Damn, my experience with journaling is so different! I write whatever comes to my mind, usually some existential turmoil or insatisfaction. Just writing them make me feel so much better. It help the bad feeling go away and grow over it. Over time, those small changes adds up and I really think I'm someone very different than someone who I wouldn't without it.
Same for me - journaling has been huge, as it lets me get thoughts and feelings out of my head, and makes them ‘real’ where I can deal with them - even if dealing with them is just shrugging and moving it, or laughing at myself. It makes a huge difference in processing them.
Part of it is sometimes in my head they are swirling so fast they are hard to process or recognize, and if too much is going on, it gets frustrating and exhausting trying to keep coherent enough I can remember any of them enough to do anything about it, even to let them go.
Meditation also helps, though for meditation a huge part is just bringing my mind to be aware of my body too, so it can process whatever is going on there.
I find the work we do to be quite mentally stimulating - sometimes to the point of exhaustion, and without balancing it out with a corresponding amount of attention to our physical body and exercise, it’s easy to get unbalanced and unhealthy.
And since our minds sit on the foundation of our body, that is a recipe for not being in good shape overall.
