Hello and happy Sunday!

This week, I've been looking at what is available in the evolving world of digital journaling apps. As technology continues to weave into our daily lives, it is fascinating to me how digital platforms are being used for journaling. Over the past 5 years I have often wondered how advanced things might get with the blending of CBT techniques into digital journaling apps. There are some pretty useful apps out there for noticing our thoughts and feelings and keeping track of our moods. But like with any new habit, they can be hard to keep doing.

Biases

I think it is the same with general journaling too. We do it when we need to do it and forget about it at other times. I asked a few people this week about how often they journal and the most common response was "I do it when I need to". This makes complete sense. But what can happen is that the databank you collect in your journal is skewed towards the struggles and the upsetting thoughts and feelings. If we are only writing when we are upset, then we only have journal entries about being upset. What about the other feelings? 

Our brains are geared towards mainly only noticing things that go wrong, rather than noticing what goes well. It is this natural bias that gratitude journaling tries to correct. Though it can be hard to maintain that also!

Setting aside a regular time each week or month

One way through this could be to journal at the same time and day every week. You then capture whatever is on your mind that week using a free-write, and then process any strong feelings whatever they may be. This gives a mixture of feelings because you are allowing a mixture of all of the feelings from the past week to be noted. This is what I do. I find it is a helpful offload and resetting practice. It also helps me to notice patterns that pop up.

Handwriting, Typing, or......speaking?

I write my journal by hand, because every time I test other methods, I find that I write differently when I write by hand. The content seems to go beneath the surface level more quickly than when I am typing. But, it could be that I have trained myself through years of practice, so maybe I could train myself to do this by typing too.

Audio journaling

An alternative to either of these, is speaking into an app to journal. This week I started testing a voice-based journaling app called 'Audio Diary'. I am sure there are many of them and I intend to do a bit more research on this area. With Audio Diary, you press record and speak whatever is on your mind, and it feeds back the transcript and then three suggestions based on what you have said. It was strange to see it feed back quite personal recommendations to me. I did think that it could have been a bit more detailed and deeper with the recommendations, but I am a CBT Therapist and so I would say that!

Privacy

The main concern I have about this is of course the privacy issue. The app states that it uses Open Ai's functionality but that Open Ai is not being trained on our data. This appears to be a custom GPT that is not connected to the wider Open Ai algorithym. However it did not state if it was private to each of us, or private to the app as a whole. My guess is it is likely to be the latter, which would mean that each user's data is collectively gathered by the app. In the terms and conditions it does read as though the data is gathered collectively in order to deliver the service. 

Privacy is an important issue if we are going to use digital journaling apps. I am being much more diligent with terms and conditions lately. I will admit I have skimmed them in the past and not read them as carefully as I should have done. It feels as though the days of skimming over the small print and 'terms and conditions' links are definitely over for me.

I know that these apps need data to be used, and if I want the service then I need to offer the data. I have no issue with this, but I do want to know that the data is being used responsibly. However, what does that really look like with ai data? This is the balance if we are going to use digital journaling apps. I think they offer valuable help for us to increase our self awareness and emotional wellbeing skills. We just need to be mindful of those apps that may be less concerned with the responsible use of our private data. We need to read the terms and conditions and not skim over them!

Just a few of my thoughts this week, but I am interested to hear if you use any digital journaling apps and what your thoughts are on them or on the privacy issues with regards to them.

Random image of forest trees

I took this the other day near our house and thought you might like to see it. I am a lover of tall forest trees. They help me put things into perspective if I am rattled about the small stuff. 

Until next Sunday, 

Hope you have a lovely week.

Donna

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As always, I'm here to support your journey in finding the best ways to express and process your emotions. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or need assistance in choosing the right approach for you.