The power of putting inside thoughts on the outside.

When our minds spin in circles, as they sometimes do, or we’re feeling generally out of sorts, it can sometimes feel like there’s not enough space inside of our own heads. It’s crowded and loud in there!

And so there are a lot of benefits to putting some of that mental clutter outside of ourselves so we can hear ourselves think and feel what we’re really feeling again.

Here’s a few suggestions for why this is useful and how you might go about it.

We’ll start with how:

Talking out loud to someone you trust. It can be useful to ask for exactly what you want, so the other person knows what you need. For example, “I’d like you to listen for ten minutes and just let me vent. I don’t need any advice, I just need to feel heard”. Or perhaps you send a voice message” “Hi, I need to get some thoughts out so this is a ramble - if you have space, it’d be nice to hear that it actually makes sense to feel this way.”

Talking out loud to yourself. There’s a joke that ‘it’s okay to talk to yourself as long as you listen’ - but there’s really something to this. If you’re just talking and not really hearing yourself speak, not really present, it’s less effective than talking to yourself and hearing the sound of your own voice while you’re doing it. Kind of like you’re listening to music in the background - you’re aware of the sound of your own voice. This helps to keep you present, and helps to create a sense of getting somewhere rather than spinning in circles. Try it out and see how it feels for you.

Writing. Journalling is a handy tool that heaps of people love for a reason - it’s a useful way of slowing down your thoughts enough to write them down, and similar to listening to yourself talk, it helps you become more conscious of what’s spinning around in your mind. Often I’ll decide I really need to write everything down, and surprise myself that when I actually sit down to do it what feels like pages and pages of mess in my head is three sentences, and the amount of mental space that was being taken up was totally disproportionate to the worry.

What if it’s hard to put into words, or words aren’t cutting it?

You probably know what I’m going to say next - make art with it. Spread some colours around and express what’s going on in your head visually in some way. If you’re feeling tangled, tie knots in string. If you’re feeling angry, scrunch and rip paper. If you’re feeling lost, draw a maze of some kind, or a lost feeling scribble. There are endless possibilities.

What else?

If you don’t know the words, maybe try humming or singing or growling nonsense words out loud to yourself. Or move or dance - let your body take what’s inside and translate it in some way.

So there’s a few ideas, but why are we doing this?

We’re locating ourselves through putting some of our inner world outside of ourselves - we are here. X marks the spot. This is how I feel. And when we know where we are and how we’re feeling, it’s much easier to know where we might want to go next, even if we’re feeling blank or numb or lost. There’s more space for it, and we’re starting to alchemise it.

External expression is like a valve, releasing some of the internal pressure so we don’t explode. Avoiding spontaneous combustion is awesome for stress relief, easing some of the emotional tension we can feel when we get stuck in our own heads.

It’s also a really good way of emotional processing - figuring out and expressing how we feel allows that feeling to move through and creates space for us to feel something else. It’s rare that I guide someone through an art therapy process of drawing how they’re feeling that they feel the exact same way at the end as they did when they began, and if we do this regularly, we gradually become more self aware and more able to navigate life.

If you’re sharing some of your internal world with someone else, it can have a bunch of benefits like feeling less lonely. Having someone around who knows how to listen and can empathise with you without needing to fix how you’re feeling can be very validating.

I have a friend who I send voice messages to who is a rockstar at this - I’ll ramble into a message for five minutes bitching about everything from stubbing my toe to feeling like something I’m struggling with hasn’t changed at all since the seventh century in a completely over the top and dramatic way, and she has a way of making all of it okay just through how she listens.

Side note - this is also a good reason to have a therapist, particularly if you’re still finding ‘your people’ to navigate life with - ideally, whoever you talk to will be someone who makes you feel heard, understood and validated.

Getting some of your inside thoughts out is also a great way of problem solving. I’m finding this a lot with writing fiction - I can spend a week thinking through a plot hole and wondering what to write to make the story make sense or where it might go next, but it’s not until I sit down and start writing that I find answers and the story flows again. Same with plot holes and problems in life - letting thoughts spin around until they magically land on the answer rarely works, in my experience, and I used to be amazing at sitting on the couch for a year trying to ‘figure it out’ before I’d take any action. Turns out, that wasn’t the best strategy… we live and learn.

It can also support emotional regulation and mental clarity, and be a better coping skill than some of the habits we turn to in order to try and survive life.

Phew. That’s a lot.

So, here’s your invitation to get some of your inside thoughts out, and see what you notice for yourself.

What are some of your favourite ways? How does it help you?

And if you’d like some professional support (either someone to talk to, or you’d like to try art therapy as a way to get some of the inside stuff out), send me a message :) We can see if working together might feel fun.