‘5 Ways Journaling Can Help You Get Through the Hard Stuff’ is a guest post that I wrote for Tiny Buddha.

I am republishing with permission from tinybuddha.com. You can find the original post here.

 

In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself. The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather—in many cases—offers an alternative to it.

 ~Susan Sontag

My first journal came into existence when I was twelve. I remember making the cover. Carefully choosing my favourite comics, pictures from magazines, and the odd scribble I’d drawn. Tongue stuck out in concentration, gluing them strategically on an unused exercise book.

Wrangling with the clear sticky contact mum used to cover my schoolbooks, I encased the precious creation in it, preserving it forevermore: Nicole’s Diary.

Needless to say it’s an extremely embarrassing collection of teenage angst, weird bits and pieces like lists of potential names for a child I didn’t and still don’t want; pages of dialogue between myself and other people with in-depth analysis of these conversations beyond anything reasonable; and daydreaming about the life I wished I had or complaining about the life I did have.

Whenever I happen upon this old journal, It takes strength not to throw it away, just in case some invisible person were ever to discover it and think this was actually me.

The journals since then have gone through phases. Phases where I wrote every day, or just once every few months. Where I was obsessed with recording quotes or where I collected everything from movie tickets to foreign sweet wrappers. There are endless lists, ways to improve myself, deep sadness, furious anger, joyful enthusiasm, unbridled hope, and ponderings on love during many a loving or loveless encounter.

Historically journaling has been extremely popular, and if you think about the mountains of YouTubers and bloggers, it still is.

They used to be more of a private affair, but consider the way we write when we really let the pen go. We’ve derived important pieces of the past from people’s journals. Are they genuine portraits of the time, or just endless, worrisome chatter from a mind trying to figure stuff out?

These days it’s popular to have a gratitude journal, and I can see why—the idea being to cultivate gratitude as part of our being, and not give so much weight to the negative and the worrying. Remembering what we are grateful for is supposed to give us perspective on the hard stuff.

But I don’t know. Writing about the hard stuff is actually what helps me get through it. Journaling can help you get through the hard stuff too. It’s what makes writing so incredibly powerful. As an online counsellor I work with lots of people to journal effectively.

Here are five reasons why journaling can help you with the hard stuff:

1. Journaling is the act of processing the past (and sometimes the future) in the here and now

For many of us, talking and writing isn’t about performance or the telling of something—it’s actually the processing. Getting it outside of yourself can give it a new shape. Journaling can help you re-author something that is circling and causing distress.

It’s like opening the clothes drier mid-cycle. You interrupt the cyclic thinking and the jumble of ideas fall out, allowing each one to be tossed around and thought about on it’s own. The amount of times solutions have begun to appear while I was actually writing is astounding.

2. Writing is and of itself cathartic

Try this: Set the timer on your phone for ten minutes, grab a pen, and write about your day until the alarm goes. Give yourself permission to burn it if you find yourself getting held back by the worries of who is going to read it (or delete it if you typed).

Even if nothing at all has happened, you will most certainly have thoughts in your head that are dying to get out. Offloading conscious and subconscious stuff helps the mind become clearer and you calmer.

If you find journaling at the end of the day brings up a lot of emotion and stress, try journaling in the morning before the day starts. You might be surprised how much you have to say after you’ve just woken up.

3. Feelings and experiences become less overwhelming

A while ago I wrote a blog post about my partner’s beautiful little old dog being killed in a car accident. When I was writing the piece, I found myself crying almost the whole time.

As I described the accident, moved onto what she meant to him, as I remembered my own times with her, it became an incredibly meaningful process. I spent some time looking for photos and wanted to share her story and offer something to the humans she had touched in her life.

Writing about the grief helped me immensely. It slowed it down as well as enriched her life. I stopped simply wanting to escape the awful feeling and instead was able to wade through it and just feel. Even if no one read it, I felt like I’d created a full-bodied process—a eulogy—that honoured her and helped me hold her light after she’d passed.

4. Reading back helps reveal patterns

Sure, it can be frustrating to look back at a journal from three years ago and see that you are writing about the same thing in the same ways again, but that can also be empowering. It’s a researcher’s dream: go back and investigate and then spend some time reflecting on what keeps you stuck if you notice patterns.

Similarly, you can celebrate any little (or big) changes you have made. “Wow, I used to worry about what people thought of me so much… it seems now I’m more concerned with what I think of myself and if I’m being a good person. What does that tell me about my journey so far? What do I want to take with me moving forward?”

5. You can use creative journaling to change your story

We tend to tell our stories in the same way over and over, emphasising the same points in the same ways, and even adding to a narrative by noticing everything that fits in with the story and ignoring everything that doesn’t.

If that narrative is overwhelmingly negative (i.e.: I’m a people pleaser; I’m a doormat; I’m hopeless; I’m a victim; I’m unlovable; I’m always anxious; I can’t do anything about this; Only jerks like me etc.) then it can lead to a full-on negative identity conclusion based on one pretty shaky theme.

Try injecting some freshness into a tired story. Journal prompts easily found via Google can help you do that, inviting you to answer questions you wouldn’t normally think of in the context of any given experience. Or you might like the look of my online course, it has lots of progressive reflective prompts to help you on your way.

Writing requires you to dig a little deeper into stories, where you may find that the ‘full’ conclusion isn’t based on much. For example, after a bunch of bad dates you may decide that you only ever attract terrible people. But if you are prompted to consider all the facts, i’m sure there were a few decent people who you rejected. Richer stories contain more complex truths.

What becomes available when you widen your perspective?

I can think of a bunch more reasons why journaling can help you, but I hope these five have injected some enthusiasm as a great starting ground. Just last month I began my own personal project of writing almost daily again, as well as launching a little Facebook group to discuss journal prompts.

Sharing some of your writing has an added benefit of being seen—becoming visible in the ways you want and feel safe to. To acknowledge your struggles as well as find humor in them, and be able to see beauty in who you are no matter what, is more than worthy of the little effort it takes to pick up a pen (or use a voice machine) and pour ourselves onto the page.

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Thank you for reading ‘5 Ways Journaling Can Help You Get Through the Hard Stuff’. Got any advice for Unveiled Stories readers? Please add in the comments below.

Looking for a short course with LOADS of reflective questions to explore in your journal? Unveiled Stories narrative-based comprehensive 10-week online course ‘From Bashful To Bold’ is available now, for the price of a book. This course is designed to help folks value themselves, bolster confidence, and strengthen a sense-of-self.

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