Give yourself maybe 10 minutes and quickly do the following exercises:
1. What did you have for lunch this week?
2. What do you feel about the last thing you did today?
Well my friends, Congratulations! Just in writing answers to those questions you have brought some healing to your life. Yes, even just listing what you had for lunch this week can be therapeutic, especially because it makes you use your memory. While the more personal the journaling the greater the therapeutic benefit, research has shown that the simplest of journaling is still therapeutic.
I started journaling 10 years ago when my mother gave me a gratitude journal (it was the book of the month from Oprah). I have been journaling with varying consistency ever since. At some point during my time at Christian Theological Seminary I noticed that I was far more consistent in my journaling during times when I was super stressed or super happy. When I started having great success with the clients I was counseling who were journaling, I decided to look at the role of journaling in the healing process. My master's thesis was entitled "Journaling and the art of self care". Through the research for and writing of the thesis I came up with a theory of how journaling works...
How journaling works:
1. Honestly, no one is entirely sure. What we can see, or measure, of course, is self ratings of happiness/contentment.
2. In other words, people report that they feel better, do better work, have better friendships, etc after they journal. People say that journaling is helpful in the following ways
a. clears head
b. not bottling - emotional release
c. helps rationalize
d. or the exact opposite, I don't have to be rational when I journal
3. My understanding of what happens/why journaling is beneficial is two fold ...
a. There seems to be multiple parts to the self. One might even say that I am made up of multiple selves. I am my Godself, my school self, my family self, my friend self, what other selves can you think of? I believe the acts of writing/creativity and reading/seeing what is created bring the different parts of the self together into a cohesive oneness. It might be that I choose to write with my school self, but it is my friend self who will do the reading of what I wrote. It is the bringing together of these different parts that leads to healing. It is almost as though through journaling we learn a little more about ourselves AND through learning about ourselves we learn to silence our inner critic that is negative thus we learn to like ourselves better.
b. Connected to learning to like yourself is the saying "Love your neighbor as thyself". - we have to first learn to love ourselves and to do that we have to learn about ourselves ... learning how we journal, what we journal about, etc help us learn who we are and thus how we can love ourselves better - once we know that we can learn to love others better
Have you ever tried to journal or keep a diary in the past? Why have you stopped if you've stopped? What has kept you from trying if you've never started?
Here are a few of the excuses I have heard before ...
Excuses for not journaling.
1. no time/too time consuming
2. hate to hand write
3. don't want someone else to read it
4. don't want to face the emotions - too exhausting to face what I might write
Why the excuses should be overcome. (the numbers correspond to the above excuses)
1. much like exercise, the therapeutic gains are too much and help with so many facets of life to let time be an excuse - and it doesn't have to take much time ...
2. if you don't like to hand write find another outlet, draw, color, use the computer and type it
3. you can password protect your files if you put them on the computer, hide or lock journals ... also research shows no decline in the therapeutic benefit of journaling if you share your work with others
4. the only thing worse than being exhausted from facing emotion is to bottle up your feelings
I encourage you to start journaling. To help you get started, here is a list of different ways journaling can be done. This is a non-exhaustive list and I would love to hear your ideas about journaling.
1. drawing
2. reading scripture
3. other book and writing about it
4. Dear Diary/Journal/God ... my day ...
5. Gratitude list
6. I feel ...
7. exercise and food journal
8. to do list - be sure to cross off what you've done for added therapeutic benefit
9. write poetry
10. finding a book on journaling and doing what it says - Dan do you know if the church library might have such a book? If not, I'm sure the public library does.
11. art - collage, painting, etc.
12. travel journal
13. online blog
14. online journal
15. word vomit - set a page limit and then just write until you fill up the space
16. decision journal
