Journalling - a gift to self
I have journalled for most of my life. Reflecting on a decades long habit I am grateful to the part of me that found the practice of writing down my thoughts and feelings. If I can make sense of the role this has played for me now, after decades of journaling, it is a form of companionship – a non-judgemental, accepting and consistent friend. The act of writing down my innermost thoughts and feelings has provided me with a safe space where I can be true to myself.
There is a lot of evidence about the value of journaling in good mental health which I won’t regurgitate here, google is awash with evidence. Having researched journaling as a clinical mental health intervention, I have no doubt in recommending journalling in my professional practice. My personal experience reinforces this.
In particular, during major life transitions and difficulties, journalling has provided me with an outlet, a method of translating what’s going on inside into something else – words on paper.
I tend to keep my journals for a period of 6 or 7 years, so I usually have at least a few years of journals that I can look back on. Periodically I might flick though old journals. What’s written down is rarely profound or deeply insightful, often it is just the mundane experiences of day-to-day life - observations, feelings, frustration, hopes etc. Just words on paper, nothing more and nothing less, and yet somehow this has been my most consistent practice of self-care.
What I’ve discovered over time is that it is the process of journalling, the daily act of putting pen to paper (or text to screen) that serves a function. It’s a way that I can ‘check in’ with myself daily. There something alchemical about the act of translating what’s in my mind into words and sentences. I feel like the act of journalling validates that my experience matters.
The fact that a journal is not intended for public consumption is a significant part of its power. There is a tendency nowadays to want to make public all of our experiences. The proliferation of social media is evidence of this, and we are bombarded with a constant stream of other people’s thoughts and feelings and perceptions. Much of what gets posted on social media is done so with the intention of influencing other people. When we post something publicly, we cannot help but censor ourselves. We are thinking about how we will be perceived through the eyes of others. Journalling is very different in that it is not about what other people think, it is an explicitly personal act – intentionally private.
Do you journal? Is it something you have ever considered, and can you see a role for it in your life?
Like any new habit, the initial period can be the hardest, one we get into a flow we can find that the habit sustains itself.
The content of what I write in my journals has changed over the years, although there are themes and common narratives. I mostly just write whatever is on my mind. I have experimented with journal prompts – set questions that are designed to help you reflect on specific aspects of your life – and these can be helpful.
Having a time and space to dedicate to journalling is a good way to encourage a habit to establish itself, in this way it can become a ritual.
A nice note pad and pen helps although many people may prefer digital.
But I guess the most important thing is motive, having a clear reason as to why you want to introduce a journalling practice into your life. My journaling emerged from writing a diary as an adolescent, growing up in a large family, I felt the need for something private, a space where I could express myself. And somehow the habit stuck. And that is still, to this day, the primary motive for me – to express myself.
The opposite of expression is repression. So many of us learn from a young age that parts of us are unacceptable, or that we have to behave in certain ways to ‘fit in’. This can result in us having to repress certain aspects of our personalities. I’ve heard it said that expression is the opposite of depression. That feels a bit binary to me, but there is a relationship between how we express ourselves and the state of our mental and emotional health.
Journaling is one way where we can freely express the complexities of the human experience. It is not a place where we are judged or compared. In this way, journalling also provides us with a valuable way to really get to know ourselves. If I have a second motive for my journalling practice, is just this – self-awareness.
Self-awareness is a cornerstone to good mental and emotional health. And self-awareness can be a surprisingly hard goal to work towards. We may think we know our motives and drives in life, but often we are acting out of our conditioning – i.e. we think and behave as the person we have been conditioned to be by the world around us.
True self-awareness is a dynamic process – not an end goal - we are always evolving. We can end up confusing ourselves with the version of us that we want to be or think we should be. In doing so, we tend to deny aspects of ourselves that don’t fit into this prescribed version of ourselves.
True self-awareness is the ability to enquire, non-judgmentally and with self-compassion – what’s really going on for me right now? The key is to not expect a nice neat clean answer. Humans are inherently contradictory and complex. We can be both angry and blissed out within the space of 5 seconds. It is possible to be full of a whole range of thoughts and feelings and emotions and for them to not make complete sense. We don’t always know what we want, and how we feel is a dynamic and ongoing dance between so many different things – what’s going on inside of us as well as what is going on outside of us, the past, the present and the future.
For me personally, journalling provides a space where I can download all of the messy, complex and sometimes contradictory experiences of being this human, without it needing to be right, or even make sense. It’s rare in life that we get the chance to allow ourselves permission to be messy or to have contradictions. Journalling can give us the space to vent unapologetically, to say the things that we would never say ‘out loud’ and to have dark thoughts and crazy fantasies. We can acknowledge our longings and put words to our pleasures without the scrutiny of judgment or comparison.
What is your experience of journalling? Would you appreciate a space where you can be yourself without any need to perform or please, without judgment or expectation?
I have come to see the time I spend journalling - and it could only be 5 minutes here or there – as a gift to myself. A sacred space beyond the demands of a world that often asks us to be a ‘someone’ or to fulfil some role. Journaling for me is a space where I can express all of the messiness of this sensing, feeling, thinking human experience, and I’m glad of that.