(Disclaimer: This transcript was made using AI technology. Please excuse any errors.)

Music 0:00
Welcome to the Atheists in Recovery podcast, where we talk about finding hope in recovery. And now your host, Dr. Adina Silvestri,

Adina Silvestri 0:11
Hello Atheists in Recovery, and welcome to Episode 89 of the Atheists in Recovery Podcast, where it's my job to address the spiritual and scientific belief systems of people in long term recovery in order to deconstruct their limiting thought patterns and introduce new behaviors, and routines you can use. And today, we are talking about journaling, but it's a it's a solo episode, and it's a brief episode, we're gonna talk about journaling, a couple of reasons why I love it, and the April pause. And so let's start with the pause. every couple of months, I take a pause from the podcast and regroup a little bit, see what I want the next couple of months to look like and focus on self care, sometimes I'm even getting a bit ahead with the podcast, sometimes I don't. But in the meantime, you want to, this is a good time to catch up on the episodes, episodes, one through 88, or maybe even re listen to a couple of your favorites. I also hope to send out a little survey via the newsletter and social media. And I would love it if you guys participated so that I can continue to create content that you guys are interested in. And and hopefully that is that is helpful on your journey in recovery. All right, so we talked about the April pause. And let's now go to journaling. I'm going to give you guys three reasons that I really love journaling. And I hope to make a more in depth episode on this in the future. But this is just a little bit of a taste of why I love it, why I think you should be using it, how I use it in my practice, with the individuals that I see that are in recovery or maybe new to recovery. So number one, self awareness, I believe that journaling can be used as a reflection tool. And I you know, this is something that I use in my own life daily, probably, if not once a day, maybe twice a day, a couple times a day. So using journaling as a reflection tool is great, because you just think about your day, maybe you didn't have such a great one. Maybe, you know, you're not really sure why you are in that horrible mood and lashed out at your family or loved ones? Well, you can't really change anything until you become aware of it. And there are, there's a lot of research out there that says that journaling can reframe trauma. So write your day, you know, do it at a scale of one to 10 maybe or however you want to do it. I use integers because I'm a little bit strange. But do it however you feel comfortable doing it and you know, you'll you'll start to track it. And over time you'll see patterns, you know, okay, so these days were all in my book nines or 10s 10 being the highest. What was different about me and these days, oh, okay, I was connecting with people that really, I enjoy being around or I was with my friends or I was creating or I was volunteering, you know, just, it's just a great way to look back on a lot of data and see what the trends are. Number two, tracking. So this is pretty similar to number one. But with number two, you're doing a lot. So let's just look at tracking money for an example. I have some of you writing in saying that money is an issue. budgeting is an issue. I hear you, I'm with you, I understand you. I and you know, I think that I only really started becoming better with my own finances when I started tracking them. And so track how you spend, notice where the holes are in your budgets. Once you can track that, then you can start to make measurable goals in order to work towards some sort of progress. And if you have a general goal, like I'm going to save more money well that's not really trackable, but if you have a very clear small, measurable, attainable, realistic, goal time sensitive goal like

You know, like the acronym S.M.A.R.T. It's so much easier to track. You know, I'm going to make a budget, and I'm going to, you know, every Friday, I'm going to make sure that, you know, I'm, I'm still sticking with it, or maybe it's twice a month or however you want to do it, probably not twice a month. That doesn't seem like a good plan. But so you can really measure anything, you can measure your cravings, you can measure your moods, your eating. They have trackable apps for measuring your eating. You can measure your sobriety day, your sobriety days, that you guys know, they definitely have apps for that. And if you need to know of some I can, I can definitely help you with that. And I think also, there's an episode that I can dig up that talks about all about technology and recovery. And so I could well use that episode, and I'll stick it in the show notes. But so tracking is really so journaling is really great for for tracking, you know, you're becoming more aware, and you're tracking how you're doing, you're making sure that the goals again are trackable, and the way that they're trackable is that they're not General, you know, they're they're measurable, they're attainable, the realistic, they're time sensitive, okay? And then the third one is, imagining your future self. So Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. journaling is the ultimate tool of self creation. So for most people, identity is past centric. I'm an alcoholic, I'm a drug addict. I'm a gambler, sex addict, you're using your journal to imagine your future self. And, you know, we do this a lot with hypnotherapy. And if you have listened to any of my solo episodes on hypnotherapy, you know that this is all we do is talk about scripting. So you're scripting out your identity. And then when you're having a bad day, you go back to that script, you go back to the person that you want to be. And I think one of the things I love about a is that they talk about having a sponsor. And when you have a strategy, you can turn to it immediately, when you are in the depths of despair. And you don't know how to get out of a situation you call your sponsor, if you don't feel comfortable to sponsor, you talk to a mentor, you have several mentors, you call one of them up. And so then, you know, you feel you feel better, because you have the support that you need, you have the strategy in place. And so, identity is the thing that drives your behavior. So when you use your journal, you start to define what really matters to you, you define what you care about. And then you design your identity, you design the person that you want to be. So so I just I think that journaling does a really great job with scripting. Okay, let's recap what, why journaling really is a great tool. So journaling is good for making the unconscious conscious, identifying why you had such a crappy day identifying why your moods are up or down. Why for whatever reason, you get triggered this very intense way.

Unknown Speaker 8:32
on certain days, or on certain holidays, maybe it's trauma related, right. So

Adina Silvestri 8:38
making the unconscious conscious for becoming aware. And tracking behavior, also very important. journaling is great for improving behaviors, it's great for designing your identity. It's also great for emotional regulation, when things get stressful. So you know, remember, when you're designing your identity, and its future centric, you know, this is the person that you want to be, you start to behave in alignment with that identity. I mean, it's just, it's human nature that we default to the person that we think that we are. And so if you're defaulting to your future self, then you're talking about with other people and you're sharing your future self with other people. And it creates this sort of feedback loop, which I would really love to talk about in another episode, in more detail. So this is why I think journaling is the ultimate tool. Alright guys. So I will see you guys again in May. And I hope you enjoy this episode. You can sign up for the monthly newsletter where I talk all about rituals and routines and habits and I Give you guys journaling prompts on pretty much every monthly newsletter. And hopefully you can take some of these new rituals and apply them to to your life. Something that that I hope that's nourishing to you and share it with others share it with me, I'd love that. You could sign up for the monthly newsletter at atheistsinrecovery.com and just click on the green subscribe button on the top of the homepage. And again, thanks for listening.

Bye.

Music 10:29
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