I started journaling when I was about 13. I think it was the summer between 7th and 8th grade. I remember I had a lot to say about the boy down the street I had a crush on. I thought that was mostly what I wrote about, until I looked back at that journal a couple months ago. I was also writing about problems with my parents, and how my little brother was a spoiled brat. But the interesting thing is I would mention that summer and at least the first part of the next school year, a friend who had dumped me. And it really felt like a dumping, rather than just a friendship ending, for two reasons. One, is she dumped me and started hanging out with this other girl who was super-smart, and two, she wrote me what was basically a break-up letter. In it she wrote a word I didn’t know yet (probably one of the reasons she needed a smarter friend). The word was “cynical”. Apparently at that age I was already cynical. Hey, some things sucked, and it wasn’t a crime to point it out! But I wrote about her and missed her a lot. I realized I wrote less about the boy, and more about her, not having an idea about this until recently. I wasn’t that surprised when I think of it, because years later, after I realized I liked women, and came out, I would figure out that she was my first major crush. I didn’t know about homosexuality so I couldn’t call it a crush at 13. She went to grade school with me, had overlapping friends, and lived about three blocks from me. We hung out around the neighborhood, but what I remember the most is when she would come to my house. I had two twin beds in my overly-Garfield-decorated (the next year would have a New Kids on the Block motif. I loved Joey!) bedroom. She would sit on one of the Garfield sheeted beds and I would sit on the other, and we would just read for hours, occasionally looking up at one of the many Garfield comics plastered all over the wall or glancing at each other. My partner now, when we get a chance, and did a lot before we had a baby, practice this introverted enactment of reading next to someone. I think it rather romantic, and I guess I always did.
Journaling has been found to be therapeutic, but I just started journaling because I had a need to get things out. I was the eldest of four children, we were biracial, didn’t have much money, I had a crush on a boy, and a big crush on a girl I was not aware of. That’s enough stuff to write about. I don’t even know if I had heard of journaling. I don’t think I had. My first journal was a plain blank book in which I glued blue fabric with a white bandana print on. Over 30 years later I can tell you that was some well-made glue. My mom was a teacher and had lot of notebooks around. She would buy a lot of school supplies in the back-to-school sales. So, my drug was writing, and she was a great supplier of the accoutrements needed to keep up my habit. I loved those plain little books I used for my first and second journals, which were bound completely like a real book, that would be about the perfect number of pages for an older elementary school age child to write a decent story in. Today, with all my writing history, I could fill one of those up in a day.
According to WebMD in an article entitled “How Writing in a Journal Helps Manage Depression” a few of the benefits or ways journaling helps are:
- It makes you more aware and helps you get to know yourself better.
- It lets you take control.
- It lets you notice patterns.
- It lets you let it all out.
These are two journals to represent my beliefs. I support the #MeToo Movement and the other journal is the bisexual flag. I got these at Amazon. They have "Black Lives Matter" journals, as well as flags that represent other sexual orientations and gender identities.
My journaling practice has helped in all these ways mentioned in the article. I am very aware and have gotten to know myself better though journaling. That is not always good, but it often is. I frequently find things out about myself that I wasn’t aware of and process it in more journaling, and or, with a therapist. It doesn’t solve everything, but I do feel like I have more control when I journal, as mentioned. Sometimes my thoughts are just jumbled up and I get in a terribly disagreeable state, to say the least. Sometimes I don’t even know what my problem is. I have more control when I figure out my problem, even though there will be more work to do on said problem.
Noticing patterns is a big thing I do in journaling and in life. I do this with myself and I have been doing this with other people as well, since I was a child. I felt more emotional-safety and control when I could understand and predict people’s behaviors through studying their patterns. So, in journaling I analyze other people’s problems too, (mainly for fun), but sometimes so I can understand them. Figuring people out helps me understand conflicts, people’s personalities and motives, and how to interact with them as well. As a writer its good character studying for writing fiction. But I look at my own patterns a lot, like I keep on binging on Thursdays, why do I feel like binging after I swim or after yoga, and at what times am I most likely to dissociate? I can work on and prevent problems by doing this. And finally, the last thing I mentioned from WedMD was letting it all out. First of all, many people don’t want to do this. I have lived in situations in which I didn’t want to do this or was scared and didn’t feel safe enough to emotionally expose myself. I couldn’t write because I was emotionally-scared for almost a year after I was raped the first time, and also after Jessica/Jessie O., who has a different name now, stole a big tub of journals and stories I had written over many years when I was about 30. (That writing was personal and it felt like I had birthed it, so yes, I’m naming names, like I hardly do; Jessica you know what you did! But I heard a rumor: karma is a bitch. I didn’t make it up- I’m just sayin’.) So even when it’s your own private journal and you are alone, it can feel vulnerable to just let out all your true feelings. It may not feel good at the beginning, but it feels better after all that “junk” is out of you!
According to the website positivepsychologyprogram.com journaling/expressive writing has been found to:
• Boost your mood/affect
• Enhance your sense of well-being
• Reduce symptoms of depression before an important event (like an exam)
• Reduce intrusion and avoidance symptoms post-trauma
• Improve your working memory (Baikie & Wilhelm, 2005)
And for my case, with PTSD specifically, the website says, “In particular, journaling can be especially helpful for those with PTSD or a history of trauma. It’s hypothesized that writing works to enhance our mental health through guiding us towards confronting previously inhibited emotions (reducing the stress from inhibition), helping us process difficult events and compose a coherent narrative about our experiences, and possibly even through repeated exposure to the negative emotions associated with traumatic memories (i.e., “extinction” of these negative emotions; Baikie & Wilhelm, 2005).”
If you look closely you can see my first journal in this collection.
There are so many things journaling can do to help you. It can even lead you do discover other coping skills that you never would have done. The main things I use journaling for are processing and mainly just sorting out thoughts and emotions. The processing can be thinking about all the details of a social encounter and what went wrong so I can prevent it from happening again, to processing issues I have processed many times, but looking at it in a different angle, perhaps based upon a new concept or theory I learned. Sorting out my emotions can be more complex, like for instance in situations like these: Suppose when I think about it, I don’t really like Beth, even though everyone else does, but my intuition says something’s wrong there. Or suppose I'm trying to figure out how I feel about something my partner said earlier that day that may change the course of our relationship. But often I use the journal to simply talk to myself, in place of a person, or talking out loud to myself. And it’s much easier to organize your thoughts rather than when simply saying them out loud.
Sometimes I write about things as mundane as what should I make for dinner. And then make a grocery list there in the journal so I don’t forget. There are lots of lists and outlines I do to process information, like around the holidays I make a present-list and I often talk to myself about all the cleaning I should do, but usually don’t get around to. Writing a journal feels like I have a friend real close and I think it has helped lead to me writing fiction, poetry and essays. I often do spend a lot of time plotting stories in my journaling.
It helps to journal regularly. I would suggest starting with perhaps 20 minutes, 3-4 times a week. When, and if, you find it beneficial you may naturally crave to do it more. I do it a lot more than that. The most I ever wrote was 8 hours in one day (not in a row). It was 11,000 words and I was trying to catch up writing one of my novels, for National Novel Writing Month. That was too much, and I don’t think I’ll ever try that again.
There are so many kinds of journals you can use. Like my first two journals, and a couple others along the way, you can decorate a plain notebook. Often if you want a decorative journal you don’t have to decorate yourself, I find that Barnes and Noble, and perhaps other bookstores, including Amazon are good places to look for them. Other places are office supply stores or craft stores.
If you want to get some good deals buy notebooks when school supplies are on sale.There are decorative notebooks, as well as plain ones. Spiral ones are easier to use when you want to turn the page and have the pages stay open, but if you get a composition notebook, which are becoming more common, the pages are less likely to rip. And another place for all crafty, office, school, writing supplies, and even journals, are dollars stores. Sometimes the journals there suck, but you can get some really cute ones as well. There are guided journals to help people get started (more often sold at bookstores) and bullet point journals so you can get the main stuff out of your head without having to go into it too long, track your habits and progress, as well as many other things. I can do another post about different kinds of journaling such as artistic and scrapbook journaling. In this post I have been sharing pictures of journals I have written in and journals that have yet to contain beautiful words. As you can see in this pic, they are making more designs on compositions books. The cute one with the colorful clouds was from a dollar store.
Is there anything negative about journaling? One thing is overdoing it in a way that you are, what I call “Circular Processing.” An example of this is if I spend time going over the same issue in the same manner, and it’s also not making me feel good. It’s different if I go over the same issue from a different perspective, which may help me learn something and eventually release the issue. Other reasons many people, especially young people, have not wanted to write in a journal, is privacy. Hiding your journal in a very safe place can be good idea. There have been some things I needed to journal to get out of me and I have either deleted it all from my journal I keep on my laptop, because that part was more embarrassing than other things I wrote, in case someone would read it. I have burned papers (usually loose leaf, or you can tear pages from your journal and burn it or burn the whole damn thing!) for privacy and I have even kept a couple journals in a lock box. Its affordable now to buy a small safe you can keep your journals in. Some even have handles to be transported easily for your journals or other items.
People who are not healthy mentally may have a problem you are keeping a journal, possibly because they are jealous you are taking care of yourself when they are not ready to; they could be paranoid, and think you are writing about them and want to find out, like my mom who I don’t think she would purposely dig around for someone’s journal or personal writings, but once she found them she takes no responsibility in the unethical act of reading another person’s journal, almost as if it’s the other person’s fault she read their journal. And she wouldn’t hesitate to read your personal business out loud (I usually don’t like to name people in my blog. You will be able to guess who some people are, but when they do something really shitty, they get at least partially named. I didn’t give her name.).
Under your mattress is an over-used place to hide things. Read mysteries and watch spy shows and movies to get hiding place ideas. I don’t want to share them with you because then the people looking for your journal will learn about the hiding places.
Journaling can be fun, therapeutic, artistic, helpful, or it can be a friend you just let all your secrets, fears, anger, pain and even joy, out on. Then that gets out of you and on the paper, on the computer, and then sometimes there’s room to even write some positive words that are beneficial to your healing in your journal after some pain is released.
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