56.320 | called non-sleep deep rest, or NSDR,

00:06:59.020 | can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy,

00:07:02.020 | even with just a short 10-minute session.

00:07:04.520 | If you'd like to try the Waking Up app,

00:07:06.440 | you can go to wakingup.com/huberman

00:07:09.320 | and access a free 30-day trial.

00:07:11.360 | Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman

00:07:14.200 | to access a free 30-day trial.

00:07:16.460 | Okay, let's talk about this particularly transformative form

00:07:19.000 | of journaling that initially was researched

00:07:21.580 | by Dr. James Pennebaker.

00:07:24.080 | James Pennebaker was a professor of psychology

00:07:26.120 | at Southern Methodist University

00:07:27.760 | when he first started researching this form of journaling

00:07:30.120 | and its positive impacts on the body and mind,

00:07:33.500 | but he has since moved to the University of Texas, Austin,

00:07:36.140 | where he still runs a laboratory

00:07:37.760 | and has continued his studies on the role of journaling

00:07:40.580 | and other forms of language, both spoken and written,

00:07:43.580 | in terms of their impact on one's mental

00:07:45.680 | and physical health.

00:07:46.800 | So the origins of the research

00:07:48.060 | into this particular form of journaling

00:07:50.120 | started in the mid-'80s, and it was really in 1986

00:07:53.600 | that the first published manuscript

00:07:55.220 | about this form of journaling was published.

00:07:57.360 | Now, I want to be clear that prior to James Pennebaker

00:07:59.560 | studying this form of journaling,

00:08:01.600 | clearly others had used the form of journaling

00:08:04.820 | that I'm about to describe.

00:08:06.200 | However, it was Pennebaker

00:08:07.860 | that really started attaching measurements

00:08:10.060 | of the specific types of changes that occurred in people

00:08:12.820 | when they did this journaling in a particular way,

00:08:15.360 | and indeed came up with the precise protocol

00:08:17.800 | that we'll talk about today.

00:08:19.220 | So Pennebaker and colleagues,

00:08:20.640 | and James Pennebaker in particular,

00:08:22.560 | really deserves credit for the discovery of this method.

00:08:25.780 | As you'll soon learn, Pennebaker was absolutely meticulous

00:08:29.760 | in figuring out exactly how long

00:08:31.840 | the method should be carried out,

00:08:33.320 | what exact forms of change occurred in the body

00:08:36.140 | and mind, he was careful to explore the method

00:08:38.900 | in the context of students,

00:08:40.220 | as well as in the general population,

00:08:41.880 | in veterans, in elderly, in kids, and on and on.

00:08:45.760 | So it's really that incredible attention to detail

00:08:49.340 | and that scientific rigor

00:08:51.040 | that makes the protocol so incredibly powerful.

00:08:54.180 | So that first scientific study

00:08:55.620 | of this particular form of journaling,

00:08:57.340 | as I mentioned, was published in 1986,

00:08:59.120 | and I provided a link to that study

00:09:00.720 | in the show note captions.

00:09:02.140 | But what that study essentially consisted of

00:09:04.420 | was inviting undergraduate students

00:09:06.840 | into the university laboratory one at a time,

00:09:09.440 | and they were to spend 15 to 30 minutes writing

00:09:12.680 | about the most difficult, even traumatic,

00:09:16.960 | or possibly non-traumatic,

00:09:18.660 | but still very difficult experience

00:09:20.940 | that they can recall from their entire life.

00:09:23.780 | The instruction included that they should write

00:09:25.560 | for the entire time.

00:09:27.060 | That is, because they were writing by hand

00:09:28.860 | in that particular experiment,

00:09:30.220 | that they were to not stop moving their hand

00:09:32.620 | for the entire duration of the 15 to 30 minutes.

00:09:35.900 | And in addition to that, that no one besides them,

00:09:38.700 | the person writing, would see what was written

00:09:42.060 | at the beginning, middle, or even after the experiment.

00:09:44.440 | In fact, the students were invited to tear up the paper

00:09:47.180 | at the end of the writing exercise if they so chose.

00:09:50.300 | Okay, so the first key instruction

00:09:51.780 | is that they take a moment to think about

00:09:53.460 | what is the most difficult,

00:09:55.380 | perhaps even traumatic, experience of their entire life.

00:09:58.940 | The second instruction was that they were supposed to write

00:10:00.880 | for 15 to 30 minutes.

00:10:02.740 | And the third instruction was that they were supposed

00:10:04.960 | to write for the entire time.

00:10:06.780 | That at no point would they take a pause,

00:10:08.660 | unless somehow emotionally or physically

00:10:11.580 | they were unable to keep moving their hand on the paper.

00:10:13.820 | In fact, they were told to not pay attention

00:10:16.520 | to accurate grammar, to not pay attention to re-readability.

00:10:21.520 | They were told, in fact, that their writing could be replete

00:10:23.660 | with spelling errors or grammatical errors.

00:10:26.160 | That didn't matter.

00:10:27.160 | What was most important is that they tap

00:10:28.580 | into a particularly negatively charged memory

00:10:32.040 | of their prior life experience.

00:10:33.940 | Now, of course, because this was an experiment

00:10:35.880 | carried out in a university laboratory,

00:10:37.980 | there was a quiet place

00:10:39.200 | where the students could write undisturbed.

00:10:41.180 | But since we're taking this particular protocol

00:10:43.400 | and we're exporting it to the real world

00:10:45.280 | through this podcast,

00:10:46.700 | so it's important that if you decide

00:10:48.060 | to implement this protocol in your own life,

00:10:50.560 | that you carry out the writing

00:10:52.300 | in a place where you will not be disturbed

00:10:54.180 | for that entire 15 to 30 minute duration.

00:10:56.860 | It's also important that you know

00:10:58.580 | that even though that first 1986 study

00:11:00.660 | was done having students write out these memories by hand

00:11:04.140 | with a pen and paper or a pencil and paper,

00:11:07.000 | there have been many subsequent studies

00:11:08.700 | that have explored whether or not the pen and paper

00:11:11.180 | was particularly important, and it turns out it's not.

00:11:13.700 | The exact same magnitude of positive effects are observed

00:11:17.000 | regardless of whether or not people write out

00:11:19.780 | their passage of words by hand

00:11:21.700 | or type it out on a word processor

00:11:23.580 | or any other form of writing.

00:11:25.360 | Now, just to make sure that everyone gets

00:11:26.860 | the exact same protocol that was provided

00:11:29.620 | in that first initial study from Pennebaker and colleagues,

00:11:32.780 | and that has been used really over and over and over again

00:11:36.260 | for more than 200 peer-reviewed studies

00:11:38.900 | that demonstrate the power of this protocol,

00:11:41.120 | I'm going to read to you some of the specific instructions

00:11:44.140 | from that first study.

00:11:45.940 | So the subjects were instructed to quote,

00:11:48.920 | "Write about something that you are thinking about

00:11:51.360 | or worrying about way too much,

00:11:54.140 | or if you're not thinking about

00:11:56.200 | or worrying about something way too much,

00:11:57.840 | perhaps you've deliberately tried to not think about

00:12:00.920 | this series of events or event,

00:12:03.820 | something that you've been dreaming about at night,

00:12:06.520 | perhaps in disturbing dreams,

00:12:08.980 | or something that you feel is affecting your life

00:12:11.300 | in an unhealthy way, either internally or externally."

00:12:15.200 | So it could be in your emotional state,

00:12:17.020 | your inability to calm down when you want to be calm,

00:12:20.460 | maybe you're ruminating, maybe even compulsive thought,

00:12:23.000 | maybe it's leading to addictive

00:12:25.140 | or compulsive or habitual behaviors,

00:12:27.740 | or perhaps you can identify a specific trauma

00:12:30.300 | or set of traumas that you know

00:12:32.300 | are really plaguing your body and mind.

00:12:34.620 | The specific instructions that were given to the subjects

00:12:36.840 | in those experiments are the specific instructions

00:12:39.740 | that I'm going to give to you now,

00:12:41.340 | should you decide to implement this journaling protocol.

00:12:44.660 | And those instructions are as follows.

00:12:47.460 | "I want you to write down your deepest emotions and thoughts

00:12:51.380 | as they relate to the most upsetting experience

00:12:53.860 | in your life.

00:12:55.280 | Really let go and explore your feelings

00:12:57.140 | and thoughts about it.

00:12:58.840 | As you write, you might tie this experience

00:13:01.040 | to your childhood, your relationship with your parents

00:13:03.440 | or siblings, people you have loved or love now,

00:13:07.120 | or even your career or schooling.

00:13:09.900 | How has this experience related to who you have now become,

00:13:13.860 | who you have been in the past

00:13:15.440 | and who you would like to become?"

00:13:17.220 | The instructions then continue to say,

00:13:19.040 | "Many people have not had a truly traumatic experience

00:13:21.820 | in their lives,

00:13:22.880 | but everyone has had major conflicts or stressors,

00:13:25.600 | and you can write about the most dramatic

00:13:28.080 | or stressful experience you've ever had."

00:13:31.020 | Okay, so those are some of the key instructions

00:13:33.520 | that subjects in these experiments were given

00:13:35.560 | before they do the exercise.

00:13:37.120 | And of course, they were given a few minutes

00:13:38.540 | to think about what they wanted to write,

00:13:40.300 | but once they selected what they wanted to write,

00:13:42.540 | they started writing.

00:13:43.940 | There was a timer going in the background

00:13:45.400 | for 15 to 30 minutes.

00:13:46.600 | And the reason, by the way,

00:13:47.440 | I keep saying 15 to 30 minutes

00:13:48.920 | is that some experiments employed a 30-minute period,

00:13:51.980 | other experiments employed a 20-minute period,

00:13:54.280 | others employed a 15-minute period.

00:13:56.640 | Turns out there were no major differences

00:13:58.820 | between the 15-minute and the 30-minute writing blocks

00:14:02.280 | in terms of the positive impact that they had

00:14:04.140 | on mental and physical health.

00:14:05.760 | But for some people and their particular experience

00:14:08.040 | that they're writing about,

00:14:09.200 | 15 minutes is simply going to be too brief a time

00:14:12.560 | in order to capture the entire experience

00:14:15.520 | and as many thoughts and feelings about that experience

00:14:18.520 | as one would perhaps put down onto paper

00:14:21.160 | or type out if they had a full 30 minutes.

00:14:23.640 | So you can allow yourself 15 to 30 minutes

00:14:26.120 | and feel welcome to stop

00:14:27.320 | before the 30-minute period is over,

00:14:29.440 | or perhaps you're going to restrict yourself to 15 minutes

00:14:32.440 | and you're going to force yourself to get out

00:14:33.820 | as much as possible in that time.

00:14:35.540 | It really doesn't matter or so say the data.

00:14:38.360 | Okay, so before I continue to detail the specifics

00:14:40.620 | of this writing protocol,

00:14:42.560 | you've probably already noticed that what I'm describing

00:14:45.460 | is a very different form of journaling

00:14:47.700 | than say morning notes,

00:14:49.480 | which is a form of journaling that writers often use

00:14:52.520 | in order to quote unquote clear out the clutter.

00:14:54.940 | This is a process of sitting down

00:14:56.660 | and writing down in stream of consciousness,

00:14:58.680 | whatever's on your mind for the first five to 15,

00:15:01.080 | maybe even 30 minutes every morning

00:15:02.920 | as a way to sort of clear out your mental processes

00:15:05.780 | and get ready for the day,

00:15:07.400 | perhaps a day of other forms of writing

00:15:09.320 | or other activities entirely.

00:15:11.280 | What I'm describing is also distinctly different

00:15:13.220 | from so-called gratitude journaling.

00:15:15.280 | In fact, it's quite the opposite.

00:15:16.540 | It's not writing about things

00:15:17.840 | that you're grateful for necessarily,

00:15:20.040 | it's writing about things that are extremely unfortunate

00:15:23.540 | that happened to you

00:15:24.380 | and that you have very charged negative emotions about.

00:15:27.860 | In addition, the form of journaling

00:15:29.120 | that we're talking about today is distinctly different

00:15:32.080 | from the form of journaling

00:15:33.940 | that I and many others have undertaken,

00:15:36.360 | perhaps not on a daily basis,

00:15:37.960 | but perhaps on a daily basis

00:15:39.940 | where you essentially are writing out the contents

00:15:42.240 | of your daily life, a so-called diary.

00:15:44.800 | And I mentioned that because I think many people do journal

00:15:47.400 | and some do so on a consistent basis.

00:15:49.840 | I would put myself into that category.

00:15:51.440 | Although the last few years

00:15:52.780 | I have not been journaling too much,

00:15:54.460 | I have literally stacks and stacks of journals

00:15:59.000 | dating back to the early '90s.

00:16:01.080 | I brought a few of them along today

00:16:02.600 | and no, I'm not going to read them to any of you.

00:16:04.580 | In fact, when I was looking at these last night,

00:16:07.680 | and by the way, these are from the late,

00:16:09.600 | so this is summer of 1997.

00:16:11.520 | So I would have been late in my undergraduate career.

00:16:15.200 | This is fall of '96, 1992,

00:16:19.200 | always done on the same composition notebook at that time

00:16:22.360 | and always done by hand.

00:16:24.340 | I'm surprised that my handwriting was as legible as it was.

00:16:27.280 | It's gotten worse over the years.

00:16:28.540 | I don't know what neural process that reflects,

00:16:31.400 | but in any event, in reading over these journal entries,

00:16:34.760 | it was clear to me that just as I had recalled

00:16:38.600 | that each and every one of them

00:16:39.920 | was essentially an update about what was happening lately,

00:16:43.240 | what I was hoping for, some challenges,

00:16:46.940 | basically a diary of sorts.

00:16:49.040 | And these are kept in the second drawer of the second,

00:16:51.880 | no, I'm just kidding.

00:16:53.200 | The idea for me is also that

00:16:54.720 | no one will ever read these besides me.

00:16:56.720 | It was quite an interesting exercise

00:16:58.500 | to go back and read those.

00:17:00.440 | And yeah, there were a few cringe moments,

00:17:02.480 | but there were also a few moments

00:17:04.000 | where I found myself smiling because in certain ways,

00:17:08.400 | so little has changed between the person I was then

00:17:11.260 | and the person I am now.

00:17:12.380 | And fortunately, in so many ways,

00:17:14.800 | certain things have changed between the person I was then

00:17:17.440 | and the person I am now.

00:17:19.000 | Now, I mentioned all of that simply because I think

00:17:21.100 | the form of journaling that I've been doing for some years,

00:17:23.800 | this sort of autobiographical approach to daily entries

00:17:27.520 | or pseudo daily entries is far and away different

00:17:30.760 | than the type of journaling that we're talking about

00:17:33.280 | for sake of improving mental and physical health

00:17:35.600 | during today's episode,

00:17:36.800 | which is not to say that gratitude journaling

00:17:39.700 | or autobiographical daily entries,

00:17:41.760 | AKA diary type journaling is not useful.

00:17:44.740 | In fact, there are data to support that gratitude journaling

00:17:48.180 | in particular can be very beneficial

00:17:50.880 | for both body and mind,

00:17:52.700 | everything from improving general states of happiness

00:17:55.680 | to reducing anxiety, improving relationships and on and on.

00:17:59.560 | But to get back to the protocol

00:18:01.400 | that we're talking about today,

00:18:02.860 | you probably noticed that it is not a protocol

00:18:06.420 | that's likely to feel very good, at least not at first.

00:18:09.980 | And indeed, that's what the research shows.

00:18:12.040 | And this is something that you really need to be aware of,

00:18:14.480 | that when subjects are given this research assignment,

00:18:17.900 | during the assignment, they are often quite distraught.

00:18:21.180 | Oftentimes they cry, oftentimes they find themselves

00:18:23.680 | holding their breath and anxiety,

00:18:25.820 | oftentimes they'll finish that 15 to 30 minute writing block

00:18:29.960 | and they'll feel as if they had run a mental marathon

00:18:32.520 | and therefore the subjects were given a period

00:18:34.600 | of five to 15 minutes post writing

00:18:38.040 | to settle down and transition back into their day.

00:18:40.800 | So I highly recommend that you incorporate that

00:18:42.800 | into your protocol as well.

00:18:44.380 | So if you're going to allow yourself,

00:18:45.700 | say 20 minutes to write,

00:18:47.440 | you'll want to give yourself probably 10 minutes

00:18:50.020 | of quiet time to bring your composure back

00:18:53.360 | and reset yourself so that you can reenter daily living.

00:18:57.660 | Because the writing that you're going to do

00:18:59.160 | for this particular protocol

00:19:00.800 | is designed to tap into very negative,

00:19:02.640 | if not the most negative experiences of your life.

00:19:07.020 | And so that's something to be taken seriously.

00:19:08.960 | And it's an entirely unreasonable expectation

00:19:12.520 | that you could write about something as difficult

00:19:15.220 | as the most difficult experience in your life

00:19:17.020 | and then simply pivot and go back

00:19:18.340 | into everyday life right away.

00:19:20.040 | So you'll want to designate a time of day or night perhaps,

00:19:23.900 | when you can do this writing

00:19:25.280 | and still allow yourself some time to settle down

00:19:28.400 | your autonomic system, return your breathing to normal,

00:19:31.560 | perhaps wash your face with some cool water,

00:19:34.180 | remind yourself that the rest of the day continues,

00:19:36.720 | that you're doing great.

00:19:37.660 | In fact, you made it through this first installment

00:19:40.460 | of the journaling exercise.

00:19:42.080 | So you're probably starting to get the impression

00:19:43.760 | that this form of journaling that Pennebaker and colleagues

00:19:46.620 | really researched and pioneered the evolution of

00:19:50.000 | is quite different than other forms of journaling.

00:19:51.840 | And in fact, it's very different.

00:19:54.540 | I've already told you that the idea is to sit down

00:19:56.600 | and write for 15 to 30 minutes, write continuously,

00:19:59.360 | write about something that really to you is one of the most,

00:20:03.960 | if not the most difficult experiences of your life.

00:20:07.160 | In addition to that,

00:20:08.000 | for this form of journaling to be most effective,

00:20:10.320 | that is to bring about the greatest positive shifts

00:20:13.260 | in mental and physical health,

00:20:15.120 | you're actually going to write about that exact same thing

00:20:18.720 | four times.

00:20:20.160 | Now, the way that that was initially researched

00:20:22.040 | by Pennebaker and others was to have the same person,

00:20:25.240 | of course, write about the same experience

00:20:28.640 | four times on four consecutive days

00:20:31.340 | for 15 to 30 minutes each.

00:20:33.700 | So students or people from the general population

00:20:36.480 | or veterans were literally coming into the laboratory

00:20:39.480 | and sitting down and writing about

00:20:41.640 | the most difficult experience of their life

00:20:43.400 | that they could recall for 15 to 30 minutes on one day,

00:20:46.800 | and then again on the next day,

00:20:48.640 | and then the next day and the next day.

00:20:52.360 | So much of the data on this particular journaling method

00:20:54.960 | reflects that four consecutive days

00:20:57.420 | of 15 to 30 minute writing bouts

00:20:59.840 | of the most difficult experience that you can recall.

00:21:03.160 | However, there have been variations on this protocol

00:21:06.980 | such that people selected one day per week,

00:21:09.800 | and it doesn't even have to be the same day,

00:21:11.560 | like every Monday, it could be Monday of one week

00:21:13.960 | and then Wednesday of the next week and so on,

00:21:16.700 | such that you write only one day per week

00:21:20.540 | about the most difficult experience you can recall,

00:21:23.680 | and then you write about that same difficult experience

00:21:26.420 | one week later, and then again one week later,

00:21:29.080 | and then again one week later across the course of a month

00:21:32.400 | or any four week period for that matter.

00:21:34.720 | Now, I don't know about you, but when I hear that,

00:21:37.080 | that I'm going to need to write about

00:21:39.080 | the most difficult experience of my entire life

00:21:41.500 | that I can recall for even 15 minutes,

00:21:43.880 | let alone 30 minutes, let alone two times,

00:21:48.200 | and here we're talking about four times,

00:21:50.560 | perhaps even on four consecutive days,

00:21:53.400 | that actually speaks to some intensity,

00:21:56.320 | some demand, in fact, I find myself kind of leaning away

00:21:58.800 | from that experience a little bit,

00:22:00.880 | but as we'll talk about later,

00:22:02.620 | that's exactly the point of this type of exercise,

00:22:05.160 | which is that we are harboring these stories,

00:22:08.860 | these experiences, and in some cases, partial recollections,

00:22:12.780 | in another case, detailed recollections

00:22:15.580 | of the difficult thing that happened to us,

00:22:19.000 | perhaps even the most difficult thing that happened to us,

00:22:21.800 | and those narratives exist in our nervous system.

00:22:25.600 | These are not necessarily traumas, as we talked about before,

00:22:28.600 | although they can be traumas.

00:22:30.440 | Now, we hear a lot about trauma,

00:22:32.360 | and these days, people call all sorts of things trauma

00:22:35.280 | and traumatizing and say that they've been traumatized

00:22:37.840 | by this or traumatized by that.

00:22:39.840 | There's actually a specific definition of trauma

00:22:41.720 | that was provided by Dr. Paul Conte,

00:22:43.680 | who, as some of you know,

00:22:45.140 | is a medical doctor and psychiatrist.

00:22:47.360 | He's been a guest on this podcast,

00:22:49.240 | first to talk about trauma.

00:22:50.520 | He wrote a excellent book about trauma.

00:22:52.840 | I provide a link to that book

00:22:53.980 | in the show note captions, by the way,

00:22:55.880 | and he and I did four episodes of the "Huberman Lab" podcast,

00:23:00.400 | a so-called guest series,

00:23:01.600 | specifically aimed at mental health, what it is,

00:23:04.900 | how to build mental health, specific protocols,

00:23:07.260 | and Dr. Paul Conte is really truly a world expert in trauma,

00:23:11.480 | and he defines trauma as any experience or experiences,

00:23:16.480 | plural, that modify our brain and neural circuitry,

00:23:21.160 | so it could be brain or body or both,

00:23:23.560 | such that we do not function as well emotionally,

00:23:28.300 | behaviorally, or cognitively going forward

00:23:31.520 | from that experience, okay?

00:23:33.100 | So not everything constitutes a trauma, but many things do.

00:23:37.020 | So applying that definition,

00:23:38.760 | I think it's fair to say that many, if not most people,

00:23:42.160 | have some form of trauma stored in their nervous system,

00:23:45.660 | and other people perhaps don't have such traumas,

00:23:48.460 | but everyone has had stressors.

00:23:50.420 | In fact, I think it's fair to say

00:23:51.520 | that everyone has had major stressors in their life,

00:23:54.160 | provided that they've lived it all.

00:23:56.200 | That's just part of life, unfortunately,

00:23:58.200 | or maybe fortunately,

00:23:59.260 | maybe it makes us who we are in positive ways

00:24:01.560 | if we are able to transmute those negative experiences

00:24:04.500 | and stressors or traumas into particular forms of learning

00:24:08.200 | that allow us to do better, and indeed, that's possible,

00:24:10.320 | and that was discussed with Paul Conte

00:24:11.660 | in that four-episode series on mental health.

00:24:13.960 | But the particular form of journaling

00:24:15.220 | that we're talking about today was really designed

00:24:17.740 | to have people focus on those difficult experiences,

00:24:21.160 | and then for four episodes total, yes, total,

00:24:24.080 | there's no ongoing every week,

00:24:26.200 | or it's not like having to seek out sunlight every morning

00:24:28.700 | and getting sunlight in your eyes,

00:24:29.920 | or trying to get the best possible night's sleep at night,

00:24:32.060 | like I'm always encouraging people to do.

00:24:33.880 | This is really a short-term protocol,

00:24:35.900 | but it's one that is indeed very intense.

00:24:38.920 | Okay, so along those lines,

00:24:40.720 | that deliberately journaling

00:24:42.280 | about a particularly distressing experience

00:24:44.500 | or set of experiences is likely to bring some degree of

00:24:49.840 | sadness, anxiety, frustration, anger,

00:24:54.040 | perhaps other emotions as well.

00:24:56.120 | It's important that you know some of the data

00:24:58.400 | that have been collected about this journaling protocol.

00:25:01.960 | One of the more important features of this protocol

00:25:04.400 | is that when people do it,

00:25:06.620 | they tend to bin out into two different groups,

00:25:09.680 | and these two groups have been described

00:25:11.320 | as low-expressors and high-expressors.

00:25:14.480 | Now, low-expressors and high-expressors have nothing to do

00:25:17.700 | with introversion and extroversion.

00:25:19.520 | That's actually been looked at,

00:25:20.560 | and they have no relationship, okay?

00:25:23.160 | So some people who are very talkative and very extroverted,

00:25:26.360 | they could be a low-expressor,

00:25:28.300 | somebody who's very introverted,

00:25:31.260 | tends to only share when they really have something to say

00:25:34.280 | and maybe doesn't have a lot of interest

00:25:36.160 | in social interactions,

00:25:37.240 | or as some of you who heard the episode on relationships

00:25:40.040 | know, an actual introvert is somebody

00:25:41.920 | who really enjoys social interactions,

00:25:44.220 | but they are very sated.

00:25:45.780 | They are very satisfied by less social interaction

00:25:48.720 | than are extroverts, okay?

00:25:50.120 | If you want to learn more about that,

00:25:51.160 | check out the episode I did on relationships.

00:25:53.560 | But in any event, when people sit down to do this exercise,

00:25:57.480 | and when they consent to having their writing analyzed,

00:26:00.860 | and when they undergo a number of other different tests,

00:26:04.000 | turns out there are two different groups that segment out.

00:26:06.840 | The first are these low-expressors.

00:26:08.400 | The low-expressors tend to use less descriptive language

00:26:11.800 | in their writing.

00:26:12.960 | They tend to get less emotional

00:26:15.440 | during the first bout of writing,

00:26:17.580 | that first day of 15 to 30-minute writing.

00:26:20.320 | Whereas the high-expressors tend to be people

00:26:23.320 | that use a lot of negative language

00:26:25.840 | to describe their negative emotions

00:26:27.740 | about the negative experience.

00:26:29.140 | So that means more negative descriptor words were used

00:26:32.400 | at higher frequency.

00:26:33.940 | These people, when they have their physiology measured,

00:26:36.560 | also tend to have higher amounts of distress and upset

00:26:41.080 | in the first bout of writing,

00:26:43.560 | that first 15 to 30-minute episode.

00:26:45.580 | So we've got two different groups.

00:26:46.940 | The low-expressors and the high-expressors.

00:26:48.440 | The low-expressors on day one are sharing a bit less.

00:26:52.700 | They're expressing less on paper

00:26:55.500 | of their particular emotions that they can recall

00:26:59.440 | from that traumatic or very distressing event.

00:27:02.180 | And overall, based on physiological measures as well,

00:27:04.760 | so cortisol increases as well as skin conductance changes

00:27:08.360 | and heart rate and blood pressure,

00:27:09.980 | the low-expressors are effectively relatively more calm,

00:27:13.900 | less distressed as they write

00:27:15.720 | about this very stressful event in their lives

00:27:17.900 | relative to the high-expressors

00:27:19.420 | who have higher blood pressure, higher heart rate.

00:27:21.480 | They tend to be the ones that cry more

00:27:23.820 | or hold their breath more or sob more.

00:27:26.500 | They have a higher levels of cortisol

00:27:28.100 | during that first round of writing.

00:27:30.680 | Now, for the protocol to be effective,

00:27:33.180 | it doesn't matter if you're in the low-expressor

00:27:35.760 | or high-expressor group.

00:27:37.180 | Here's what's interesting.

00:27:38.480 | I just mentioned that on day one,

00:27:41.320 | the low-expressors are less distressed physiologically

00:27:43.920 | and psychologically as they write about this for them,

00:27:46.780 | very distressful event,

00:27:48.140 | whereas the high-expressors are much more distressed,

00:27:51.040 | significantly more so, in fact,

00:27:52.500 | when these are measured in laboratory studies

00:27:54.780 | on both mental and physical dimensions of stress.

00:27:58.620 | Now, that's on day one,

00:28:00.140 | but then what's observed is an opposite pattern

00:28:02.620 | of progression such that the low-expressors

00:28:06.680 | become more and more distressed

00:28:09.820 | as the writing exercise continues

00:28:12.140 | from day two, three, and four.

00:28:15.060 | Whereas the high-expressors,

00:28:17.280 | these people that use a lot of language

00:28:19.780 | to communicate their distress

00:28:21.000 | and are experiencing a lot of physiological

00:28:22.860 | and emotional distress as they're writing on day one,

00:28:25.740 | their amount of distress from day one to two

00:28:30.060 | to three to four actually goes down more dramatically.

00:28:34.520 | So you can expect that you fall into one or the other group.

00:28:37.980 | This was truly a binary distribution

00:28:40.300 | where people binned out into one or the other

00:28:42.000 | based on a number of different measurements.

00:28:44.380 | But here's the good news.

00:28:45.840 | It turns out it doesn't matter

00:28:47.220 | whether or not you're a low-expressor or a high-expressor.

00:28:51.080 | You want to use the form of writing

00:28:52.620 | that's most natural for you

00:28:54.540 | and that, for you, communicates

00:28:57.740 | what that negative experience was like

00:29:00.360 | and how it has affected you

00:29:01.940 | and perhaps how it's affected others as well.

00:29:04.180 | The important thing to know is that both groups,

00:29:07.480 | both the low-expressors and the high-expressors,

00:29:09.740 | benefit from this journaling protocol

00:29:12.120 | such that three weeks later and even three months later

00:29:15.760 | and even years later,

00:29:18.340 | both groups are experiencing far less distress

00:29:22.020 | and baseline levels of stress

00:29:24.920 | than they did prior to embarking on the journaling protocol

00:29:28.200 | at the very beginning.

00:29:29.440 | Now, the reason I mentioned these two groups,

00:29:30.980 | the low-expressors and the high-expressors,

00:29:33.060 | is that it's a non-trivial detail of this writing protocol

00:29:36.700 | because some people are very familiar

00:29:39.100 | with communicating their emotions,

00:29:40.980 | both in writing and perhaps in speech as well.

00:29:43.660 | And this actually has been looked at.

00:29:45.980 | There's a wonderful study also by Pennebaker and colleagues,

00:29:48.980 | and I should mention that even though he studied

00:29:51.100 | these journaling protocol for a good number of years,

00:29:53.380 | his laboratory has evolved now

00:29:55.120 | to studying all sorts of things

00:29:57.020 | related to how the particular language usage patterns

00:30:01.480 | that people use in everyday speech

00:30:03.560 | as well as in their writing,

00:30:04.700 | how that reflects their underlying psychological tone

00:30:08.460 | and emotions, but also, and I find this so interesting,

00:30:11.580 | how the particular words that we use in writing and speech

00:30:14.580 | actually shape in a causal way our emotional state.

00:30:18.100 | So I'll talk a little bit about that later,

00:30:20.060 | but the important thing to focus on now

00:30:22.300 | is the results of this study entitled

00:30:24.280 | Natural Emotion Vocabularies as Windows

00:30:27.020 | on Distress and Well-Being.

00:30:29.060 | And this, again, is a study

00:30:30.660 | that was done by Pennebaker and colleagues,

00:30:32.300 | I've linked to in the show note captions,

00:30:34.260 | and it essentially examines

00:30:35.740 | people's natural language usage patterns.

00:30:38.700 | Now, what do I mean by natural and why is that important?

00:30:41.220 | Well, there have been many, many studies

00:30:44.140 | of people's vocabulary and assessing

00:30:46.220 | whether or not people have more knowledge of negative words

00:30:49.700 | to describe negative emotions or positive emotions.

00:30:52.740 | These studies are varying in their form,

00:30:54.900 | but generally consist of having people

00:30:56.700 | circle words they recognize

00:30:58.080 | or maybe writing out the definitions to,

00:31:00.160 | and it turns out that people that have

00:31:02.420 | more extensive knowledge of words

00:31:04.840 | that describe negative emotions themselves

00:31:07.880 | tend to have a lower affect or negative emotional state

00:31:12.020 | as compared to people who have more extensive knowledge

00:31:15.300 | of vocabulary words that pertain to positive emotions.

00:31:18.900 | So a crude example of what I just described

00:31:21.140 | is somebody that has fairly limited knowledge

00:31:24.040 | of words that describe positive emotional states.

00:31:26.560 | So perhaps they recognize the word happy,

00:31:29.360 | they recognize the word ecstatic,

00:31:31.100 | they recognize the word joyful,

00:31:33.760 | but they have a fairly limited word set

00:31:36.160 | that pertains to positive emotions.

00:31:37.820 | Whereas by comparison,

00:31:39.420 | this is always relative within the same person, right?

00:31:41.460 | By comparison, the person knows four times more words

00:31:45.180 | that pertain to a negative emotional state, okay?

00:31:48.260 | In general, those people tend to be more depressive,

00:31:52.020 | tend to have higher levels of anxiety and so forth

00:31:54.740 | as compared to somebody where the reverse pattern is true,

00:31:57.460 | where they have knowledge of far more words

00:31:59.460 | that pertain to positive emotional states

00:32:01.540 | as compared to negative emotional states.

00:32:03.740 | Now on the face of it,

00:32:04.580 | that result probably seems straightforward, right?

00:32:06.840 | People that have a lot of words to describe happiness

00:32:09.160 | are more happy.

00:32:10.000 | People that have a lot of words to describe sadness

00:32:11.820 | and negative emotions are more sad,

00:32:13.520 | but it didn't necessarily have to be that way.

00:32:15.480 | And it turns out that it's not always that way.

00:32:19.240 | What do I mean by that?

00:32:20.120 | Well, the particular study that I've been describing here,

00:32:22.360 | this natural emotion vocabularies

00:32:24.720 | as windows on distress and wellbeing is an important paper

00:32:27.840 | because it explored not the words

00:32:30.860 | that people have knowledge of,

00:32:33.020 | but the word patterns that people tend to use

00:32:36.380 | in their natural speech, either spoken or written.

00:32:39.720 | And what Pennebaker and others showed

00:32:41.800 | is that people that tend to use a lot of negative words

00:32:46.060 | tend to have more negative emotional states.

00:32:48.760 | Whereas people that naturally tend to use words

00:32:50.780 | that describe positive emotional states

00:32:52.980 | have more positive emotions.

00:32:54.900 | And this related to both mental and physical metrics

00:32:58.660 | of negative emotions and positive emotions.

00:33:01.680 | So this is a significant result

00:33:03.200 | because what it says is that our knowledge

00:33:06.080 | of vocabulary words is, while interesting

00:33:09.460 | and perhaps important for other things,

00:33:11.400 | is not nearly as important as which particular words

00:33:14.920 | we use on a frequent basis.

00:33:16.840 | And so, whereas before I said,

00:33:19.360 | okay, if you're going to embark on this protocol

00:33:21.320 | of four writing sessions, 15 to 30 minutes each,

00:33:24.440 | that you should not monitor your writing,

00:33:26.700 | that you want to sit down, start writing

00:33:28.280 | and just don't stop.

00:33:29.500 | You don't want to pay attention to grammar

00:33:30.980 | or spelling or anything else.

00:33:32.640 | And then after the fourth writing session,

00:33:34.920 | you don't look at what you've written for at least a week,

00:33:38.080 | but then a week or more later,

00:33:39.840 | you go back and you read what you've written,

00:33:43.040 | paying careful attention to the number of words

00:33:45.960 | that you use that reflect a negative emotional or affect,

00:33:50.000 | as it's sometimes called, state in the first

00:33:52.520 | versus the second versus the third

00:33:54.880 | versus the fourth journal entry.

00:33:57.380 | Now, this might seem a little bit detailed

00:33:59.880 | and reductionist for a protocol

00:34:02.200 | that we would discuss on this podcast here.

00:34:03.660 | We're really talking about you doing

00:34:04.760 | your own data analysis of self.

00:34:06.900 | But if you think about it, a practice like this,

00:34:09.460 | both can be very quick and highly informative.

00:34:12.680 | So for instance, you can go back

00:34:13.880 | and simply circle all the words that at first blush to you,

00:34:18.240 | appear to reflect a negative state

00:34:20.140 | and put a square around all the words

00:34:22.160 | that just by your read seem to reflect a positive state,

00:34:26.280 | and then compare them across those four journal entries.

00:34:30.000 | And of course, you can opt to not do any of this,

00:34:32.120 | but what people find,

00:34:33.100 | that is what was discovered in the research literature,

00:34:35.740 | is that on average, the patterns of language use

00:34:39.380 | from the first to the fourth entry shift dramatically,

00:34:42.260 | such that by the fourth entry,

00:34:43.940 | people, even though they're still writing

00:34:45.820 | about the same negative experience,

00:34:48.460 | are writing about that experience in a very different way.

00:34:51.820 | Not only are they naturally using fewer negative words

00:34:54.960 | to describe their recollection

00:34:56.460 | and experience of that negative event,

00:34:58.980 | but the number of positive words is also increasing.

00:35:02.180 | Now, this is important because when Pennebaker

00:35:04.700 | and colleagues gave the instruction

00:35:06.220 | to people to do this protocol,

00:35:07.960 | they encouraged them to think about three things

00:35:10.500 | before they ever start writing.

00:35:12.380 | The first is, of course, to write about facts

00:35:16.400 | about that difficult experience.

00:35:18.460 | I think that's sort of obvious,

00:35:19.660 | that when people are going to recall a difficult experience,

00:35:22.460 | they're likely to write down facts about that experience.

00:35:25.720 | The second thing that they wanted to remind them to include

00:35:28.960 | were emotions that they felt at the time of the experience,

00:35:33.600 | as well as emotions that they happen to feel now

00:35:36.820 | about that experience.

00:35:38.360 | And third, that people include writing

00:35:40.080 | about any and all links that come to mind,

00:35:43.040 | about the negative experience

00:35:44.720 | and things that may be happening today

00:35:46.840 | or plans for the future,

00:35:48.460 | people from the past, present or future,

00:35:50.840 | really any link, no matter how distant it might seem

00:35:54.220 | or how random it might seem,

00:35:55.700 | to include that in the writing, okay?

00:35:57.820 | So just to repeat the three things

00:35:59.440 | that they were instructed to include

00:36:01.180 | before they ever set their pens to paper

00:36:03.460 | or started typing out their negative experience,

00:36:06.440 | first, facts about the hard experience.

00:36:09.080 | So whatever they can recall that happened

00:36:12.500 | in that hard experience,

00:36:13.600 | or perhaps it was something that didn't happen

00:36:15.240 | and that was why it was a hard experience,

00:36:16.660 | but facts related to that hard experience,

00:36:19.260 | facts of the hard experience.

00:36:21.900 | Second, that they include writing about emotions felt

00:36:25.240 | at the time of the experience,

00:36:27.060 | as well as emotions felt now

00:36:29.380 | while writing about that prior experience.

00:36:32.460 | And third, to include any writing

00:36:34.620 | about any links that spring to mind

00:36:37.080 | about the negative experience

00:36:38.660 | and anything that's happening now

00:36:40.780 | or perhaps happened in the past

00:36:42.120 | or things that you have planned for the future.

00:36:44.160 | Now, that third category of links between the experience

00:36:46.920 | and other things may be direct and obvious.

00:36:49.720 | Maybe these are real aha moments where you go,

00:36:51.560 | "Oh my goodness, I realize now that what's been happening

00:36:54.840 | "for the last six months is a direct mirror

00:36:57.460 | "of what happened in that earlier traumatic

00:36:59.760 | "or very stressful episode."

00:37:01.420 | Or perhaps the links are more opaque.

00:37:03.820 | Maybe the link is, "I don't know why,

00:37:05.580 | "but I keep thinking about this one experience that I had

00:37:08.300 | "and I keep thinking about this one person

00:37:09.800 | "and I don't know how they're linked."

00:37:11.560 | That's fine, put those down on paper.

00:37:13.240 | You could even draw a diagram,

00:37:14.640 | but I should mention it is important

00:37:16.400 | that you try to the best of your ability

00:37:18.440 | to write things out in complete sentences.

00:37:20.980 | Again, they don't have to be perfect grammar

00:37:22.960 | or even pseudo perfect grammar.

00:37:24.840 | The spelling can be off, your handwriting can be a mess.

00:37:27.840 | Although if your handwriting is truly a mess,

00:37:29.920 | it might be hard to read later.

00:37:31.160 | By the way, folks, my older sister always teases me

00:37:33.760 | that my handwriting is frozen in the third grade.

00:37:36.100 | Actually, I would like to show her my journal entries.

00:37:38.180 | My handwriting was actually quite a bit better

00:37:39.820 | than it is now, which basically speaks

00:37:41.960 | to some degree of cognitive decline for me.

00:37:45.300 | But in any case, the point is that this third category

00:37:48.520 | of establishing links between the prior negative experience

00:37:51.460 | and whatever else is an important component

00:37:54.360 | of the writing protocol.

00:37:55.840 | So whatever it takes to include those links,

00:37:58.380 | they are worth including.

00:37:59.840 | Now, I want to reemphasize that even though I pointed

00:38:02.540 | to the positive health benefits of using more positive words

00:38:07.200 | in one's writing or speech, as opposed to negative words,

00:38:11.180 | which tend to be associated with worse health outcomes,

00:38:14.940 | both in terms of physical and mental health,

00:38:17.640 | it is important and it's central to this writing protocol,

00:38:21.360 | if you're going to get the positive consequences of it,

00:38:24.300 | that you're not monitoring the words

00:38:26.280 | that you're using too closely.

00:38:27.560 | You're not trying to write this so someone else can see it.

00:38:29.820 | You're not trying to write the great American novel.

00:38:31.580 | You're not writing your eulogy.

00:38:34.080 | You're not writing your autobiography.

00:38:36.200 | You're really writing this for you.

00:38:38.240 | I can't emphasize that enough.

00:38:39.960 | You're doing this writing protocol

00:38:41.960 | so that you can work through something

00:38:44.880 | that is stressful or traumatic,

00:38:46.880 | that resides in your nervous system,

00:38:48.880 | and that is not serving you well.

00:38:51.240 | Indeed, next, we're going to talk about what happens

00:38:54.440 | when these narratives of our prior negative experiences

00:38:57.740 | are not worked through,

00:38:59.160 | that they have not been put either to speech

00:39:02.160 | or to pen to paper or typed out.

00:39:05.080 | And perhaps more importantly,

00:39:06.880 | we're going to talk about the incredibly positive benefits,

00:39:09.920 | both at the level of neural changes,

00:39:12.560 | so-called neuroplasticity,

00:39:13.700 | which is the literal rewiring of neural connections,

00:39:16.680 | as well as psychological benefits, reduced anxiety,

00:39:19.940 | improved mood, improved sleep,

00:39:22.820 | and improved immune function that are the consequence

00:39:26.080 | of doing this four bouts

00:39:29.020 | of 15 to 30 minute writing protocol.

00:39:31.640 | As we all know, quality nutrition influences, of course,

00:39:34.540 | our physical health, but also our mental health

00:39:36.800 | and our cognitive functioning, our memory,

00:39:38.660 | our ability to learn new things and to focus.

00:39:41.020 | And we know that one of the most important features

00:39:43.200 | of high quality nutrition

00:39:44.560 | is making sure that we get enough vitamins and minerals

00:39:47.140 | from high quality unprocessed or minimally processed sources

00:39:50.740 | as well as enough probiotics and prebiotics and fiber

00:39:53.840 | to support basically all the cellular functions in our body,

00:39:56.900 | including the gut microbiome.

00:39:58.760 | Now, I, like most everybody,

00:40:00.880 | try to get optimal nutrition from whole foods,

00:40:03.940 | ideally, mostly from minimally processed

00:40:06.680 | or non-processed foods.

00:40:08.140 | However, one of the challenges

00:40:09.240 | that I and so many other people face

00:40:11.100 | is getting enough servings of high quality fruits

00:40:13.160 | and vegetables per day, as well as fiber and probiotics

00:40:16.100 | that often accompany those fruits and vegetables.

00:40:18.300 | That's why way back in 2012,

00:40:20.340 | long before I ever had a podcast, I started drinking AG1.

00:40:24.180 | And so I'm delighted that AG1

00:40:25.780 | is sponsoring the Huberman Lab podcast.

00:40:27.940 | The reason I started taking AG1

00:40:29.680 | and the reason I still drink AG1 once or twice a day

00:40:32.980 | is that it provides all of my foundational nutritional needs.

00:40:35.760 | That is, it provides insurance

00:40:37.720 | that I get the proper amounts of those vitamins, minerals,

00:40:40.500 | probiotics, and fiber to ensure optimal mental health,

00:40:44.180 | physical health, and performance.

00:40:46.340 | If you'd like to try AG1,

00:40:47.780 | you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman

00:40:51.040 | to claim a special offer.

00:40:52.580 | They're giving away five free travel packs

00:40:54.340 | plus a year supply of vitamin D3K2.

00:40:57.180 | Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman

00:41:00.520 | to claim that special offer.

00:41:02.380 | Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the positive mental

00:41:05.060 | and in particular physical changes that occur

00:41:07.400 | in people that do this writing exercise.

00:41:09.780 | I should mention that most of the studies,

00:41:11.940 | and again, more than 200 quality peer-reviewed studies

00:41:15.260 | of this protocol have been carried out

00:41:16.620 | and are still ongoing, not just in Pennebaker Laboratory,

00:41:19.140 | but in many, many other laboratories as well,

00:41:21.840 | reveal that the positive physical shifts

00:41:24.780 | that occur in people that complete this four bouts of writing

00:41:28.660 | in the way I described

00:41:30.520 | is both significant and long lasting.

00:41:34.500 | Now, of course, it is not the case

00:41:36.780 | that these four episodes of writing

00:41:38.740 | can completely cure major forms of depression

00:41:41.620 | or post-traumatic stress disorder,

00:41:43.240 | although they have been shown to benefit,

00:41:45.580 | that is to reduce depressive symptoms

00:41:47.860 | and to reduce the symptoms

00:41:49.000 | of post-traumatic stress disorder considerably,

00:41:51.420 | but they shouldn't be considered complete therapeutics

00:41:54.780 | for those conditions.

00:41:56.020 | However, they have been shown to significantly improve

00:41:58.400 | many other health metrics.

00:41:59.580 | And I alluded to some of these

00:42:01.380 | at the beginning of today's episode.

00:42:03.480 | There have, for instance,

00:42:04.320 | been studies of this type of journaling protocol

00:42:06.540 | for people that have been suffering from chronic anxiety

00:42:08.700 | and insomnia, and indeed,

00:42:10.380 | they experienced significant relief.

00:42:12.380 | As well, people who have suffered from arthritis,

00:42:15.740 | people who are going through cancer treatment,

00:42:17.920 | people who have lupus, which is an autoimmune disorder,

00:42:20.900 | report significantly improved symptoms,

00:42:23.140 | not necessarily cured from those conditions,

00:42:25.380 | but significantly improved symptoms

00:42:28.140 | as a consequence of doing this writing protocol.

00:42:31.640 | In addition, and earlier I mentioned this, I realized,

00:42:34.060 | but I'll mention it again,

00:42:35.200 | people suffering from fibromyalgia,

00:42:36.980 | which is a chronic pain condition

00:42:38.900 | that is or can be very debilitating,

00:42:41.660 | has shown significant improvement in symptomology

00:42:43.900 | that has reduced chronic pain

00:42:45.820 | after they do this four bouts of writing

00:42:48.680 | in the way that I described.

00:42:49.940 | And again, the relief from pain seems to be ongoing.

00:42:54.020 | Again, not a total cure of their symptoms.

00:42:55.980 | I don't want to provide false hope here

00:42:58.140 | or overblow the positive impact

00:43:01.060 | of this particular writing protocol,

00:43:03.000 | but nonetheless, statistically significant shifts

00:43:05.740 | that were pervasive over time.

00:43:08.140 | In addition, people suffering from IBS,

00:43:10.000 | or irritable bowel syndrome,

00:43:11.780 | have achieved some significant degree of relief

00:43:14.900 | of their symptoms relative to people

00:43:17.320 | who also have irritable bowel syndrome,

00:43:19.060 | but who do not do the exact same protocol

00:43:21.780 | that we're talking about today.

00:43:23.420 | Now, of course, in all of these studies,

00:43:24.620 | we're not talking about people

00:43:26.120 | that simply do this writing protocol

00:43:27.900 | as compared to people that don't do the writing protocol.

00:43:31.160 | Pennebaker and others, of course, are excellent scientists,

00:43:33.800 | and so they provide adequate control conditions.

00:43:37.180 | The control conditions, in most cases,

00:43:39.880 | were to have people also do 15 to 30 minutes of writing,

00:43:44.140 | but to do journaling in the more conventional manner

00:43:46.480 | of autobiographical report of what they've been up to lately

00:43:49.880 | or what they plan to do.

00:43:51.420 | In fact, very much like my journal entries from college

00:43:55.100 | and in the year subsequent to that.

00:43:57.500 | So it's important to understand

00:43:59.600 | that what we're talking about today is a journaling protocol,

00:44:02.520 | which seems somewhat conventional,

00:44:04.700 | but the exact protocol is highly unusual,

00:44:07.400 | as we've been talking about throughout today's episode.

00:44:10.100 | And in addition, all of the data that we're discussing

00:44:12.780 | in terms of positive mental and physical effects

00:44:15.220 | are data that were established relative,

00:44:19.220 | that is, are statistically significant

00:44:21.540 | as compared to a control group

00:44:23.480 | that also wrote for an equivalent amount of time,

00:44:26.900 | tended to write out an equivalent number of words on average,

00:44:30.260 | and yet we're writing about something quite different

00:44:32.660 | than the people that were in

00:44:33.960 | the so-called experimental group.

00:44:35.520 | So it's important to keep in mind

00:44:37.120 | that we're not simply talking about phenomenology here.

00:44:39.280 | We're talking about scientific studies

00:44:41.980 | where very specific measurements of the experimental group,

00:44:45.120 | that is the group that did this particular form

00:44:47.140 | of writing about something very distressing

00:44:49.240 | or even traumatic four times, 15 to 30 minutes per time,

00:44:52.980 | relative to a control group

00:44:54.580 | that did nearly the equivalent form

00:44:57.320 | of mechanical processes of writing,

00:44:59.460 | but that the specific emotional content

00:45:01.700 | related to that writing

00:45:02.900 | was the major variable that differed.

00:45:05.360 | In fact, that is one particular strength

00:45:07.180 | of the protocol we're describing today,

00:45:09.340 | that if you think about it would be very hard to do

00:45:11.900 | in a study, say, of physical exercise,

00:45:15.220 | where you have people perhaps run on a treadmill,

00:45:19.060 | getting their heart rate up to 85%

00:45:20.980 | of their maximum heart rate for 30 minutes, five days a week,

00:45:24.920 | you would expect that that group,

00:45:26.780 | compared to a group that did nothing,

00:45:29.000 | would experience significantly greater shifts

00:45:31.900 | in positive health metrics like lowered blood pressure,

00:45:34.540 | certainly not during the exercise bout.

00:45:36.240 | During the exercise bout,

00:45:37.140 | you can bet that their blood pressure and heart rate

00:45:38.740 | went way, way up, but that, of course,

00:45:40.180 | afterwards they would adapt to that exercise

00:45:42.200 | by having a resting heart rate that was lower

00:45:44.960 | than any group that did nothing or that walked on a treadmill

00:45:47.700 | but it's actually very hard to think about a control group

00:45:51.180 | that would provide real equivalence

00:45:52.900 | of time spent and effort spent,

00:45:55.780 | but that would differ only on one variable,

00:45:57.980 | which would be heart rate.

00:45:58.920 | You could probably come up with something

00:46:00.060 | but it'd be very difficult to do,

00:46:01.300 | whereas in the studies that we're talking about

00:46:03.140 | during today's episode,

00:46:04.820 | essentially everything was the same, right?

00:46:06.860 | People are still writing, they're still sitting,

00:46:09.040 | they're still doing it for the same amount of time.

00:46:11.200 | It's simply that the content of the writing is different

00:46:13.700 | at the level of the emotional tone of the subject

00:46:17.440 | that they're writing about,

00:46:18.280 | which I find both exciting and personally quite motivating

00:46:21.320 | to do the sort of protocol that I've described today

00:46:24.020 | because it leads to such dramatic shifts in health

00:46:27.180 | across a huge range of dimensions,

00:46:29.280 | both in people suffering from certain conditions

00:46:31.160 | and people who are not suffering from certain conditions.

00:46:33.300 | And then the question becomes why?

00:46:36.080 | What is actually happening at a physiological level

00:46:39.140 | that can explain all of these incredible psychological

00:46:42.540 | and physical positive shifts that occur?

00:46:45.140 | Okay, so as with any protocol

00:46:46.580 | that's shown in many, many studies,

00:46:48.580 | again, here are more than 200 peer-reviewed studies

00:46:51.460 | to have positive effects on mental health or physical health,

00:46:54.280 | can imagine that there's going to be a constellation

00:46:56.580 | of positive effects that occur

00:46:58.260 | that can explain, say,

00:46:59.820 | the improvement in autoimmune conditions

00:47:03.260 | or the improvement in anxiety,

00:47:05.860 | that is a reduction in anxiety,

00:47:07.540 | or the improvement in sleep patterns.

00:47:09.580 | It's not going to be just one thing.

00:47:11.440 | However, there are some general categories

00:47:13.860 | of physiological changes that have been observed

00:47:16.300 | in people that do the particular protocol

00:47:18.280 | we're talking about today

00:47:19.900 | that I think can explain a great number

00:47:22.220 | of the mental and physical shifts that occur.

00:47:24.460 | Now, one of the more important studies in this area

00:47:26.300 | that's been published, and here, again,

00:47:28.340 | this is a paper by James Pennebaker,

00:47:29.940 | but I don't want to give the impression

00:47:31.160 | that he's the only person or the only laboratory

00:47:33.160 | that's looked at this particular writing protocol.

00:47:35.720 | Many others have as well,

00:47:37.120 | and I'll provide links to some of those

00:47:38.620 | in the show note captions.

00:47:40.020 | But this particular study I'm about to describe

00:47:42.780 | explored how the disclosure of traumas

00:47:45.500 | or the writing out of very stressful experiences

00:47:48.540 | impact immune function at the level of specific cell types

00:47:53.700 | of our immune system that are challenged

00:47:56.500 | in a way that mimics the sort of challenge

00:47:58.840 | we would experience if we were to be exposed

00:48:01.380 | to a bacteria or virus.

00:48:03.340 | Now, without getting into a detailed lecture

00:48:04.760 | about immunology, and by the way,

00:48:06.200 | I did an entire episode of the Huberman Lab podcast

00:48:08.480 | about immune function and the brain some years ago,

00:48:11.220 | and you can find that by going to hubermanlab.com.

00:48:13.500 | Just put immune system into the search function.

00:48:15.900 | It will take you to that episode

00:48:17.220 | and to any timestamps of other episodes

00:48:19.240 | where I touch on the immune system

00:48:20.900 | or protocols related to immune brain function.

00:48:24.160 | In the meantime, this particular study

00:48:25.780 | is very interesting and worth highlighting

00:48:27.660 | because what they did was to essentially have people

00:48:29.660 | do the exact same protocol that we've been describing

00:48:31.920 | throughout today's episode.

00:48:33.580 | But they also included blood draws

00:48:35.740 | from the subjects in those experiments.

00:48:37.860 | And they collected that blood from subjects

00:48:39.620 | both before and after the writing episodes.

00:48:42.620 | In fact, they took the blood at 15 weeks prior to the study,

00:48:46.300 | and again, six weeks into the study, okay?

00:48:49.780 | Now keep in mind that people were completing

00:48:51.440 | the writing exercise over the course of,

00:48:54.020 | at a maximum, four weeks,

00:48:56.080 | but they were still monitoring these subjects

00:48:58.740 | in terms of their psychological and physical health

00:49:01.660 | after the final writing exercise.

00:49:03.660 | That was a key component of essentially all of the studies

00:49:06.820 | of this particular protocol.

00:49:08.060 | They'd assess people before they did the writing assignment,

00:49:10.980 | they assessed people during the writing assignment,

00:49:12.900 | and they assessed people often long

00:49:15.420 | after the writing assignment was completed,

00:49:17.080 | even years after the writing assignment was completed.

00:49:19.340 | So in this particular experiment,

00:49:20.480 | they're drawing blood 15 weeks before

00:49:22.540 | and six weeks into the study.

00:49:23.940 | Six weeks into the study is after all of the writing,

00:49:26.760 | that is the four bouts of writing, have been completed.

00:49:29.660 | They also divided subjects in this study

00:49:31.820 | into people that were so-called high disclosures.

00:49:35.060 | So these are people that revealed a lot

00:49:37.460 | about their particular traumatic or stressful episode

00:49:40.660 | in their writing, and people that were low disclosures.

00:49:44.780 | They also included a control group,

00:49:46.460 | and the control group was essentially

00:49:47.980 | as I described before.

00:49:49.500 | It consisted of people that also were doing journaling

00:49:52.620 | for the equivalent amount of time,

00:49:53.920 | as people that were in the experimental group,

00:49:56.620 | but that were not writing about a traumatic

00:49:58.820 | or stressful experience.

00:50:00.460 | Now, the basic takeaway of this study is as follows.

00:50:03.500 | They take the blood.

00:50:04.700 | They are able to isolate from the blood

00:50:06.620 | something called T lymphocytes.

00:50:08.540 | T lymphocytes are an essential component

00:50:10.380 | of your immune system.

00:50:11.300 | These are cells that many people describe

00:50:14.140 | as white blood cells.

00:50:15.580 | They are manufactured in the bone marrow,

00:50:17.840 | which I still find amazing, right?

00:50:19.260 | We think of bone as just these like, you know,

00:50:21.220 | hard components of our body and our skeleton

00:50:23.720 | that allow us to be upright and to be rigid

00:50:25.700 | and to move about and, you know, not be, you know,

00:50:28.200 | jelly-like, but indeed in the center of the bone is marrow,

00:50:32.880 | and the marrow itself is performing

00:50:34.820 | an important physiological role, many roles in fact,

00:50:37.400 | one of which is to create these T lymphocytes

00:50:40.180 | or white blood cells.

00:50:41.180 | They actually are born of the bone marrow,

00:50:44.020 | but then they mature in a structure called the thymus.

00:50:46.740 | The thymus is an organ that sits essentially

00:50:49.640 | behind your sternum, and it's there that the cells

00:50:54.040 | that originate from the bone marrow are matured

00:50:57.720 | into what are effectively white blood cells,

00:51:00.560 | which are essentially cells that go out

00:51:02.620 | and combat infections, bacterial infections,

00:51:05.520 | viral infections, even fungal infections.

00:51:08.720 | Now they combat infection not alone,

00:51:11.240 | but in collaboration with other immune cell types

00:51:13.700 | that you can learn about, again, in that episode

00:51:15.600 | I did about the immune system and the nervous system.

00:51:18.740 | If you choose to go listen to it, and even if you don't,

00:51:22.140 | here's what you need to know about this study.

00:51:24.220 | In this study, what they found is that when they took

00:51:27.080 | the blood from these subjects, isolated those T lymphocytes

00:51:30.740 | and then challenged those T lymphocytes

00:51:33.220 | with something that mimics an infection,

00:51:35.240 | and they did that with something called concanavalin A.

00:51:38.320 | Concanavalin A is what's considered a mitogen.

00:51:41.720 | It's something that activates T lymphocytes,

00:51:45.440 | and it activates what are called natural killer cells.

00:51:48.060 | Now that's a lot of detail for sake of this episode.

00:51:51.520 | Basically what the concanavalin A is doing

00:51:53.880 | is it's mimicking an infection,

00:51:56.400 | but in this particular study, this is all being done

00:51:59.080 | on T lymphocytes that have been collected,

00:52:01.640 | they're put into a dish, and then they're exposed

00:52:03.640 | to different concentrations going from low to medium to high

00:52:07.640 | of that concanavalin A, mimicking a low grade,

00:52:11.560 | moderate, or severe infection.

00:52:13.920 | And what they observed in this study is remarkable.

00:52:16.640 | I mean, to me, this just still blows my mind.

00:52:20.380 | People that did this four bouts of writing protocol

00:52:24.580 | experienced greater degree of T lymphocyte activation

00:52:30.080 | from the concanavalin-mitogen challenge,

00:52:34.000 | which mimics infection, then did people who wrote

00:52:38.060 | about something that wasn't stressful or traumatic.

00:52:41.260 | Now that itself is pretty striking, if you think about it.

00:52:43.500 | I mean, we're talking about a writing exercise

00:52:45.840 | that generates an emotional state

00:52:48.600 | versus a writing exercise that does not produce

00:52:51.760 | as negative or intense an emotional state.

00:52:53.960 | And we're talking about a significant effect

00:52:56.440 | on the immune system or the mobilization of immune cells

00:52:58.860 | in response to an immune challenge.

00:53:01.000 | In addition to that, however,

00:53:04.080 | they observed that high disclosures,

00:53:06.400 | that is people that really poured themselves

00:53:08.920 | into this writing protocol,

00:53:10.760 | experienced a greater degree of immune activation,

00:53:13.760 | that is a fighting off response to this mitogen,

00:53:18.760 | concanavalin A, then did people that were low disclosures.

00:53:22.860 | So this really speaks to the fact that the intensity,

00:53:25.680 | the emotional state during the writing exercise

00:53:28.940 | is having a significant impact on the immune system

00:53:32.460 | at the level of something as basic and yet as powerful

00:53:35.880 | as how much deployment of immune response

00:53:38.860 | there is to an infection.

00:53:41.180 | Now, the field of so-called psychoneuroimmunology

00:53:43.940 | has been around for more than 30 years.

00:53:45.960 | In fact, if you don't apply standard definitions

00:53:49.280 | to that field, it's been around for thousands of years.

00:53:51.800 | But really it's only in the last 10 years or so

00:53:54.800 | that scientists and physicians,

00:53:56.980 | at least standard scientists and physicians

00:53:59.540 | have started to really adopt the understanding

00:54:01.960 | and really apply to their studies

00:54:04.120 | and their clinical practice this firm idea

00:54:07.420 | that the body and mind are linked in this way,

00:54:09.360 | that emotions can really shape our physical responses

00:54:12.920 | and that physical responses also can shape, of course,

00:54:16.160 | our mental responses.

00:54:17.640 | Now, I'm not trying to be disparaging at all

00:54:20.020 | of traditional science or medicine.

00:54:21.360 | It's just that until recently,

00:54:22.920 | these fields have existed more or less as silos,

00:54:24.940 | people that studied bodily organs

00:54:26.360 | versus people that studied the brain,

00:54:27.760 | people that studied emotions and psychology

00:54:29.760 | versus people that studied the immune system.

00:54:32.040 | And there's been some crossover,

00:54:33.800 | but by and large, it's been very siloed.

00:54:36.160 | Now, I mentioned this because if you look into the history

00:54:38.080 | of why James Pennebaker and colleagues

00:54:40.120 | started exploring this particular pattern of journaling,

00:54:43.520 | it actually relates to his own personal experience.

00:54:45.640 | And I don't want to spend too much time on this,

00:54:47.000 | but it's worth mentioning that Pennebaker

00:54:49.280 | has actually spoken about and written about in, by the way,

00:54:52.180 | an excellent book that I've linked to

00:54:54.120 | in the show note captions,

00:54:55.520 | where he talks about his experience in suffering

00:54:58.120 | pretty severely from asthma as a child

00:55:00.800 | and that that asthma was seasonal.

00:55:03.300 | And yet at some point later in his life,

00:55:06.220 | because he had certain relatives visiting him

00:55:08.360 | in his new home location,

00:55:10.940 | that his asthma would come and go

00:55:13.540 | as a consequence of interacting

00:55:15.220 | with certain members of his family independent of season.

00:55:18.540 | And basically what he deduced

00:55:19.780 | from his own personal experience

00:55:21.540 | is that there must be some link between our emotions,

00:55:24.980 | either negative or positive, and our immune system

00:55:28.300 | or other physical ailments or thriving

00:55:31.580 | in the physical sense.

00:55:32.540 | Now, he certainly wasn't the first one

00:55:34.000 | to come up with that hypothesis,

00:55:35.980 | but indeed he was one of the first

00:55:38.040 | to really start exploring a protocol within the laboratory,

00:55:41.740 | an experimental protocol that could really tap

00:55:44.700 | into high degrees of emotionality,

00:55:47.340 | in this case, negative emotions,

00:55:49.000 | and the consequence of that on physical health outcomes.

00:55:53.200 | And this study that I mentioned

00:55:54.380 | is but one of those examples.

00:55:57.220 | And in that way, he's truly a pioneer

00:55:59.620 | in thinking about, quote unquote, psychoneuroimmunology,

00:56:02.560 | but couching it not in the direction that most people do,

00:56:05.460 | which is, for instance, there've been lots of studies

00:56:08.720 | where people have said,

00:56:09.560 | okay, and people that are chronically stressed,

00:56:11.220 | which includes, of course, psychological stress,

00:56:13.140 | what are the effects on the nervous system,

00:56:15.060 | the immune system, et cetera?

00:56:16.740 | And as you could imagine, in general,

00:56:18.760 | people who were more stressed over long, long periods of time

00:56:22.100 | had worse physical outcomes,

00:56:23.560 | and people who were less stressed

00:56:24.660 | had better physical outcomes.

00:56:26.560 | But the protocol that we're talking about today

00:56:28.820 | is quite a bit different.

00:56:30.140 | So if you step back and think about,

00:56:31.220 | it's a little counterintuitive.

00:56:32.220 | What Pennebaker essentially did was to have people

00:56:34.620 | deliberately induce a negative experience,

00:56:38.540 | and yet they're seeing positive physical health outcomes,

00:56:41.820 | or in this case, positive effects on immune system function.

00:56:45.580 | So that leads to the question of what's really happening

00:56:48.300 | during and after these four episodes of writing.

00:56:50.980 | And that's where things get especially interesting

00:56:53.220 | as it relates to the nervous system and to neuroplasticity,

00:56:56.820 | or the nervous system's ability to rewire itself

00:56:59.640 | in response to experience.

00:57:01.180 | So that's what we're going to talk about next.

00:57:03.220 | I'd like to take a quick break

00:57:04.340 | and thank our sponsor, InsideTracker.

00:57:06.760 | InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform

00:57:09.220 | that analyzes data from your blood and DNA

00:57:11.900 | to help you better understand your body

00:57:13.540 | and help you reach your health goals.

00:57:15.300 | I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done

00:57:18.060 | for the simple reason that many of the factors

00:57:19.900 | that impact your immediate and long-term health

00:57:22.140 | can only be analyzed from a quality blood test.

00:57:24.980 | A major problem with a lot of blood tests out there,

00:57:27.080 | however, is that you get information back

00:57:29.460 | about metabolic factors, lipids and hormones and so forth,

00:57:32.340 | but you don't know what to do with that information.

00:57:34.380 | With InsideTracker, they make it very easy

00:57:36.580 | because they have a personalized platform

00:57:38.520 | that allows you to see the levels of all those things,

00:57:41.080 | metabolic factors, lipids, hormones, et cetera,

00:57:43.580 | but it gives you specific directives that you can follow

00:57:46.460 | that relate to nutrition, behavioral modification,

00:57:48.780 | supplements, et cetera, that can help you bring those numbers

00:57:51.420 | into the ranges that are optimal for you.

00:57:53.640 | If you'd like to try InsideTracker,

00:57:55.300 | go to insidetracker.com/huberman.

00:57:58.500 | For this week only, meaning now through November 26th,

00:58:01.740 | InsideTracker is offering 50% off all bundles

00:58:04.760 | and 30% off all other tests.

00:58:06.740 | Again, that's insidetracker.com/huberman.

00:58:10.120 | Okay, so what's happening at a mechanistic level

00:58:12.780 | that allows people who do these four bouts of writing

00:58:15.360 | about something traumatic or stressful

00:58:17.560 | to achieve these long-lasting, positive shifts

00:58:20.460 | in mental and physical health?

00:58:22.280 | Now, there could be any number of different changes

00:58:24.740 | occurring at the level of the mind or body,

00:58:27.660 | but what we're talking about here

00:58:28.680 | is trying to find the pivotal one,

00:58:30.260 | or sometimes referred to as the linchpin mechanism,

00:58:33.880 | that when one taps into that mechanism,

00:58:36.660 | it wicks out into all these different systems

00:58:39.180 | of the brain and body

00:58:40.020 | and provides all of these different positive benefits.

00:58:43.220 | Now, in researching this episode,

00:58:44.860 | I thought long and hard about this

00:58:46.300 | and came up with a short list of ideas.

00:58:48.420 | And as is always the case,

00:58:50.620 | people have worked in this area on this particular protocol

00:58:53.220 | and protocol similar to it

00:58:54.620 | in the field of psychology and neuroscience,

00:58:56.660 | have also generated their own short list.

00:58:58.820 | And those short lists converge

00:59:01.240 | at the level of one particular mechanism

00:59:03.720 | that is worth describing.

00:59:05.060 | And that one particular mechanism

00:59:06.580 | is anchored around the concept of neuroplasticity,

00:59:09.620 | that is our nervous system's ability to change

00:59:12.280 | in response to experience.

00:59:13.820 | And if you've heard me talk about neuroplasticity before,

00:59:16.660 | neuroplasticity in childhood occurs

00:59:19.220 | through rather passive experience of any sorts of events.

00:59:22.740 | In fact, one of the hallmarks of childhood

00:59:24.620 | is that just the mere exposure to an experience

00:59:27.900 | reshapes the brain, not necessarily permanently,

00:59:30.500 | but often in a way that is very long lasting.

00:59:33.620 | Now, that's a feature of childhood,

00:59:34.920 | because if you think about what the nervous system

00:59:36.540 | is really designed to do for us,

00:59:38.900 | it's of course what allows us to move our limbs,

00:59:41.300 | it's what allows us to have a heart rate

00:59:44.020 | that goes in the background

00:59:44.940 | without us having to think about it,

00:59:46.380 | so-called autonomic functions,

00:59:47.900 | it's what keeps us breathing

00:59:49.060 | without us having to think about it, and on and on.

00:59:51.940 | But one of the main functions of the nervous system

00:59:54.340 | is to be a predictive machine,

00:59:57.080 | to make good guesses about what's to come next.

00:59:59.960 | And one of the ways to make really good guesses

01:00:01.740 | about what's to come next

01:00:02.860 | is to take a certain period of life that we call childhood,

01:00:05.900 | superimpose on that period of life, that childhood,

01:00:09.060 | what we call a critical period or sensitive period,

01:00:11.740 | during which our experiences

01:00:13.820 | create a sort of map within us

01:00:16.100 | that allow us to predict, okay,

01:00:17.860 | well, if this person's in the room later,

01:00:19.900 | well, then that's likely to happen.

01:00:21.480 | Or if those people are in the room,

01:00:23.380 | any number of different things could happen,

01:00:25.020 | but of one particular category of experience

01:00:27.540 | as opposed to another.

01:00:28.380 | That's really what your nervous system does.

01:00:29.840 | It becomes a prediction machine,

01:00:31.620 | and it becomes a prediction machine

01:00:33.580 | by drawing strong correlations between emotional states,

01:00:38.180 | your physical surroundings,

01:00:39.920 | your perception of who's there, what's there,

01:00:42.500 | what happened just prior to something,

01:00:44.220 | and how it made you feel later.

01:00:45.820 | So when we talk about recounting

01:00:47.280 | a stressful or traumatic event,

01:00:49.240 | if you recall, there were three components to it.

01:00:51.680 | It involved facts about that experience,

01:00:54.100 | so literally who was there, what happened,

01:00:57.500 | as to the best of our recollection.

01:00:59.700 | If you recall the second thing,

01:01:00.680 | it's also about recounting how that experience

01:01:03.140 | made you feel at the time and how it makes you feel now.

01:01:06.660 | And then if you recall,

01:01:07.660 | the third thing that's critical to include,

01:01:09.860 | it's about any links or associations

01:01:12.460 | between what happened and really anything at all.

01:01:15.600 | So if you think about it,

01:01:16.480 | all three of those things in that list

01:01:18.260 | are really about tapping into your neural map

01:01:20.660 | or your schema, as it's sometimes called,

01:01:23.020 | or your internal representation,

01:01:24.820 | both conscious and unconscious,

01:01:27.080 | of what happened during that stressful or traumatic event.

01:01:30.260 | Now, a hallmark feature of traumas,

01:01:33.280 | as well as a hallmark feature of addictions,

01:01:35.820 | as well as a hallmark feature of compulsive behaviors

01:01:39.040 | or negative habitual behaviors,

01:01:41.460 | and negative habitual states like chronic stress, anxiety,

01:01:46.460 | the sorts of things that trigger insomnia,

01:01:48.840 | the sorts of states of body that trigger immune compromise

01:01:51.720 | and give us autoimmune

01:01:53.400 | or other types of immune system challenges,

01:01:56.520 | are that a certain component of our nervous system

01:01:58.520 | and our brain in particular are less engaged

01:02:02.040 | than they normally would be in the healthy condition.

01:02:05.320 | Now, I want to be clear

01:02:06.980 | that in any one of these conditions,

01:02:08.560 | whether or not it's irritable bowel syndrome

01:02:10.120 | or it's fibromyalgia or it's chronic anxiety or depression,

01:02:13.120 | there are many, many different brain centers and networks,

01:02:16.660 | that is stations within the nervous system

01:02:18.700 | of the brain and body that are involved.

01:02:20.800 | I really want to emphasize that this,

01:02:22.160 | there's no one location in the brain, for instance,

01:02:24.420 | for fear or anxiety, it's always a network phenomenon,

01:02:27.840 | the relative activation of different brain centers

01:02:29.980 | at different times and so on.

01:02:31.640 | But with respect to thinking about traumas

01:02:34.160 | and stressful experiences, we have to ask ourselves,

01:02:37.140 | what is it about the emotional states

01:02:39.120 | and all the mapping, the representation

01:02:41.320 | around those emotional experiences

01:02:43.280 | that would somehow impact our immune system,

01:02:45.420 | like our thymus of all things, or our bone marrow?

01:02:48.600 | Or conversely, what would it be about a stressful experience

01:02:51.920 | that would impact our heart rate

01:02:53.920 | that would somehow then also change our brain?

01:02:56.480 | So the mechanism that seems to be a sort of smoking gun

01:02:59.400 | of sorts, that is the mechanism that really does seem

01:03:02.200 | to be at least one of those linchpin mechanisms,

01:03:05.600 | is that when we experience very stressful

01:03:07.760 | or traumatic experiences, our prefrontal cortex,

01:03:10.840 | the neural real estate that's just behind our forehead,

01:03:13.660 | which has several different subdivisions, in fact,

01:03:16.800 | is reduced in its overall levels of activity

01:03:20.600 | and other areas of the brain that sometimes are referred to

01:03:23.860 | as the limbic areas of the brain,

01:03:25.280 | although if we were to be more accurate than that,

01:03:27.200 | the modern neuroscience really refers to these

01:03:29.280 | as subcortical structures.

01:03:31.120 | They aren't necessarily limbic structures per se,

01:03:33.360 | although they can include components of the limbic system,

01:03:36.200 | so they can include things like the hypothalamus,

01:03:38.240 | so this dense collection of neurons that resides

01:03:40.200 | over the roof of your mouth that's involved

01:03:41.720 | in things like aggression or temperature regulation,

01:03:44.720 | sleep-wake cycles, and so on,

01:03:46.560 | as well as structures that perhaps you've heard more about,

01:03:48.820 | such as the amygdala, which is involved in threat detection,

01:03:51.840 | but other structures as well, all of which are subcortical.

01:03:55.260 | Now, those subcortical structures can be compared

01:03:57.920 | in a fairly general but still accurate way

01:04:00.520 | to the prefrontal cortex,

01:04:02.320 | which is involved in contextual planning,

01:04:04.920 | involved in assessing outcomes.

01:04:06.680 | If I do A, what will happen?

01:04:08.200 | If I do B, what will happen?

01:04:10.120 | The prefrontal cortex is also associated

01:04:12.320 | with our self-concept of our identity,

01:04:15.760 | who we are, what we are about, what we value,

01:04:18.720 | what motivates our decisions to do or to not do things.

01:04:22.000 | So I don't want to create any false impressions

01:04:24.320 | that the prefrontal cortex is somehow

01:04:26.360 | a more evolved structure than these subcortical

01:04:29.000 | and limbic structures, but in some sense, it is.

01:04:31.340 | It's involved in more, quote-unquote,

01:04:33.080 | "sophisticated functions," or at least functions

01:04:36.240 | that involve us really thinking

01:04:38.600 | and being able to place a coherent narrative

01:04:41.320 | of what happened in the past, what's happening now,

01:04:45.120 | and what's likely to happen in the future

01:04:48.120 | if conditions A, B, or C happen to arise, okay?

01:04:51.880 | So that's a very brief top-level contour lesson

01:04:54.520 | in prefrontal cortical function and comparing it a bit

01:04:57.220 | to some subcortical and limbic structure functions.

01:05:00.240 | Now, there have been neuroimaging studies,

01:05:03.480 | in particular studies by the Lieberman Laboratory

01:05:06.320 | at University of California, Los Angeles,

01:05:08.300 | but neuroimaging studies in other laboratories as well

01:05:10.960 | that have established that when people recount

01:05:13.160 | very stressful or traumatic events,

01:05:16.200 | the prefrontal cortex level of activity is reduced

01:05:20.200 | as compared to when people recall less stressful

01:05:22.880 | or less traumatic events.

01:05:24.880 | In addition to that, those subcortical structures

01:05:27.040 | ramp up their activity when people recall traumatic events,

01:05:30.560 | at least at first, okay?

01:05:32.720 | This is very important.

01:05:34.360 | What I'm about to tell you is that the repeated visiting

01:05:37.160 | of stressful and traumatic events in a structured way,

01:05:40.800 | or even in a pseudo-structured way,

01:05:43.240 | as is the case when people first start journaling

01:05:45.620 | about that stressful or traumatic event on day one,

01:05:48.280 | when it tends to be a pretty unstructured narrative,

01:05:50.920 | that's actually been shown in the literature,

01:05:53.000 | and then over the course of that second and third

01:05:55.960 | and fourth writing bout,

01:05:57.560 | people not only shift the sort of language that they use

01:06:00.240 | to describe their feelings in that event,

01:06:02.240 | as we talked about earlier,

01:06:03.780 | but the degree to which there's a more coherent narrative

01:06:07.040 | placed on the structure of that writing increases

01:06:09.980 | with each subsequent bout of writing.

01:06:12.760 | And this is very important

01:06:14.120 | because what we're really talking about here

01:06:16.760 | is people going deeper into their recollection

01:06:19.860 | of the experience,

01:06:20.920 | not remaining at such a superficial level.

01:06:24.040 | And two things are happening,

01:06:25.280 | even though they're going deeper

01:06:26.800 | into this very distressing event,

01:06:29.560 | they're perhaps even experiencing

01:06:31.560 | heightened levels of distress, right?

01:06:33.240 | If you recall back to earlier in the episode,

01:06:35.760 | when I talked about people

01:06:36.600 | who tend to be on the low disclosure end of things,

01:06:38.880 | they're not very verbose,

01:06:40.140 | they don't tend to use a lot of emotional words,

01:06:41.700 | and early on, they're not sharing too much

01:06:44.000 | about this experience, and over time it increases,

01:06:46.440 | whereas the other group decrease the level of emotionality

01:06:49.200 | with each subsequent writing bout.

01:06:51.080 | But in each case, the coherence of the narrative,

01:06:53.320 | that is, the degree to which the narrative

01:06:55.440 | takes on a story-like structure,

01:06:58.400 | increases from the first to the fourth writing bout.

01:07:01.800 | And this is very important

01:07:03.160 | because what we're really talking about here

01:07:05.160 | is increasing the amount of truth-telling,

01:07:08.040 | the honesty around the experience.

01:07:10.800 | And when we say honesty,

01:07:11.920 | I'm not talking about any prior debate or ongoing debate

01:07:15.880 | about what happened during those experiences.

01:07:17.880 | Remember, when people do this protocol,

01:07:20.200 | you're recalling what happened,

01:07:22.520 | what were the facts in your mind?

01:07:25.460 | What were the facts?

01:07:26.360 | What happened?

01:07:27.200 | What didn't happen perhaps is relevant too,

01:07:29.080 | but what happened?

01:07:30.220 | Second, how did it make you feel?

01:07:31.740 | That's something that you are uniquely qualified

01:07:34.360 | to answer factually,

01:07:35.800 | because only you can really know how you feel.

01:07:39.420 | Sometimes it takes some effort to think into how you feel,

01:07:42.200 | to really get a clear sense of how you felt

01:07:44.440 | and how you feel, but only you can report that factually.

01:07:48.780 | No one can dispute that, those are your feelings,

01:07:51.160 | and that's part of what you're writing about.

01:07:53.080 | And then of course, there's the third component

01:07:55.200 | of what are the connections between different experiences

01:07:57.940 | that are coming to mind.

01:07:58.860 | And there again, that is your unique factual report

01:08:03.260 | of what's going on inside your head around that event.

01:08:06.980 | Okay, so what we're talking about here

01:08:08.960 | is an exercise in writing that yes is distressing,

01:08:12.920 | but that we know based on neuroimaging data,

01:08:16.060 | over time is increasing the baseline levels of activity

01:08:20.560 | in certain key areas of the prefrontal cortex.

01:08:23.360 | And that we know is associated with improvements

01:08:26.600 | in the symptomology around trauma and other stressful events.

01:08:30.500 | Now it's extremely important to highlight

01:08:32.520 | this truth telling component,

01:08:34.040 | and the fact that your truth about these experiences

01:08:36.580 | is indeed your truth.

01:08:38.080 | And it's such a key component of the writing exercise.

01:08:40.720 | So what we're looking at here is a situation where

01:08:43.080 | the event or events that happened actually happened,

01:08:46.040 | there's no changing that.

01:08:47.620 | But your narrative about those events

01:08:49.860 | is vitally important in terms of how you experience

01:08:53.040 | either ongoing distress from or relief from those events.

01:08:56.540 | And in sort of a counterintuitive way,

01:08:59.100 | reporting those events in a way that initially

01:09:02.120 | is very stressful, or that can be stressful

01:09:04.200 | in any number of those different four writing bouts,

01:09:07.620 | over time provides relief from that stress.

01:09:11.580 | So why do I say counterintuitive?

01:09:13.640 | Well, you could say, okay, well then does distress itself

01:09:18.180 | cause changes in the prefrontal cortex that are positive?

01:09:20.760 | No, in fact, the opposite is true.

01:09:22.220 | We know that being under conditions of duress or stress

01:09:25.120 | or trauma reduces activity in the prefrontal cortex.

01:09:27.960 | And here we're saying recalling that trauma and stress

01:09:31.040 | in ways that are highly emotional and negative

01:09:33.840 | is actually increasing ongoing activity

01:09:36.640 | in the prefrontal cortex.

01:09:38.280 | And indeed, yes, that is the case.

01:09:40.400 | So how could that be?

01:09:41.760 | During development, neuroplasticity is a passive process.

01:09:44.360 | Whatever we are exposed to changes our brain

01:09:47.480 | in a way that allows us

01:09:48.560 | to more reliably predict the future, right?

01:09:51.260 | That's one of the key functions of the brain.

01:09:53.520 | But as an adult, meaning from age 25 onward,

01:09:57.560 | and really that's not a strict cutoff,

01:09:59.340 | could be late teens, maybe 19,

01:10:01.640 | all the way up to say age 120,

01:10:03.860 | which we think is perhaps the maximum lifespan

01:10:05.920 | that humans could possibly reach.

01:10:07.420 | We don't know, most people don't reach 120,

01:10:09.040 | but let's say from 19 all the way up to 120,

01:10:12.580 | we know that neuroplasticity is created

01:10:17.200 | when the nervous system goes into states that are atypical

01:10:20.920 | as compared to our normal waking states.

01:10:24.000 | And one of the key triggers for neuroplasticity

01:10:26.780 | is when we have high levels of the so-called catecholamines,

01:10:30.040 | dopamine, epinephrine, and/or norepinephrine

01:10:33.320 | in our brain and body.

01:10:34.760 | That creates a state change

01:10:36.480 | that we call autonomic nervous system shift,

01:10:38.420 | where we have elevated heart rate, more distress,

01:10:40.480 | high degrees of emotionality.

01:10:41.960 | It is highly uncomfortable often.

01:10:44.040 | And yet that signals to the neural tissue,

01:10:47.140 | hey, something's happening here and we need to rewire,

01:10:50.040 | we need to change it.

01:10:50.920 | And the actual rewiring occurs during deep sleep

01:10:54.300 | and states such as non-sleep deep rest,

01:10:57.100 | or anytime we're in a deep relaxation state.

01:10:58.900 | Some of you have heard me talk about neuroplasticity before,

01:11:01.040 | but the key elements to remember for today's discussion

01:11:03.120 | is that these states of heightened levels of emotionality

01:11:07.100 | are the trigger for neuroplasticity,

01:11:09.280 | and that the actual rewiring of neural connections

01:11:11.280 | happens in sleep and states such as non-sleep deep rest.

01:11:14.340 | So if we were to be completely logical,

01:11:16.300 | we would sit back at this point and say,

01:11:18.440 | okay, here's a protocol in which we deliberately

01:11:22.560 | make ourselves stressed out again

01:11:24.400 | about a very stressful or traumatic event.

01:11:27.240 | And yet, even though that stressful or traumatic event

01:11:30.440 | at first created problems for our mental

01:11:33.520 | and physical health, by revisiting it

01:11:36.180 | and triggering that stressful experience again four times,

01:11:41.480 | in a lot of detail,

01:11:42.640 | somehow it's giving me relief from that experience.

01:11:46.200 | It's creating positive mental and physical shifts.

01:11:48.560 | I mean, how could that be?

01:11:49.720 | How could it be that the negative experience

01:11:52.440 | on the one hand creates problems,

01:11:53.940 | and then on the other hand,

01:11:55.820 | recreating that negative experience

01:11:57.560 | relieves those very same problems.

01:11:59.600 | There's something completely illogical

01:12:01.040 | about that framework, right?

01:12:02.920 | Well, here's where things get really interesting.

01:12:05.840 | There have been two separate collections of work

01:12:08.740 | in the psychology and neuroscience literature

01:12:10.920 | in the last 10 years,

01:12:12.320 | which have focused mainly on two concepts.

01:12:14.860 | The first concept is that extremely stressful

01:12:17.340 | and traumatic experiences,

01:12:18.560 | because they induce a relative reduction

01:12:21.020 | in the activity in the prefrontal cortex,

01:12:24.140 | divorce our mind from creating

01:12:26.580 | a coherent structural narrative

01:12:29.520 | about what happened during those particular episodes.

01:12:32.140 | And in doing so,

01:12:33.800 | create a sort of confusion about responsibility.

01:12:37.640 | Now, there's a whole discussion to be had about this,

01:12:39.520 | and we will have that discussion

01:12:40.840 | in a future episode of the podcast

01:12:42.320 | about how trauma is actually mapped

01:12:44.560 | within the brain and body.

01:12:45.920 | There are a lot of theories about this, right?

01:12:47.660 | Sometimes we hear that it's all mapped within the body.

01:12:50.040 | Sometimes we hear it's all mapped within the brain.

01:12:51.720 | Turns out, as is almost always the case, it's both.

01:12:55.080 | But there does seem to be both neuroscience-based

01:12:57.560 | and psychology,

01:12:59.200 | both clinical and research psychology-based evidence

01:13:01.860 | for the idea that when people experience

01:13:04.480 | very stressful and traumatic events,

01:13:06.760 | that the representation of those events

01:13:09.400 | is somewhat fractured in the sense that people,

01:13:13.000 | by not talking about them,

01:13:14.320 | by not creating a coherent narrative around them,

01:13:17.680 | start to form false correlations

01:13:20.020 | between the kind of stress that they create

01:13:22.120 | in our body and mind when we think about them,

01:13:24.760 | and a confusion about what happened,

01:13:27.400 | a confusion about why we feel terrible

01:13:30.360 | when maybe we weren't the perpetrator,

01:13:32.780 | or create a sort of lack of coherence

01:13:35.080 | between our bodily state and what we're thinking,

01:13:37.760 | especially because we're not the perpetrator, right?

01:13:40.560 | Here, we're talking about traumas

01:13:41.600 | and stressful things that happened to us.

01:13:43.880 | Maybe we were participants in that

01:13:46.280 | by virtue of our circumstances,

01:13:48.080 | but when we talk about traumas,

01:13:49.320 | what we're really talking about are things

01:13:51.600 | that we would have never elected to do otherwise, okay?

01:13:54.940 | So I don't want to be too abstract about this,

01:13:57.100 | but again, within the neuroscience and psychology

01:13:59.440 | understanding of trauma and stress,

01:14:01.520 | it seems that there's a lack of coherence

01:14:03.340 | about the narrative.

01:14:04.300 | There's also a mismatch between the bodily state

01:14:07.000 | and thoughts about that experience,

01:14:08.880 | and there seems to be a confusion about

01:14:11.160 | who or what was responsible for inducing that negative state

01:14:14.880 | in a way that in some sense causes people

01:14:18.960 | to set aside that narrative and try and push it away

01:14:21.760 | and not think about it, because it is confusing.

01:14:24.320 | It can often even be discombobulating.

01:14:26.560 | For those that have suffered

01:14:27.400 | from very stressful events and trauma,

01:14:29.500 | I think some of this will resonate with you.

01:14:31.480 | Now, a separate literature that's largely nested

01:14:33.740 | just within the neuroscience community,

01:14:35.720 | although it's starting to wick out

01:14:36.920 | into the psychology community as well,

01:14:39.200 | is the idea that when people tell the truth,

01:14:42.860 | and in particular, when people tell the truth

01:14:44.660 | with a very coherent structured narrative,

01:14:47.680 | the levels of activity in the prefrontal cortex increase,

01:14:51.160 | but not just temporarily.

01:14:52.840 | That is that there's neuroplasticity

01:14:54.640 | of these prefrontal cortical structures,

01:14:56.600 | which are both involved in generating coherent narratives,

01:14:59.880 | but are also involved, and this is super important,

01:15:02.680 | that are also involved in regulating the activity

01:15:06.360 | of those subcortical structures

01:15:07.920 | like the hypothalamus and limbic structures.

01:15:10.560 | In other words, that when we can increase

01:15:12.800 | our understanding of an event,

01:15:14.740 | when we can understand why certain emotions arose,

01:15:17.920 | what our role in it really was,

01:15:19.440 | what others' roles in that particular event were,

01:15:22.140 | well, then by increasing the activity

01:15:24.000 | of the prefrontal cortex,

01:15:25.520 | it's better both in that moment and going forward

01:15:28.580 | to regulate the activity

01:15:29.960 | of these other subcortical structures.

01:15:31.760 | And I think one of the more impressive experiments

01:15:33.580 | within that whole field

01:15:34.840 | of linking prefrontal activity to truth-telling

01:15:37.880 | is an experiment that was published a few years ago

01:15:39.880 | in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

01:15:42.680 | entitled "Increasing Honesty in Humans

01:15:44.880 | "with Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation."

01:15:47.420 | Now, this is a very artificial scenario

01:15:49.600 | where people come into the laboratory

01:15:51.500 | and they have people do

01:15:52.720 | what is essentially a die rolling game.

01:15:55.280 | They roll dice.

01:15:56.320 | Okay, so they're rolling dice,

01:15:57.960 | and then after they roll the dice,

01:15:59.620 | only they can see the score that they get with those dice.

01:16:03.100 | And then a number is presented on a screen,

01:16:05.260 | and they have to report whether or not

01:16:07.540 | the die roll that they did matches or does not match

01:16:12.200 | the number that's presented on the screen.

01:16:13.880 | And if it does match, then they get a monetary award.

01:16:17.720 | And the monetary award is not huge,

01:16:20.060 | but it's not insignificant either.

01:16:21.900 | For each die roll where they match the number

01:16:23.920 | that's presented on the screen,

01:16:25.460 | they get the equivalent of,

01:16:27.380 | and because this experiment was done in Switzerland,

01:16:29.480 | nine Swiss francs, which at the time of the study

01:16:31.760 | corresponded roughly to $9,

01:16:33.680 | and today corresponds to roughly $10.

01:16:37.260 | So they do this repeatedly.

01:16:39.540 | And so in some sense,

01:16:40.900 | the subjects in these experiments are in a place to make

01:16:43.560 | not an enormous amount of money,

01:16:44.860 | but again, not an insignificant amount either.

01:16:48.200 | Now, here's the key component of the study.

01:16:50.620 | The statistics of the dice that they roll

01:16:52.980 | and the statistics of die rolling

01:16:55.240 | and the numbers that they are presented,

01:16:58.300 | make sure that there can only be a correct match

01:17:02.680 | on average 50% of the time, okay?

01:17:06.060 | And in this experiment,

01:17:07.180 | the subjects are asked to report entirely

01:17:09.580 | on the honor system what they got when they rolled the dice.

01:17:13.840 | And what one finds in this study

01:17:15.520 | and other studies that have been done subsequent to it

01:17:18.760 | is that when you take everyday people,

01:17:21.220 | so you take men and women, you take a broad age range,

01:17:24.980 | you're not selecting for sociopaths,

01:17:26.760 | you're not selecting for people in one given profession

01:17:29.000 | or another, pick your favorite profession

01:17:30.620 | if you were to assume any one given profession

01:17:33.460 | has less honest people than others,

01:17:35.480 | they collect people from all sorts of walks of life

01:17:38.940 | and people report getting the same number

01:17:42.520 | that is presented to them,

01:17:43.600 | that is a match about 68% of the time,

01:17:48.020 | which means they are not faithfully reporting what happened.

01:17:52.560 | Now, neuroimaging studies show that when people lie,

01:17:55.760 | certain areas of the frontal cortex

01:17:57.320 | increase in their activity,

01:17:58.960 | although the major effect when one looks neurally

01:18:02.840 | is a reduction in the prefrontal cortex

01:18:05.360 | and in particular sub-compartments

01:18:06.740 | of the prefrontal cortex that we'll talk about in a moment.

01:18:09.120 | And this particular study entitled

01:18:12.240 | Increasing Honesty in Humans

01:18:13.380 | with Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation,

01:18:15.780 | as the name suggests, used non-invasive brain stimulation,

01:18:19.120 | so this is transcranial magnetic stimulation,

01:18:21.480 | which is a really nice and convenient tool

01:18:23.280 | because you don't have to drill down through the skull,

01:18:24.960 | you can simply put this tool, it's a little coil,

01:18:27.780 | you put it over a particular part of the brain,

01:18:30.220 | but on the outside of the skull,

01:18:31.420 | indeed on the outside of the hair,

01:18:33.340 | and you can either inhibit

01:18:36.000 | or stimulate particular brain areas

01:18:38.580 | using this transcranial stimulation.

01:18:40.220 | I've actually had this done,

01:18:41.580 | not in this particular experiment,

01:18:43.200 | but I had it done when I was a graduate student

01:18:44.960 | some years ago, and it was placed over my motor cortex,

01:18:47.740 | and I was instructed to tap my fingers

01:18:49.680 | in a particular sequence,

01:18:50.720 | and then they inhibit neural activity

01:18:53.320 | in a particular brain area,

01:18:54.320 | and I was unable to tap in that same sequence,

01:18:57.000 | and they could even shut down my ability to tap,

01:18:58.960 | it was terrifying, frankly,

01:19:00.140 | although I don't want to discourage anyone

01:19:01.440 | from participating in any of these experiments

01:19:03.360 | should you choose, and yes, of course,

01:19:05.460 | your motor abilities come back immediately afterwards,

01:19:07.760 | that's why they can run these experiments.

01:19:09.340 | Now, in this experiment,

01:19:11.040 | what they did is they stimulated or inhibited neural activity

01:19:14.320 | in particular areas of the prefrontal cortex,

01:19:16.200 | and what they discovered was,

01:19:18.520 | I think, and many others, by the way, also agree,

01:19:22.000 | a remarkable result, which is that when they stimulated

01:19:27.000 | over a particular region of the prefrontal cortex,

01:19:30.080 | people's honest report of what happened

01:19:33.760 | when they rolled the die relative to the number

01:19:35.660 | they were presented increased, okay?

01:19:38.280 | So they went from reporting

01:19:39.900 | that they had matched the number on the screen,

01:19:42.020 | and therefore won money 68% of the time,

01:19:45.880 | that number was reduced down to what?

01:19:48.320 | Down to 50% of the time.

01:19:50.040 | In other words, this stimulation of the prefrontal cortex

01:19:53.400 | took dishonest people,

01:19:55.440 | even though they were, should we say, mildly dishonest

01:19:58.520 | or dishonest only in certain conditions,

01:20:00.520 | they were getting into judgment calls,

01:20:02.120 | and I don't want to do that, and made them truly honest.

01:20:05.220 | They faithfully represented reality

01:20:08.580 | when a particular area of the prefrontal cortex,

01:20:11.000 | and that area, by the way,

01:20:11.920 | is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, was activated,

01:20:16.720 | they became truly honest.

01:20:18.320 | They faithfully represented what happened

01:20:22.160 | in the die rolling game.

01:20:23.720 | Now, the conditions in this experiment

01:20:25.400 | are far and away different from the journaling protocol

01:20:27.880 | that we've talked about up until now.

01:20:29.560 | However, there've been subsequent studies

01:20:32.080 | that have shown that indeed, when people tell the truth,

01:20:35.420 | to the best of their abilities,

01:20:36.780 | they are absolutely trying to faithfully report

01:20:41.000 | what happened in a given experience of theirs,

01:20:45.020 | activity in the prefrontal cortex goes up,

01:20:47.880 | and it persists afterwards.

01:20:49.720 | There is indeed neuroplasticity of the prefrontal cortex.

01:20:53.340 | So the hypothesis that seems to be the most likely,

01:20:56.280 | and indeed has the greatest weight of evidence for it,

01:20:59.120 | is that when people accurately and truthfully

01:21:03.480 | report an experience,

01:21:05.520 | even if that experience is a stressful and traumatic one,

01:21:09.000 | the repeated activation of the prefrontal cortex

01:21:11.240 | that occurs during that truth telling,

01:21:13.680 | even though the truth telling

01:21:14.680 | is about a highly negative experience,

01:21:17.160 | has the net effect over time of leading to more activity

01:21:20.520 | in the prefrontal cortex,

01:21:21.760 | and that has a sort of runaway positive effect

01:21:25.160 | in the sense that it creates a more coherent framework

01:21:29.280 | and understanding of the stressful thing that happened.

01:21:31.960 | So all that discombobulation

01:21:33.320 | and that lack of coherent story

01:21:36.400 | that then leads to lack of coherence

01:21:38.200 | in terms of one's autonomic function,

01:21:39.880 | so underlying stress and confusion about who's responsible,

01:21:43.640 | that does seem to be resolved or at least partially resolved.

01:21:46.480 | And the prefrontal cortex, of course,

01:21:48.500 | doesn't harbor one area just for faithful,

01:21:50.980 | accurate reporting of traumas and stressful events.

01:21:53.760 | That very same area,

01:21:55.200 | that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,

01:21:57.000 | is responsible for faithful reporting

01:21:59.320 | of all sorts of other things.

01:22:01.080 | And there are now more and more studies showing

01:22:03.560 | that truth telling, faithful, accurate representation

01:22:07.760 | of what we at least experienced in our past

01:22:11.080 | and are experiencing presently,

01:22:13.240 | is good for us both in the short term and the long term.

01:22:16.360 | And this, I believe, and other researchers,

01:22:18.640 | both neuroscientists and psychologists and psychiatrists

01:22:21.220 | that I've talked to about this result,

01:22:23.160 | are in agreement that when one sees

01:22:25.940 | all these positive shifts in, say, immune system function,

01:22:28.760 | like how could it be that these cells produced

01:22:31.320 | by the bone marrow and the thymus

01:22:33.300 | are somehow better able to deal with an infection

01:22:37.120 | when one has recounted a traumatic or stressful event, right?

01:22:39.860 | First of all, it's counterintuitive.

01:22:41.040 | Second of all, why would that be?

01:22:42.380 | I mean, how are the body and brain linked in that way?

01:22:44.400 | Well, they're linked through this thing

01:22:46.100 | that we call the nervous system.

01:22:47.540 | And the key component of the nervous system in this context

01:22:50.960 | is that when the prefrontal cortex can organize

01:22:54.360 | its understanding of why our autonomic nervous system

01:22:58.180 | was so active, well, then the autonomic nervous system,

01:23:01.080 | it seems, becomes less likely to be active

01:23:04.280 | when it's not supposed to, okay?

01:23:06.040 | That could at least partially explain

01:23:08.200 | the reductions in anxiety, the improvements in sleep,

01:23:11.860 | the reductions in insomnia,

01:23:13.640 | and because the nervous system and the immune system

01:23:15.800 | are in direct communication.

01:23:17.280 | This often isn't discussed,

01:23:18.760 | but not only does the immune system impact the brain,

01:23:21.040 | but the brain has networks, literally neural circuits,

01:23:24.400 | that innervate structures like the spleen,

01:23:27.000 | like the thalamus, that can communicate

01:23:29.480 | with the bone marrow, right?

01:23:30.940 | This isn't science fiction.

01:23:32.040 | This is really the case.

01:23:33.520 | In fact, there was an article that just came out

01:23:34.980 | in the journal "Nature" this month,

01:23:36.640 | and I'll provide a link to it in the show, no captions,

01:23:38.800 | which is finally starting to acknowledge

01:23:41.200 | that yes, while these fields of immunology and brain science

01:23:45.040 | and psychology have existed as disparate silos up until now,

01:23:48.580 | it's oh so clear that the nervous system

01:23:51.240 | is the connection between all these different components

01:23:54.200 | of brain and body.

01:23:55.040 | And so while it might seem counterintuitive

01:23:57.800 | that a writing protocol of the sort

01:24:00.040 | that we've been talking about today

01:24:01.220 | could positively impact the immune system,

01:24:03.960 | or that a writing protocol of the sort

01:24:05.680 | that we are talking about today

01:24:07.140 | could positively impact things like fibromyalgia symptoms,

01:24:11.260 | well, it makes perfect sense, really.

01:24:13.200 | When we start to think about the prefrontal cortex

01:24:15.580 | as this highly flexible seat of our cognition,

01:24:18.300 | about our self-representation ideas about who we are,

01:24:21.320 | and about when certain elements within our brain and body

01:24:24.600 | ought to be activated,

01:24:25.860 | and when they ought not to be activated,

01:24:28.260 | because so much of the negative symptomology

01:24:31.260 | of stressful events and traumas is about the kind of disarray

01:24:35.740 | and discombobulated activation of wakefulness

01:24:38.760 | in the middle of sleep, right?

01:24:39.820 | Getting woken up in the middle of the night

01:24:41.120 | and not being able to go back to sleep,

01:24:42.460 | or elevated heart rate, panic attacks,

01:24:44.480 | anxiety, and on and on.

01:24:46.480 | I talked about some of this

01:24:47.320 | in the Huberman Lab podcast episode that I did about stress

01:24:50.540 | and how to master stress with particular protocols.

01:24:52.940 | It also came up in the discussion with Dr. Paul Conte

01:24:55.180 | in the episode about trauma and the series on mental health.

01:24:58.120 | So what we're pulling together here

01:24:59.180 | is a mechanistic understanding

01:25:01.120 | of why something like writing for 15 to 30 minutes

01:25:04.900 | about a stressful or traumatic episode

01:25:07.220 | would or even could induce all these positive shifts

01:25:10.660 | in mental and physical health.

01:25:12.180 | And while we don't have a complete understanding

01:25:14.380 | about the underlying mechanisms,

01:25:16.180 | the activation and the neuroplasticity

01:25:18.660 | of the prefrontal cortex

01:25:20.140 | seems to be one of the most logical

01:25:23.340 | and the most likely that sits at the center

01:25:26.220 | of at least the top list of the most important mechanisms.

01:25:30.120 | I want to be clear that yes, indeed,

01:25:32.580 | I'm saying that when you write about your truth,

01:25:35.700 | about the facts, the events of an experience,

01:25:38.360 | and your emotions, as they relate to that experience,

01:25:42.240 | and the connections that you draw

01:25:44.020 | between any number of different things

01:25:46.180 | around that experience,

01:25:47.420 | that the truth telling is the stimulus,

01:25:50.260 | and that the emotion that accompanies that truth telling

01:25:53.940 | is what allows for neuroplasticity to occur,

01:25:57.220 | and that indeed truth telling and heightened levels

01:25:59.420 | of emotion, even if they're negative emotions,

01:26:01.540 | really do seem to have a positive rehabilitative effect.

01:26:05.780 | They're not necessarily going to cure every ailment.

01:26:07.860 | I certainly don't want to give that impression,

01:26:09.700 | nor am I saying that people can't still benefit

01:26:12.260 | from therapy, talk therapy, or other forms of therapy,

01:26:15.360 | like prescription drug therapy, et cetera.

01:26:17.420 | Those certainly have their place.

01:26:18.860 | You should talk to an expert psychiatrist,

01:26:20.460 | psychologist, medical doctor, of course.

01:26:22.820 | And in fact, the data on the sort of journaling

01:26:25.500 | that we talked about today

01:26:27.060 | indicate that people's progression through talk therapy,

01:26:29.880 | drug therapies, et cetera, for depression and PTSD

01:26:32.300 | is accelerated and significantly so

01:26:34.880 | when they do this type of journaling.

01:26:36.280 | So the sort of journaling we're talking about today

01:26:38.360 | and other therapies are not mutually exclusive,

01:26:40.720 | and yet the journaling protocol

01:26:42.740 | that Pennebaker and colleagues came up with

01:26:44.700 | I think is spectacular

01:26:46.220 | because it has a number of important features,

01:26:48.460 | and some of those are perhaps obvious to you already.

01:26:50.680 | First of all, it's completely zero cost.

01:26:53.140 | I mean, it costs a bit of time, but not even that much time.

01:26:56.700 | It has an emotional cost, and we should acknowledge that.

01:26:59.060 | It's intense, right?

01:27:00.720 | And the more intense it seems, the more effective.

01:27:04.100 | And third, it's something that really can be done

01:27:07.320 | either in the course of four days or across an entire month,

01:27:10.020 | so it has some degree of flexibility to it.

01:27:11.960 | I would even say a great degree of flexibility to it.

01:27:14.480 | And last, but certainly not least,

01:27:16.660 | it's been shown over and over again.

01:27:19.220 | I mean, more than 200 peer-reviewed studies,

01:27:21.220 | not just from Pennebaker, but from others as well,

01:27:23.740 | to have myriad positive effects on the body and the mind

01:27:27.740 | in ways that are not just short-term,

01:27:29.580 | but that are pervasive not just over months,

01:27:31.700 | but indeed over years.

01:27:33.420 | So I don't know about you,

01:27:34.560 | but when I first learned about this literature,

01:27:37.620 | I was, well, initially a little bit skeptical

01:27:40.180 | because that's just my nature.

01:27:41.380 | I'm like, wait, how could journaling

01:27:43.520 | have such a huge impact?

01:27:44.860 | I mean, I've been journaling for years.

01:27:46.680 | I know other people that journal on a regular basis,

01:27:48.980 | and I've never heard of this particular impact,

01:27:51.020 | and I certainly haven't heard or seen the data.

01:27:54.660 | But when I started looking at the data,

01:27:57.300 | I thought, oh my goodness,

01:27:59.340 | how come I haven't heard about this?

01:28:00.780 | And I don't really have an answer for that.

01:28:02.580 | Although I will say that Pennebaker and others,

01:28:05.380 | I think were very early in their merging

01:28:08.500 | of mind and body states.

01:28:10.420 | Although the initial studies weren't really focused

01:28:13.220 | on mind and body, all the emphasis on immune system

01:28:15.580 | and brain and neuroscience, that actually came later.

01:28:18.380 | So I think one of the reasons we haven't heard

01:28:20.900 | about this particular form of journaling is that frankly,

01:28:23.620 | it's nested within the academic literature.

01:28:25.860 | I haven't heard much about it being incorporated

01:28:27.680 | into clinical practices, although I am sure

01:28:29.780 | it is incorporated into clinical practices.

01:28:31.620 | And frankly, whatever the reason,

01:28:33.180 | I'm just grateful to my colleague, Dr. David Spiegel,

01:28:36.140 | who again is our associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford.

01:28:38.460 | He's a medical doctor of incredibly highly esteemed

01:28:41.380 | worldwide for his work on neuroplasticity

01:28:44.220 | and helping people with stress and anxiety

01:28:46.300 | and all sorts of other challenges for informing me about it.

01:28:51.100 | So much so that I've decided that next month,

01:28:53.060 | I'm going to do one bout of writing

01:28:56.740 | for each week within that month.

01:28:58.480 | I've opted to not do the four consecutive days of writing.

01:29:01.500 | To me, just personally, that seems a bit too intense.

01:29:04.620 | It's not the time commitment.

01:29:06.140 | It's the emotional commitment of placing myself

01:29:09.060 | into close proximity of some really challenging,

01:29:12.340 | stressful, maybe even traumatic memories,

01:29:15.560 | day after day after day for four days.

01:29:17.420 | Personally, I don't want to do that.

01:29:18.660 | Other people might opt to do that in tighter succession

01:29:21.640 | and do the four days in a row.

01:29:23.860 | What the literature tells us again

01:29:25.180 | is that it doesn't really matter.

01:29:27.460 | As long as you do the four bouts of writing,

01:29:30.080 | sometime within a month period,

01:29:32.360 | doesn't matter if they all are back-to-back days

01:29:34.840 | or you spread them out by a week or so.

01:29:37.120 | Just to recap the other components of the protocol,

01:29:40.120 | you're going to write about the same event

01:29:42.560 | for all four writing episodes.

01:29:45.500 | Those writing episodes can be anywhere

01:29:46.960 | from 15 to 30 minutes, but not less.

01:29:50.300 | Throughout each writing episode,

01:29:52.240 | you're going to continuously write, right?

01:29:54.240 | Unless you need to stop to catch your breath

01:29:55.800 | or wipe your eyes dry of tears,

01:29:57.780 | you're going to keep writing.

01:30:00.260 | It is not necessary to pay attention to grammar or spelling,

01:30:03.860 | but some degree of coherence,

01:30:05.440 | maybe not perfect complete sentences,

01:30:07.360 | but some degree of coherence is probably useful,

01:30:09.900 | especially if you decide to go back

01:30:11.280 | and analyze what you wrote later,

01:30:12.780 | which again is an option.

01:30:14.000 | You don't have to do that.

01:30:16.000 | But if you do want to do that,

01:30:16.920 | you're going to go back and circle the negative words,

01:30:20.820 | that is the words that you perceive to be negative,

01:30:22.860 | and you're going to square the words that are positive.

01:30:25.260 | And if you like, you can also reread them

01:30:27.600 | and see whether or not,

01:30:29.320 | as was observed in the studies that we described,

01:30:31.920 | there was an increase in the amount of coherence

01:30:34.960 | about the topic or the event that you wrote about.

01:30:38.680 | Keep in mind that for each of the four ballots of writing,

01:30:41.480 | you want to include both facts about the events,

01:30:44.960 | facts about how you felt and or feel about those events now,

01:30:49.840 | and third, any associations whatsoever

01:30:53.180 | that happen to come to mind about those events,

01:30:55.140 | emotional states, people in your life,

01:30:57.080 | anything past, present, or future.

01:30:58.860 | That third category of things to include

01:31:00.400 | is really open to you for anything you want to include.

01:31:02.980 | The only requirement for it to be included

01:31:04.800 | is that it's true for you.

01:31:06.360 | Keep in mind also that this writing protocol is for you.

01:31:09.440 | It is not necessarily to be shared.

01:31:12.940 | Now, there isn't a rule that says that you cannot share it

01:31:15.380 | with anybody.

01:31:16.320 | Although I do want to introduce the important caveat

01:31:18.980 | that if you are going to share it with someone,

01:31:20.820 | that person should be a dedicated healthcare,

01:31:24.960 | ideally mental healthcare professional,

01:31:27.620 | because there are data that suggest

01:31:29.320 | that when we write about traumatic and stressful events,

01:31:32.740 | while it can be very beneficial for us,

01:31:35.160 | it can actually be traumatic or challenging for people

01:31:38.300 | that we read it to.

01:31:39.740 | Now, there's huge variation around that statement.

01:31:41.600 | Certainly many of you probably know friends

01:31:43.480 | or family members or other trusted ones

01:31:45.740 | that you can talk to that would be able to hear

01:31:48.140 | about your stressful or traumatic experience

01:31:50.020 | and not be traumatized by it.

01:31:52.040 | However, it does seem that the listener

01:31:53.780 | can experience trauma and negative symptoms,

01:31:57.560 | which is challenges, sleeping, distress, et cetera,

01:32:00.300 | by hearing about very stressful events

01:32:02.360 | that have occurred to others.

01:32:03.680 | Okay, this is third-hand trauma or observational trauma,

01:32:07.680 | it's sometimes called.

01:32:09.000 | So if we were to adhere to the protocol

01:32:11.240 | as it was used in the various studies

01:32:13.560 | that form the basis for what we're talking about today,

01:32:16.440 | we would say that you are writing about something

01:32:19.240 | that is for your eyes only.

01:32:21.480 | In fact, you are welcome to tear up

01:32:23.440 | or delete the document afterwards.

01:32:25.600 | And certainly you would want to store it in a safe place

01:32:28.160 | so that it's not going to fall into hands of somebody

01:32:30.720 | that you wouldn't want seeing the contents of that writing.

01:32:33.660 | The other thing to keep in mind

01:32:34.720 | is that while it's been demonstrated over and over again,

01:32:37.160 | that over time, these bouts of writing

01:32:39.500 | lead to improvements in mental and physical health.

01:32:41.900 | As we talked about earlier, it is very normal,

01:32:45.260 | and in fact, quite likely,

01:32:46.960 | that one will feel pretty activated in the negative sense,

01:32:50.960 | that one will feel somewhat low, depressed, angry, sad,

01:32:55.420 | immediately after finishing one of these bouts of writing,

01:32:58.300 | especially if you fall into the high expressor category.

01:33:01.420 | So it's important that, as we mentioned earlier,

01:33:03.460 | that you have a buffer of time

01:33:05.140 | after which you complete the writing

01:33:06.340 | before moving into your other day's events.

01:33:08.740 | I also just personally wouldn't recommend

01:33:10.580 | that you do this writing exercise

01:33:12.400 | just prior to trying to go to sleep at night

01:33:14.840 | if the experience is especially stressful or traumatic,

01:33:17.860 | and by definition, the writing exercise

01:33:19.440 | focuses on stressful and traumatic events.

01:33:22.220 | So keep that in mind as well.

01:33:23.740 | And then as a final point, but certainly a significant one,

01:33:27.540 | is to keep in mind that if this writing protocol

01:33:30.240 | is creating in you significant enough amounts of stress,

01:33:34.480 | either psychological or physical,

01:33:36.380 | that you simply don't want to do it

01:33:38.320 | or that it's impeding other areas of life,

01:33:40.500 | by all means, just stop, okay?

01:33:42.900 | There was very little, if any, data within the papers

01:33:46.320 | that I read that indicated that people

01:33:48.700 | had to be removed from the study for this reason,

01:33:51.280 | but keep in mind that we're talking about

01:33:53.340 | purposefully delving into stressful or traumatic experiences

01:33:56.880 | and writing about them in some detail

01:33:58.620 | so it stands to reason

01:33:59.900 | that some people might not be able to tolerate that.

01:34:02.020 | And I want to strongly request that

01:34:03.980 | before anyone embark on this writing protocol,

01:34:07.080 | that you ask yourself whether or not

01:34:09.040 | you are indeed prepared to deal with the emotional state

01:34:12.760 | that might accompany faithful, accurate recollection

01:34:16.740 | of what happened, what you felt,

01:34:19.140 | and any links or experiences

01:34:21.020 | a full four times across the protocol.

01:34:23.300 | I also see no reason why you couldn't do this protocol

01:34:26.220 | for something that wasn't the most stressful

01:34:28.680 | or traumatic event in your life,

01:34:30.300 | but rather take your first pass at this protocol

01:34:33.940 | with something that was very stressful,

01:34:36.260 | maybe even traumatic,

01:34:37.320 | but perhaps not the most traumatic event

01:34:39.480 | as a way of sampling whether or not it's for you.

01:34:41.320 | In fact, I plan to do that.

01:34:42.780 | In reviewing the literature

01:34:44.360 | and preparing for today's episode,

01:34:45.860 | I wrote down two things, possibly three,

01:34:48.940 | that I would want to write about,

01:34:50.740 | and then I rated them one through three,

01:34:52.860 | one being the most stressful, perhaps even traumatic,

01:34:55.940 | the other being less stressful,

01:34:57.420 | and the third, the least stressful of the three,

01:34:59.580 | and decided to go with writing about

01:35:01.740 | the second in that list,

01:35:03.380 | that is the moderately stressful AK traumatic event

01:35:06.740 | as a way to first wade into this protocol.

01:35:09.680 | But I will adhere to the protocol.

01:35:11.740 | I'm going to write about that same thing four times

01:35:13.960 | as opposed to switching from one event to the next

01:35:16.580 | midway through the protocol.

01:35:17.680 | So I am going to adhere to the protocol.

01:35:20.040 | I'll certainly be happy to get back to you

01:35:21.700 | and let you know how it goes.

01:35:23.180 | I invite you, if you like,

01:35:25.260 | to embrace this protocol, to try it.

01:35:27.900 | We've provided links to the literature

01:35:29.700 | that supports this protocol.

01:35:31.260 | Again, it's very rare.

01:35:32.920 | Perhaps the first time that I've ever done

01:35:34.540 | an entire podcast episode about a single protocol

01:35:37.820 | or to formulate an entire podcast around a protocol.

01:35:40.960 | But frankly, I don't look at this protocol

01:35:43.380 | from Pennebaker and Collies as just a protocol.

01:35:45.700 | I look at it as an entire body of literature

01:35:48.180 | that includes a center of massive data

01:35:50.800 | that all seem to point in the same direction,

01:35:53.180 | which is that writing about something very stressful

01:35:56.220 | or traumatic for 15 to 30 minutes,

01:35:58.680 | four times, either on consecutive days

01:36:00.820 | or separated out by a week between each of those

01:36:03.160 | four writing sessions can produce long lasting

01:36:06.020 | positive effects on mental and physical health.

01:36:08.540 | And to me, that's a protocol that is simply too valuable

01:36:12.140 | to overlook and simply too valuable to not share with you.

01:36:15.920 | If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast,

01:36:18.140 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

01:36:19.840 | That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

01:36:22.420 | In addition, please subscribe to the podcast

01:36:24.480 | on both Spotify and Apple.

01:36:26.220 | And on both Spotify and Apple,

01:36:27.400 | you can leave us up to a five star review.

01:36:29.400 | Please check out the sponsors mentioned

01:36:30.760 | at the beginning of today's episode.

01:36:32.400 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

01:36:34.940 | If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast,

01:36:37.480 | or topics or guests that you'd like me to consider

01:36:39.400 | for the Huberman Lab podcast,

01:36:40.980 | please put those in the comments section on YouTube.

01:36:43.320 | I do read all the comments.

01:36:45.040 | Not on today's episode,

01:36:46.160 | but on many previous episodes of the Huberman Lab podcast,

01:36:48.680 | we discussed supplements.

01:36:49.900 | While supplements aren't necessary for everybody,

01:36:52.000 | many people derive tremendous benefit from them

01:36:54.000 | for things like improving sleep, for hormone support,

01:36:56.320 | and for improving focus.

01:36:57.760 | To learn more about the supplements discussed

01:36:59.320 | on the Huberman Lab podcast,

01:37:00.760 | you can go to Live Momentus, spelled O-U-S.

01:37:03.600 | So it's livemomentus.com/huberman.

01:37:06.320 | If you're not already following me on social media,

01:37:08.600 | I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

01:37:11.480 | So that's Instagram, Twitter, now called X,

01:37:14.120 | LinkedIn, Facebook, and Threads.

01:37:15.960 | And on all of those platforms,

01:37:17.140 | I discuss science and science related tools,

01:37:19.300 | some of which overlap with the contents

01:37:20.740 | of the Huberman Lab podcast,

01:37:21.880 | but much of which are distinct from the contents

01:37:23.920 | of the Huberman Lab podcast.

01:37:25.120 | So again, it's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

01:37:28.360 | If you haven't already subscribed

01:37:29.480 | to our neural network newsletter,

01:37:30.880 | the neural network newsletter is a monthly newsletter

01:37:33.080 | that's completely zero cost,

01:37:34.480 | that includes podcast summaries, as well as toolkits.

01:37:37.560 | Toolkits are brief PDFs that describe protocols

01:37:40.000 | for things like neuroplasticity, for improving your sleep,

01:37:43.360 | for dopamine regulation, for exercise flexibility,

01:37:46.400 | and on and on.

01:37:47.240 | Again, all completely zero cost.

01:37:48.600 | To sign up for the neural network newsletter,

01:37:50.080 | you simply go to HubermanLab.com, go to the menu tab,

01:37:53.240 | scroll down to newsletter, and put your email there.

01:37:55.640 | You'll receive an email, and if you approve,

01:37:57.160 | you'll start receiving the monthly newsletter.

01:37:59.200 | Again, it's completely zero cost,

01:38:00.640 | and I want to point out that we do not

01:38:02.040 | share your email with anybody.

01:38:03.920 | Thank you for joining for today's episode,

01:38:05.440 | where we discussed a journaling protocol

01:38:07.760 | that has been demonstrated in the scientific literature

01:38:09.800 | to significantly improve mental and physical health.

01:38:12.760 | And last, but certainly not least,

01:38:15.020 | thank you for your interest in science.

01:38:16.800 | (upbeat music)

01:38:19.380 | (upbeat music)

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

Chapters