- Moderator
- #25
Sideways
VIP Member
It's been really, like REALLY helpful when needing to give myself a reality check to write stuff down.
Don't want to write it down usually. So much easier to not think about it, not deal with it, and if there's no record of it anywhere, I can kid myself that whatever it was, it wasn't that bad. Works for my past, and works for the way I deal with stuff now.
Once it's written down somewhere, it takes on a certain reality. Like saying things out loud to your T, only with journals, you have more control. About what you write, and how and when you revisit it. Every now and again, you go back to something, the idea becomes clearer, you realise "I've been here before", or sometimes, hurray! "At least it's not like that any more.
You wrote stuff down and it made you feel bloody awful. Why? In theory, nothing actually changed by you writing it down. Only something did change - the emotions you have connected to what you wrote had a chance to come out. And that felt godawful. But the alternative was continuing to carry them around, pretending they're not there, and all the endless suffering that goes along with pretending they're not there.
If you found that journalling brought out a lot of tough emotions. That's a reason to take it slowly. But it's also a reason to consider that maybe (just maybe) journalling may be an incredibly helpful way for you to connect with, processs, and move past, some of those really intense emotions inside that currently have no form of expression.
Don't want to write it down usually. So much easier to not think about it, not deal with it, and if there's no record of it anywhere, I can kid myself that whatever it was, it wasn't that bad. Works for my past, and works for the way I deal with stuff now.
Once it's written down somewhere, it takes on a certain reality. Like saying things out loud to your T, only with journals, you have more control. About what you write, and how and when you revisit it. Every now and again, you go back to something, the idea becomes clearer, you realise "I've been here before", or sometimes, hurray! "At least it's not like that any more.
You wrote stuff down and it made you feel bloody awful. Why? In theory, nothing actually changed by you writing it down. Only something did change - the emotions you have connected to what you wrote had a chance to come out. And that felt godawful. But the alternative was continuing to carry them around, pretending they're not there, and all the endless suffering that goes along with pretending they're not there.
If you found that journalling brought out a lot of tough emotions. That's a reason to take it slowly. But it's also a reason to consider that maybe (just maybe) journalling may be an incredibly helpful way for you to connect with, processs, and move past, some of those really intense emotions inside that currently have no form of expression.
