E148 - Your Busy Brain Needs Poetry (and Time to Journal) Guest, Bri McLaughlin

Poetry is having a moment. And your busy brain needs it! ✍️

This week on Create Today, Beth sits down with Bri McLaughlin, LCSW, a bilingual therapist, and poetry therapist in training at Connections Health in Evanston, Illinois.

Together Beth and Bri explore how a poem and a few minutes minutes with a journal can calm anxious thoughts, quiet your inner critic, and finally give words to feelings you couldn't name.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• What poetry therapy actually is (bibliotherapy, ritual, metaphor, and group sharing)

• Why you need zero writing experience to benefit

• Why reading a poem out loud, helps you feel and find hidden understanding

• How a five-minute free write, with no spelling, grammar, or punctuation rules, pushes back on perfectionism

• The unsent letter: says the important things you need to say to someone

• The bonfire "burn boxes" from one of Beth's creative retreats

• What psychologist James Pennebaker's research found when people spent a few short sessions writing about hard experiences: fewer doctor visits and measurable changes in immune markers

• How a journaling exercise turns a poem into a mirror for your busy brain’s worries and anxiety