Alchemize Your Anger and Anxiety | Suleika Jaouad

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, one of the questions we come back to time and again on this show is What do you do when you're in the grip of anxiety, anger, uncertainty, or any other excruciating state of mind? Today we're going to talk about how to alchemize difficult emotions through journaling.

Just to say, and you may have heard me say this before, journaling is one of those practices that for years I reflexively rejected until I saw The science, and there is a lot of science here, according to the research, journaling can be an effective way to reduce stress and anxiety, and that's not all. Various forms of journaling practice have been shown to increase immune response, sleep, memory, focus, time management, and decision making. My guest today has used journaling in some quite extreme circumstances. Suleika Jawad is in the midst of her third round of treatment for leukemia.

You may know Zuleka's story, but just to fill you in quickly, she burst onto the national scene during her first round of leukemia treatment when she was 22 years old. From her hospital bed at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City, she started writing a New York Times column called Life Interrupted that got very popular. She followed that up with a best-selling memoir called Between Two Kingdoms, and she came on this show to discuss that book. I'll put a link in the show notes. What I didn't know during that appearance was that she was experiencing the early stages of a recurrence of leukemia, and as she was treated for that second round of leukemia, it was captured on film in a documentary about Suleika and her husband, the very popular musician John Batiste.

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