A Writing Protocol To Permanently Lower Stress Levels
Writing has been proven to have the power to permanently lower stress levels 🤯
As someone who writes daily, I am not surprised at this power. That said, I am surprised at the protocol (workflow) that brings about this permanent change.
Huberman’s Writing Protocol Analysis
A few weeks ago, Andrew Huberman (renowned neuroscientist, Podcaster, YouTuber, and professor at Stanford University) released a 2 hour podcast on a specific writing protocol that has been shown to permanently lower stress and anxiety levels.
How is that possible? How can a single writing exercise have such incredible power?
Let’s take a look ✨
Recalibrating Recap
Welcome to Recalibrating! My name is Callum (@_wanderloots)
Join me each week as I learn to better life in every way possible, reflecting and recalibrating along the way to keep from getting too lost.
Thanks for sharing the journey with me ✨
I am excited to announce that I have launched the first YouTube video in the Recalibrating series. This video series will provide complementary context to this newsletter. I would love to hear your thoughts ✨
Last week, we touched on the different styles of intuition and how intuition differs from instinct. I explained the concept of neuroplasticity (rewiring the brain) and how we can leverage neuroplasticity to improve our experience.
I also announced the launch of Worldbuilding, the practical counterpart to Recalibrating. Worldbuilding includes content available only to my paying subscribers, including step-by-step tutorials, more context, and access to a private chat.
This week, I am mixing it up a bit by providing a deep dive into a neuroscientific writing protocol outlined by Andrew Huberman that has been shown to permanently alter stress levels.
I provide my key takeaways from the 2 hour podcast on this peer-reviewed writing protocol and how they apply directly to my daily and weekly writing. This writing forms my digital mind (second brain), which will power the dataset for my personal AI system.
Key Takeaways: The Writing Protocol
- Truth-telling: truth is essential for reconstructing a coherent narrative of the self, enabling the permanent change to our worldview through neuroplasticity.
- Language: vocabulary we use on a regular basis has a massive impact on psychology.
- Linking: connecting thoughts between the past, present, and future is more powerful than you can imagine.
🚨 Warning 🚨
Before you consider experimenting with this writing protocol, I want to emphasize that reflecting and writing about traumatic (or high negative emotion) experiences can itself be traumatic.
If you struggle with mental health, consider discussing this protocol with a mental health professional before experimenting or plan to have a professional you can talk to after you do the experiment.
Alternatively, consider starting with a less emotional negative experience than the most traumatic experience you have ever experienced.
If you begin to feel mentally overwhelmed more than feels safe, you can stop writing at any moment. Huberman emphasizes this point repeatedly over the 2 hour podcast.
Warnings out of the way, let’s dive in.
The 4 x Writing Protocol
The writing protocol is relatively simple:
- Spend 15-30 minutes continuously writing about a traumatic experience.
- Repeat this writing exercise four times.
In other words, write about the same traumatic experience four times (on different days).
The four times can be four days in a row, or once a week for four weeks (I personally think once a week sounds more emotionally reasonable). The writing can handwritten or typed; it makes no difference to the emotional outcome.
7 Main Factors Of The Writing Protocol:
In each bout of writing, you should consider the following 7 factors:
- Write about something you worry about too much or have suppressed (perhaps something that is having an unhealthy impact on your life);
- Write in full sentences;
- Write about the FACTS of what happened (who, what, when, where, why, how);
- Write about the EMOTIONS at the time of the experience and the emotions you are feeling while writing;
- As you write, make links between the past, present, and future (if what you are writing makes you think of something “unrelated”, write it down anyways);
- As you write, do not self-monitor (don’t worry about what you’re writing, just let it out);
- Consider: how has this experience shaped who you are and who you would like to be?
This writing will be uncomfortable (confronting negative memories always is), but that’s the point. It’s not meant to feel good, it’s meant to heal. It’s meant to recalibrate your sense of self by updating your understanding based on new information since the event.
By confronting the narrative of our past traumatic (or negative) experience, we allow ourselves to deeply explore an experience that, in our everyday lives, we probably do our best not to think about.
We are our experiences.
2 more things to keep in mind:
- If you feel overwhelmed and unable to continue, STOP (it’s okay 😊 maybe consider talking to a professional about why you couldn’t complete the exercise);
- Write for YOU, just let the words flow out (no one else will read this).
This summary is not meant to be an exhaustive overview of what Huberman discussed. I believe writing to be one of the most powerful tools we can leverage in our daily lives, based on my own experience and understanding of neuroscience and noticed many similarities to this writing protocol. If you want to go deeper into the neuroscience, I suggest listening to the full podcast.
The Writing Protocol vs Being A Writer
The difficulty I foresee with this writing protocol is that the prompt is to write for 15-30 minutes about the most traumatic experience of your life. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like an emotionally draining experience. Maybe not the best time during the dreary Toronto winter when my Vitamin D is lower than usual.
While I see the value in performing this protocol to permanently lower my stress levels (maybe once a year or once every few years), I believe that regular writing about softer and less traumatizing topics can still provide significant benefits in daily life.
Writing regularly has literally changed my life. I am smarter, I process information faster, I learn more quickly, and, perhaps most importantly, my self-awareness and mindfulness have increased to levels I’ve never experienced before.
There are many different parts of myself. One of these selves is a writer (see here for more discussion on self and story). Each day, I take notes on what I learn and how it applies to my experience. I use writing to process information and solve problems, while sharing what I learn with others.
I am excited to use this writing, a written record of my experience, to train a personal AI assistant (business advisor, marketer, content creator, potential therapist, accountant, lawyer, etc.) based on my particular way of experiencing life.
By the end of this entry, you will have a broad overview of my personal daily writing ritual and also an understanding of the tools I use to build a digital mind. This digital mind is compatible with my own personal artificial intelligence system, calibrated to me personally.
I believe this digital mind, this second brain, will be the most valuable asset I ever build.
It all starts with writing.
It all starts now ✨
3 Reasons Why The Writing Protocol Works
These are a few of my main takeaways from the Huberman Podcast. These concepts apply not only to the trauma writing protocol, but also:
- my understanding of how writing and creation have changed my own life (quitting my job and starting this weekly newsletter 27 weeks ago)
- my understanding of what makes a valuable artificial intelligence system (my research over the last 27 weeks)
- my understanding of what makes an idea “good” (my experience as an IP lawyer and patent agent)
(1) Trauma And Our Desire For Truth
Trauma is/are experience(s) that modify our neural circuitry so that we do not function as well, emotionally, behaviourally, or cognitively moving forward from that experience.
Our brains develop and change through neuroplasticity. As a child, this rewiring of our brain occurs passively. Our nervous system is a prediction machine. As a child, we are in a sensitive period that creates a deterministic map for our nervous system moving forward.
As an adult, this neuroplasticity does not occur as passively; we must put in effort to experience novelty (atypical states) to trigger the brain to change. Unfortunately, many people do not trigger this change, instead allowing the brain wiring of the past dictate the truth of our future.
Everyone has stress in life, many people have trauma. This stress/trauma can be stored in your nervous system like a deterministic memory. For example, if X happens, I can expect Y to happen (whether or not that is still true).
Speaking of truth, that is a core aspect (in theory) of why this writing protocol is successful.
We are our experiences. Our experiences thread together to form the tapestry that is life, weaving together our story. But sometimes, our brain likes to hide some of the threads of colour that make up the bigger picture (often unconsciously).
We create a narrative for ourselves that helps us cope with life. We tell ourselves a story, but sometimes leave out a few pieces so that the story is easier to deal with.
In a sense, we have either forgotten these pieces our lied to our selfs about what the true story is.
By writing down what happened, 4 times, we can better recall the events of the experience and begin to identify the holes in our story. We are forced to confront our blocks, our pains. Our reality.
We can then reflect on those holes with the knowledge we have gained since that experience occurred. We can reconstruct (recalibrate) the story of our self.
Truth-telling is essential for reconstructing a coherent narrative of the self.
But to tell the truth, we must recalibrate our understanding of the event. We must link the knowledge we have now to the state of mind we had back then.
Our state of mind has changed. Our understanding of the difficult experience is due for an upgrade.
(2) Linking Our Thinking (Strategically)
Linking thoughts between the past, present, and future is more powerful than you can imagine.
Some of our experiences have a greater impact on our lives than others. Both good and bad. However, we tend to struggle more with the bad ones.
Often, bad experiences are ones that we do not understand. What exactly happened? Perhaps we were too young to understand or the experience was so shocking that we literally could not make sense of it at the time.
Our nervous system remembers this experience, including that we did not understand it. Accordingly, that experience is “flagged” in a way that we know to avoid it and avoid thinking about it in the future.
But we are not the same person we were when that experience occurred. Literally terabytes of information (if not more) have passed through your brain since that moment. Those flags are out of date.
Revisiting a traumatic/negative emotional experience four times helps us remember old connections and make new ones. We can link our new understanding of the world back to the time the event occurred and use that strengthened connection to better course our future.
Modern technology such as a digital mind (second brain) allow for better linking of our thinking than ever before; more on that below.
It is important to remember that we are not our past and that our future is not set in stone. Our current self has changed and evolved greatly since the traumatic event occurred.
We have learned new words and can now tell better stories.
(3) Vocabulary – A Window To Our Well-Being
Our vocabulary is a window to our well-being.
Language, the vocabulary used on a regular basis has a massive impact on who we are. Words have power, they shape the stories we tell of our selfs.
The words we choose to explain our experiences give us psychological insight into who we are and how we are mentally doing. If a person uses more negative words than more positive, they are generally more anxious or depressive. If a person uses more positive than negative words, they are generally happier.
Words have power.
The narrative we tell ourselves (our truth) and the words we use to craft that story can impact who we are. But the reverse is also true.
By learning to pay attention to our vocabulary and how we frame our experiences, we can gain incredible insight on our problems and how we can improve our experiences moving forward.
We can learn to give more weight to certain words, guiding our intuition when writing or solving problems.
Benefits Of The Writing Protocol: The Mind Body Connection
Undergoing this writing protocol can permanently lower stress levels. My understanding is that by reframing the narrative we tell ourselves (our truth), we are able to approach future situations with less confusion and stress. Forever.
Huberman discussed a number of other benefits from this protocol that arise from an impact on the immune system.
Our mind and body are connected, our emotions can shape our physical response. By disclosing trauma (writing about the stressful experience), the immune system itself can be impacted. Kind of like getting a stress vaccine.
The benefits of this experiment may be a reduction in symptoms of: depression, PTSD, anxiety, insomnia, arthritis, cancer, lupous, fibro mialgia, IBS, and more (Huberman explains each of these in more depth in the podcast).
Applying The Writing Protocol Principles To My Digital Brain
In my experience, these three principles: (1) truth-telling; (2) linking thinking between the past, present, and future; and (3) personalized vocabulary selection, go beyond the specific writing protocol analyzed by Huberman.
These principles apply to writing as a philosophy and a life-changing habit.
When we refuse to face the truth of our own narrative, we are left with a confusion of responsibility. The mind does not know what to think and the body does not know how to respond. We are incoherent.
Instead of leaving that loop open forever in a perpetual state of confusion, we can take the time to revisit the past and close that loop, learning how to move forward.
Writing provides an opportunity to take our muddled thoughts and put them into containers (words) that force us to confront our self, like holding a mirror to the ego.
Here is how I use these principles to build my digital mind (my second brain), completely changing the way I approach my life:
MY Writing Protocol
Each of the dots shown above is a note (node). Each of the lines is a link between notes (an edge).
Each day, I create one or more notes and then take time to link them to existing notes. I am literally linking my thinking, connecting between days, months, and (eventually) years…
💰 🧱 🏠 🌎 PAYWALL
The rest of this entry is paywalled for my paid members on Substack.
Next week
Next week, I will provide a year in review of Recalibrating 2024 as I plan for the new year.
Stay tuned ✨
P.S. If you are interested in learning how I build my digital mind (second brain) to help me process information and identify patterns to solve my problems, please consider upgrading your subscription to paid. Your support means more than you know 😌 ✨
Paid subscribers get full access to Worldbuilding, a practical counterpoint to the theories described in Recalibrating. You also get access to a private chat and bonus explanations exclusive to paying members 👀
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