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0 By Shirley Davis
I’ve not been one who enjoys journaling. In fact, I told my now-retired therapist that I was going to journal many times, but only did for a short time. Eventually, she dropped the whole idea.
However, in my recent crisis I found journaling a wonderful way to get out of my head the spinning negative thoughts that were dragging me down. It was almost as good as venting to my therapist. I wept, I shook, and I felt relief after putting it down on paper.
So, I decided to write this post and give some helpful ideas on how to do journaling. These are only suggestions, because everyone is different. I prefer to type my journal into a computer file; others buy beautiful journals or even make them to give it a more personal touch.
You may prefer to write in the first person or the third. You may decide to write several times per day or just once a week. Journaling has no right or wrong, and journals can either be private or you may decide to share your thoughts with your therapist or someone else you trust.
Five Suggestions For Journaling
One. Start by writing about where you are in this moment in your life.
Describe your living situation, where you work and the relationships you enjoy in your life. Write about what you always wanted to do for a living, in comparison to what you do now. Describe where you live, who you live with, and where you would like to be living. Talk about your relationships. Not just the amorous ones, but also your friendships.
Are you where you want to be in life? Write about that too.
Two. For five to ten minutes, write without regard to editing your thoughts or feelings.
Open up your heart and tell all. Don’t worry about proper grammar or how strange or wild your thoughts sound, just vent, vent, vent. Make sure to stick to your predetermined time limit so you don’t get stuck in negativity. After your time is up, recoup and move on.
Three. Write a message to your inner-self.
If you are living with dissociative identity disorder, write to your alters or choose one for the day. Try doing this with your opposite hand than you usually use to write. This gives your insider(s) a chance to write how they feel too.
This is a wonderful way to gain co-consciousness and cooperation in a DID system. It gives your system a way to express thoughts and feelings so that the entire system can understand the feelings of the others.
Four. Write a list of what you are grateful for today.
Don’t forget to write about the things you are grateful for. If you are feeling particularly negative that day, start with the basics. Can you see? Hear? Have you enough to eat? Do you have a place to stay? How about enough clothing to wear? Be grateful for all the small things that many people of the world do not have, to get you started.
Five. Make sure to journal about your successes.
You should start a list and add to it whenever you have a success. Is the negativity bug telling you that you have no successes to write about? Consider this. If you are a survivor of childhood trauma, you are already a major success. Start with that then build on what skills you have learned to cope with the trauma that was your childhood and with your adult life.
Six. Write in the third person about things that are triggering and disturbing to you.
This takes away some of the power of the event and can give you a totally new perspective on what occurred. This can be extremely helpful when you want to share your experiences with a therapist.
Your voice is vital
Like I said, none of the above suggestions are set in stone. I’m sure there as many ways to journal as there are people who do it.
Remember, no matter what you may be feeling about yourself today, you are special and unique. There is has never been and never will be again someone exactly like you. Your voice is vital to the existence of humanity. Yes, you may be muted for now, or even lack the ability to speak loudly, but that will change.
Gaining an inside track about who you are is important to finding your niche in the world, and we need you.
“Everyone has a purpose in life and a unique talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstasy and exultation of own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals.” Kallam Anji Reddy
Reproduced with permission, originally posted here: morgan6062.blog
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