Look deeper.
Solve problems more effectively.
Challenge your negative thoughts.
Rewrite your inner dialogue.
Yes, please. All of that sounds really good.
You’re needing time for introspection. You need to work toward a more positive life.
You’re ready for change.
But how exactly do you do all that?
Especially when you’re away from your counselor’s office but want to keep moving forward?
What’s a good way to seek clarity and healing on your own?
Prompted journaling may provide the self-awareness you’re hoping for.
According to the Center for Journal Therapy, therapeutic journaling is “the purposeful and intentional use of reflective writing to further mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health and wellness.”
This isn’t your basic sort of rambling, middle-school style diary.
You won’t be focused on detailing a daily chronicle of each and every little event.
The time you spend journaling will result in much more than an unfocused narrative.
The goal is to employ journal therapy as a process of capturing internal experiences, thoughts, and feelings purposefully, through questions and prompts.
With that guidance in mind, you’ll look deeper at the memories you recall.
You’ll dialogue with the people that are part of the relationships you include.
You’ll recognize, in writing, the kind of language you direct towards yourself.
Journaling gives you the chance to analyze and revisit the things that occur or recur in your mind. Privately and progressively, you can take charge of your therapy. Journal writing techniques may be particularly helpful if you have difficulty processing your thoughts.
Research indicates that writing is a rational, left brain activity. While your left brain is busy, your right brain creates and feels, improving intuition and comprehension. Journaling stimulates a deeper understanding of your life that can be extremely valuable, insightful, and rewarding.
The journaling process is served well by prompts and exercises intended to stimulate productive thinking. The act of writing will help guide, inform, and achieve your treatment goals. There’s also something comforting about using the journal as another way to communicate with your therapist, allowing you to share with an added measure of safety. Your therapist may assign journal therapy for homework that can be processed for the next time you come together.
Your therapist may also be a professional who works only in the area of journal therapy or simply employs prompted journaling alongside a variety of other therapies. Your therapy will include various writing exercises, some timed and some more open-ended or possibly combined with imagery. Journaling can help direct your therapy sessions, uncover areas you might be uncomfortable discussing initially, frame memories that might not come together verbally, or simply hone-in on present concerns more effectively.
If you think journaling might be helpful, the following 5 questions are a good place to start:
- How have you changed, grown, or developed during the last year? In what ways do you hope to change in the coming months?
- What are your most important relationships? How can you better maintain them?
- What do you do to take care of yourself? How can you improve?
- Who do you trust and confide in? How can you be this trustworthy yourself?
- How do you handle rejection, grief, or fear? How do you think you could better prepare for those instances in the future?
Writing helps you slow down your thinking.
You are allowed the space to mindfully consider your words, and observe them repeatedly.
Journaling is a safe place to take a good look at who you are and who you want to be.
Write freely and honestly. Use what you’ve written for inspiration, perspective, and change.
