Journalling as a tool for self -awareness.

Quite often I encounter clients who find it difficult to put their feelings into words. They understand that ‘talking your feelings through’ would be good for them but they really don’t know how to. Maybe a partner or family members have told them they don’t open up or talk about their feelings enough, so they go to therapy hoping to somehow begin this process.

With a good, non-judgmental therapist they may begin to open up and feel the benefit of saying their feelings aloud in the safe space that is therapy. This process allows them to examine and discuss their feelings helping them to recognise and own them. However, for some, this is still very difficult, especially when trauma has caused them to bury those feelings deep inside.

For clients like this especially, journalling can be the first step to understanding and owning their feelings. All of us can benefit from trying to write down how we feel about things. The action of writing down on paper what we are feeling about something helps us to clarify and consolidate those feelings. It is then, often possible to begin to discuss them in the therapy room perhaps using the journal writings as a prompt.

Journalling as a practice, can be a very useful way of self- analysing. It is also a way of continuing this process outside of the therapy room, in between and after sessions.

Why don’t you try it? Get a notebook and maybe start just writing about different points in your day, how you felt and perhaps ideas on why you might feel that way. Once you get into it you could also start looking at difficult times in your life, remembering how they made you feel at the time. You might then think about how remembering these incidents makes you feel in the here and now. How do you think this may have affected your behaviour or how you see life now?