Alchemize Your Anger and Anxiety | Suleika Jaouad
Suleika Jaouad, author of "The Book of Alchemy," discusses how journaling has helped her process emotions during multiple leukemia recurrences. She shares how this creative practice transforms difficult experiences into meaning and agency, offering prompts from her new book.
Deep Dive Analysis
11 Topic Outline
Introduction to Suleika Jaouad and the Power of Journaling
Suleika's Journey with Recurrent Leukemia and Redefining Health
Bianca's Personal Connection to Illness and Identity
Journaling's Transformative Role During Illness and Confinement
The 100-Day Creative Project and Family Communication
Introduction to 'The Book of Alchemy' and Journaling Prompts
Exploring 'The Mind Map' Prompt for Memory Excavation
George Saunders' Empathy-Focused Short Story Prompt
Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Letters from Love' for Self-Compassion
Journaling as a 'Team Sport' and the Benefits of Community
Journaling as a Form of Meditation and Overcoming Resistance
5 Key Concepts
Alchemy (through journaling)
This concept describes the process of transforming difficult or seemingly worthless experiences and emotions into something precious, meaningful, and valuable, such as insights, agency, or purpose, through the act of journaling and reflection.
Porous Border Between Sick and Well
This idea challenges the binary view of health, suggesting that the distinction between being sick and well is not rigid but fluid, with individuals often existing in a 'messy middle' where these states overlap and interact.
Over-determined and Under-considered Life
This refers to a state where one's life feels dictated by external circumstances and an overwhelming influx of information, leading to a lack of intentional reflection, personal narrative control, and a sense of being driven rather than choosing one's path.
Focused, Unfocused Sensation (in journaling)
Similar to meditation, this describes a mental state in journaling where one allows their mind to wander freely, starting with an seemingly unrelated topic, which can unexpectedly lead to profound insights about deeper personal questions or challenges.
Self-Loathing as a Western Concept
This highlights self-loathing as a widely normalized and accepted, yet insidious, cultural phenomenon, particularly in Western societies, that often hinders self-compassion and the ability to engage in kind, internal dialogue.
7 Questions Answered
Journaling provides a private space to be one's messiest, unedited self, allowing for conversation with oneself, processing trauma, and gaining a sense of agency and narrative control over one's life, even in limiting circumstances.
Consistent journaling has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety, increase immune response, and improve sleep, memory, focus, time management, and decision-making by providing a space for daily pause and reflection.
Using prompts can help 'twist the cylinder of the kaleidoscope' and allow light to fall differently, spurring new directions and unexpected insights, even if the initial topic seems unrelated to one's main quandaries.
Prompts that encourage inhabiting different points of view, especially those of people one feels aversion towards, can be an exercise in empathy, helping to understand perspectives beyond one's own and challenge preconceived narratives.
Self-loathing is a common and insidious concept, making it challenging to inhabit a 'voice of love' towards oneself, even though it's an exercise that often reveals what one truly needs to hear.
Yes, doing journaling in a community can supercharge creativity by providing accountability, energy, and inspiration, and can lead to shared vulnerability and connection, transforming individual struggles into collective understanding.
By treating first drafts as personal journal entries, writers can trick their brains out of performance anxiety, allowing for freedom, experimentation, and ease, without the pressure of audience, critics, or deadlines.
15 Actionable Insights
1. Journaling for Emotional Alchemy
Practice journaling to reduce stress and anxiety, increase immune response, sleep, memory, focus, time management, and decision-making. It helps process difficult emotions, transforming them into something meaningful and providing a sense of agency.
2. Redefine Health Beyond Metrics
Shift your definition of health from blood results to how you want your life to feel right now. Ask what isn’t in sync with the life you need to live to feel good, then make changes, recognizing the porous border between “sick” and “well.”
3. Solve for the Now
Avoid “time traveling” to the future to solve unknowns, as this causes anxiety. Instead, focus on “solving for the now” to counteract anxiety (overfixation on the future) and depression (overfixation on the past).
4. Journaling for Creative Flow
Use journaling as a space for free writing and experimentation, especially for first drafts, to bypass self-censorship. This helps tap into intuition, generate unexpected insights, and overcome creative blocks by writing without judgment.
5. Embrace Meditation Struggles
When meditating, recognize that struggles like distraction are normal and part of the practice, not a sign of doing it wrong. The point is to observe what’s happening in your mind to gain clarity and avoid being “owned by it.”
6. 100-Day Creative Project
Commit to one creative act daily for 100 days, such as journaling, to establish a consistent practice. This structured approach provides accountability, helps push through resistance, and fosters creativity.
7. Journaling for Vulnerable Communication
Use journaling to articulate feelings you might not say aloud, giving language to difficult emotions. This practice fosters connection, reduces shame by bringing hidden thoughts to light, and helps you find words to communicate with loved ones.
8. Community Journaling for Accountability
Engage in journaling within a community (known individuals or strangers) to generate accountability and energy. This “team sport” approach helps maintain consistent practice, overcome resistance, break repetitive loops, and draw inspiration from others.
9. Prompts for Journaling Exploration
Use journaling prompts to break free from repetitive thought loops and explore unexpected ideas. You can follow the prompt, write about why you dislike it, or let it spark an entirely different direction, allowing for new perspectives.
10. Mind Map Memory Excavation
Practice “Mind Map” journaling by starting with a year in the center of a page, then free-associating big events, and from those, free-associating more events. This technique excavates deeper memories and insights by following subconscious connections.
11. Indirect Journaling for Insight
If directly addressing a problem feels too heavy, try writing about descriptive or seemingly unrelated topics. This indirect approach can help you let go, leading you in a roundabout way to new angles and unexpected insights for unsolved problems.
12. Empathy Through Character Prompt
Use George Saunders’ multi-step prompt to write a short story from different characters’ perspectives, especially someone you feel aversion towards. This exercise in inhabiting another’s point of view cultivates empathy and challenges your own narratives.
13. Write “Letters from Love”
Write a letter to yourself from “the voice of love” or “dear love, what would you have me know today?” This practice challenges self-loathing, fosters a more compassionate internal dialogue, and helps you hear what you need.
14. Couples Journaling for Connection
For couples, write journal entries addressed to each other (e.g., three pages daily), then share them. This uncovers deeper thoughts and feelings that might not emerge in quick conversations, fostering connection and understanding.
15. Write What You Don’t Know
For profound self-discovery, write not just what you don’t want others to know, but especially what you don’t want to know about yourself. This approach uncovers deeper, often uncomfortable, truths that are most valuable.
7 Key Quotes
To describe my life as a roller coaster is an insult to roller coasters.
Suleika Jaouad
I can't anchor my sense of hope in a miracle. I need to be good with where my life is right now, regardless of what's happening in my body and in my biopsy results, because none of us know what the future holds.
Suleika Jaouad
Depression is an overfixation on the past. Anxiety is an overfixation on the future and the antidote to that is solving for the now.
Suleika Jaouad
The greatest antidote to shame is sunlight.
Nadia Boltzweber (quoted by Suleika Jaouad)
The second I write something down, it consumes me less. I've taken it out of my body and placed it onto the page.
Suleika Jaouad
When we dare to be vulnerable, it creates a reverberation where vulnerability begets vulnerability begets vulnerability.
Suleika Jaouad
A good book, write what you don't want others to know about you. If you want to write a great book, write what you don't want to know about yourself.
Suleika Jaouad
3 Protocols
100-Day Creative Project
Suleika Jaouad- Commit to one creative act a day for 100 days.
- Choose a creative act that feels easy and has no strict rules (e.g., journaling).
- Push through initial resistance and commit to the daily practice.
- Use the journal as a 'reporter's notebook' to write about everything, including fears, mundane aspects, and deeper reflections.
- Allow the practice to foster a sense of agency, narrative control, and help reroute priorities.
Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Letters from Love' Journaling Prompt
Elizabeth Gilbert (described by Suleika Jaouad)- Address your journal entry with 'Dear Love'.
- Ask the question, 'What would you have me know today?'.
- Write the response from the 'voice of love,' allowing for unexpected insights.
- (Optional variation) Address the prompt as 'Dear Fear' and write the response from the 'voice of fear.'
Couples Journaling for Connection
John Batiste (described by Suleika Jaouad)- Instead of individual journaling, each partner writes three pages addressed to the other.
- Snap a photo of the written pages.
- Text the photo to each other.
- Continue this practice to foster deeper communication and share thoughts/feelings that might not emerge in quick conversations.