The Power of Writing - The Journaling Technique
How writing things down can be helpful
The purpose of the journaling is to be able to identify and analyze your thinking, emotional and behavioral patterns, but also to find ways to adapt, change and manage them.
Writing promotes self-awareness and self-understanding, as well as personal development, unconditional self-acceptance and goal achievement. It can also lead to releasing tension and bring clarity about the situation you are in or the problem you are facing.
Journaling can be used in many different ways and situations, but the specific one that we are addressing is writing things down when we are experiencing difficult negative emotions and moments of distress.
What are the benefits of journaling
It helps you slow down your thoughts.
You cannot write as fast as you think. In this way, you help your mind slow down the thinking process, and you manage to feel less overwhelmed about the number of thoughts that you are being flooded with.
It brings order where there is chaos in your mind.
Your thoughts are moving extremely fast in your brains, and by deciding to write things down, you can actually choose what to focus on, what it is more powerful or important right now. It is also a useful way to organize your ideas and start to feel more in control.
It is a good way to stop rumination.
Rumination is that process when you start from a thought and then you keep going and going and going until you split everything into a million pieces. You ruminate because you believe that if you keep analyzing things in detail and go over them over and over again, you might find a solution or have a way to fix or change something. But that is rarely the case. Rumination can be very intense and extremely difficult to get out of. That is way starting to write can be a useful tool.
It helps you feel relief.
After you managed to get through it, you can often feel that a burden has been taken off your shoulders and that you can breathe again. And it would help if you had that relief when dealing with intense thoughts and emotions.
It helps you gain clarity.
After you finished writing, you can take a step back from your thoughts, you can distance yourself a bit. Then, you can look at what you wrote and decide what you want to do with that it is there. You don’t have to solve or manage every thought right then and there, you can choose what to focus on. Very often after looking at your written thoughts, you will find yourself saying: “Yeah, I took it too far there”, “This is very unlikely to happen”, “That thought is definitely not true”. And so, in this way, you help ourselves put things into perspective.
How to journal
This technique can help you gather information about your emotions and thoughts in different contexts. When you want to write, you can follow a specific structure; for example, you can include:
The moment when your thought or emotion appeared (e.g. day, time)
Potential activators or factors that influenced you
How intense your emotion was (e.g. on a scale of 1-10) and how long it lasted
How you responded to that emotion (e.g. what behavior did you do, what strategy did you apply to cope with that emotion).
You can journal in difficult moments or you can set aside 15 minutes to handwrite every day to connect with your thoughts and emotions.
In some situations, it is easier or more efficient to write on your phone. For example, if you are at work and have a difficult emotion, you can take a few minutes to write what is going on, and later when you are at home, you can focus on better understanding what caused that feeling, and how you can manage it better next time.
When you write, your experience in doing so, your writing skills, grammar, syntax and punctuation don't matter. So, try not to let these factors influence you.
Positive Journaling
It is also valuable to remember that you don’t just have to journal when you feel bombarded with negative thoughts and difficult emotions. You can also journal in positive moments. Below you can find some ideas that you can put into practice. We will discuss them in more detail in a future article.
A record of your steps and progress regarding a goal that you set up for yourself
An ongoing achievement list
A daily gratitude journal
A journal of positive memories
An open list with your favorite quotes and inspirational sayings
30-Min. Free Online Exploration Session
If you are curious to discover how to make journaling work for you and how to introduce a powerful writing habit in your life, get in touch. We can schedule a 30 min. online free session to discuss your needs and goals and find ways to personalize this process so you can get the most out of it.