A good counselor will tell you to keep
a daily journal. There are many articles online that talk about the
new data which shows the mental and physical health benefits of the
practice, in addition to the sage old advice about the benefits of
the discipline. Google puts them right at our fingertips, so I won't
spend much time here on that subject.
Keyboard, Pen, or Non-Dominant Hand
Something I don't see discussed all
that often concerns the manner in which one seeks to record a
journal, whether through a keyboard or a pen and paper to record
their thoughts and feelings. I've heard some specialists who are
aware of the healing effects of bilateral stimulation and movement of
the body (through physical activity and modalities like binaural
sound and EMDR), that the keyboard taps into this healing aspect of
the brain. I've also heard some respected counselors that I know
personally speak of a study that came out of Marsha Means' work which
demonstrated some superior benefit to writing with a pen and paper
(however, I don't have any documentation, findings that may never
have been published). I've also heard several experts suggest that a
person try to write with their non-dominant hand to liberate blocked
emotions, because the effort stimulates the non-dominant side of the
brain (which for most of us is the Left hemisphere). I switch back
and forth between keyboard and pen, and I make an effort to write
with my non-dominant hand when I do feel like I'm struggling
emotionally with something, willing to make the effort in the event
that it is helpful.
What to Write?
To encourage the habit and to get the
flow of the process going, and from all I've read and been taught on
the subject of writing in general, one needs to commit at least 20
minutes to the discipline every day. In my first college class, in
good old English 101, the instructor required us to keep a daily
journal where we could write about anything we wanted, and we need
not worry about spelling or grammar. We were just supposed to be
free to write, so long as we wrote every day. These considerations
are especially true if you seek to use journaling as a means of
emotional growth and healing. Like any skill, the more you write the
better at it you will become.
Thinking back to this college class, I
wrote about all sorts of things, including a whole month on what I
would do and where I would put things if I had my own place to live.
It required imagination, and I talked about why I set this up for
myself as a goal and a rite of passage. That liberated my emotions
about my hopes and dreams and those things that seemed to stand in
the way of my ability to achieve them. But I found that I did better
at writing and didn't find it intimidating if I had a theme as some
type of goal. I needed the structure of the theme or the goal.
Purging Grief
I did a great deal of writing about
grief in order to move through it, and I continue to do so with the
new things that come into my life or the triggered memories of past
events. (Having moved through much grief, I tend to write about more
happy memories at this point, because I have more room to celebrate
the good.) For those who have been through spiritual abuse and for
those who grew up in dysfunctional homes, there's much grief to work
through and a host of different ways to do it. A person can spend
time writing about how they feel about events of the past, but
sometimes, some people find it hard to get started. Here are some
ideas that can be helpful, providing some structure to the process.
Listing offenses. The first
thing a counselor ever asked me to do was to write out all of the
hurtful statements that my biggest critic in life had said to me. I
also have done the same thing regarding self-talk and the types of
unhealthy things that I have dwelt on in the past. Years later, I
had another counselor ask me to do the same thing, and I've since
read other advice about this practice. One counselor had me keep
what I'd written, and one asked me to turn what I'd written into him,
and he didn't return it. Another way of releasing past hurts and
grief that I've seen recommend involves taking the lists and burning
them or shredding them, an act of commitment to forgive so that you
don't rehearse the hurts. I've also talked with a therapist who uses
something called “flash
paper” used in magic shows. These small pieces of paper can be
easily burned without much risk of a fire hazard, and it creates the
visual memory of the hurt being turned into nothing but fine ash.
Letter writing. Writing letters
to people can be a wonderful way to fill up a journal if you feel at
a loss about how to start, writing both letters of gratitude for
those who have loved and encouraged you as well as letters to people
who have hurt you. You can choose to send such letters, but you can
also use a journal to express those things that people may not
understand and receive. There is a part of your brain that doesn't
distinguish between what is real and what is imagined, and just
creating and imagining the opportunity to say anything to those who
have hurt you liberates a part of you. This type of writing can
serve as a pressure valve, allowing you to express emotion that you'd
otherwise carry all bottled up inside. It can also help you rehearse
what you might write or say to someone at a later time, without the
emotions that you can't control and without so much intimidation.
You can always go back later to pick out what you want to say and
what you decide might be best unsaid. You can also go through to see
where your unhealed wounds tend to be and what things you ought to
work on. Do you write about being angry or do you throw around guilt
and blame as you write the letter? You can go back to see later?
Are you expressing things that need to be said, or are you acting out
of self-defense. You can use your journal as a “trial run” to
make you a better communicator.
Self Help Books and Workbooks
Almost every self improvement book,
especially the Christian ones that flooded the market a couple of
decades ago have lists of questions to ask yourself about whether or
not a certain situation or issue applies to you. You can use these
types of books as a guide for your journaling for self-expression. I
recently adapted
this list from a book on gaslighting,
gearing the questions to young women who grew up in the patriarchy
movement. If you go through one of these books and put checkmarks by
the things that seem to apply to you, if you copy them into your
journal, it further deepens your understanding of the material, like
taking notes in a class helps you to remember and enhances learning
for you. If something seems pertinent, you can expand upon the item
and write about the memories you have which cause you to agree with
the statement. And in the book that has become one of my favorites,
Harriet Braiker's Who's Pulling Your Strings also contains checklists
that help you identify your weak points that make you vulnerable to
manipulators, but they also encompass much material from many
different books about self-improvement.
Spiritual Abuse Recovery. Take
Back Your Life: Recovery from Cults and Abusive Relationships
by Lalich and Tobias is of the best books that helps a person with
the practical issues that people face after spiritual abuse. In the
book, there are lists and lists of questions that pertain to why a
person gets involved, what the group leader or other significant
players in the system were like, and there are also lists of symptoms
that people tend to have after they leave certain groups. The lists
make it easier to think about what to write, giving you structure
which directs how you journal. The feelings can be overwhelming, and
you can use this book as a guide to help you. You can also use books
like Johnson and VanVonderan's The
Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse to prompt you to write about
past experiences and how you feel about them in your journal.
Journaling as (free!) Cognitive
Behavioral Therapy: My Favorite Christian Titles
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
focuses on practical problems through discussion and assumes that
problematic emotions and dysfunction are supported by thoughts that
are not beneficial, encouraging, or realistic. If you believe that
when you get up in the morning to go to your car to find that it's
been transformed into a top of the line Lexus, and you drive a 15
year old Chevy, you're likely to be disappointed. Though a silly
example, it points out how negative or untrue thoughts set a person
up for frustration and depression because of unrealistic expectations
that flow from a person's basic beliefs about how the world should
work. If you believe that life really is fair, you'll be very
disappointed to note how bad you feel when bitter reality rears its
ugly side, demonstrating that you've operated under the wrong
assumptions. When you adjust your beliefs to make the more
realistic, you adapt better and have more satisfaction, because your
expectations tend to be met. If your expectations are more
realistic, and your emotions balance, your behavior changes in
positive ways.
The ABC Method. This is
one of the cornerstones of CBT, and it uses a simple, three step
acronym for examining how your thoughts determine how you feel,
leading to behavior. I list this method first because it is the
standard in CBT, and the Christian author David Stoop uses it to
describe how to use this method as a type of spiritual warfare, after
the fact. If you scroll to page 30 on Google
Books which lets you read the first 49 pages of the book, you can
see how Dr. Stoop sketches out the process.
A stands for “Activating Event”
which triggers you to feel some unpleasant emotion. I would then
write about the event and what I felt and believed about the
situation.
B stands for “Beliefs,” and
with a little thought about the matter, I should be able to come up
with the ideas that may have set me up for disappointment. This step
gives me a chance to evaluate what happened and what I thought about
it, identifying both my irrational and rational beliefs about the
situation.
C stands for “Consequences”
which gives me an opportunity to reflect upon what happened,
particularly concerning my emotions and behaviors.
This
page on CBT offers the following examples, along with some
typical false beliefs:
Situation
One – Negative Perspective
A
- Mary is walking down the street, and her friend Sarah walks right
on by.
B
– Mary thinks, “Oh Sarah is such a jerk.”
C
– Next time, Mary ignores Sarah.
The
“B” may or may not be true. Here is another possibility.
Situation Two – Positive Perspective
A
- Mary is walking down the street, and her friend Sarah walks right
on by.
B
– Mary thinks, “Oh that Sarah, always distracted.”
C
– Mary calls out, Sarah apologizes for missing her, and they go for
coffee!
As
you can see, the role of the counselor in cognitive behavioral
therapy is to challenge false beliefs.
Thurman's Truth Program.
This is my favorite method and my favorite book on this subject is
one that is no longer in print, Chris Thurman's The
Truths We Must Believe, but you can get the same type of
information out of the first book, The
Lies We Believe. There's also now a workbook
that you can get, too. Thurman looks at the most common
misconceptions that people tend to hold and writes about how to
confront those problems.
The first 40 or 50 pages appear on Google Books, so you can get a
good idea about his premise. The author uses the acronym of TRUTH as
a structure for journaling at the end of the day, identifying strong
emotion and then looking at the unrealistic beliefs that caused the
emotion, so you can correct it. I've found this practice to be
amazingly helpful in understanding my own emotions and behavior, and
I return to it often.
T stands for “Trigger,” and
I would first identify some experience that triggered an emotional
reaction. As a young, zealous, and dysfunctional person my early
twenties when I started this discipline,, I never had difficulty
identifying an emotional experience. I occasionally use this
technique now, and I write down my trigger event, describing it in my
journal.
For example
lets say that I had a friend who promised to call me to talk about a
particular matter, and they didn't call. Not hearing from them and
then no response to my call to them triggered anxiety and fear.
R stands for “Reaction,” and
I then describe the situation and consider as many things as I can
imagine about a situation.
In my example,
I immediately started to think all kinds of negative things,
primarily that they became angry with me for some unknown reason, or
that they were trying to avoid me. I assumed that I did something
wrong and that there was true discord between us.
I
would write this and all of the details in my journal, explaining the
feelings that I had and what I thought things meant.
U stands for “Untrue Belief,”
and I would then identify the false idea that I had about the way the
world works to determine why I rushed to believe something negative
before having more information. My untrue belief might be several
things, and it's possible to identify several “lies” in a given
situation.
In my example,
I made the assumption that I had done something to create discord.
My underlying belief would be “I'm at fault for
everything,” or “I'm a failure.”
A better way of stating this would be “I must be
perfect.” Another factor I might notice is my
assumption that something negative happened in the relationship. So
another false idea related specifically to relationships, perhaps
based on previous experience, could be “I'm terrible at
relationshps.” I may also have unreasonable
expectations of my friend, which could boil down to the idea that “I
am not lovable,” or “I'm not worthy of
consideration.” I might also expect more of the friend,
believing them to be perfect and infallible, leading to a basic
belief that “People should be perfect.”
This step forces
you to look into your own beliefs and the type of things that you
tell yourself in your thoughts when things don't go according to your
expectations. This step alone is very helpful in learning about
yourself. This took some practice, but The Lies We Believe goes
through and explains how to identify what your underlying belief
might be. It may also be true that I had realistic beliefs, but
someone else didn't respect me, my abilities, or limitations, and I
might identify my emotional responses to be a violation of my
boundaries, causing me to feel a legitimate threat or disappointment.
T stands for
“True Belief,” and I would write down either what I learned
to be true about the situation, or after thinking about what the
possibilities might be that accounted for the trigger, I'm able to
gain some perspective.
In my example,
rather than assuming the worst, I would stop to consider all of the
possibilities that may account for not hearing back from my friend.
They were going to contact me after they learned some new
information. What if they didn't learn anything new, and they were
still waiting to call me because they didn't have anything new to
tell me? What if their phone service was interrupted, and
communcations were down? What if there was damage done to their home
in a storm, and our phone call became a low priority? What if they
or someone in their family became ill? What if I'd dialed the wrong
phone number when I called them? What if they were called into work
or called out of town unexpectedly? All of these things could be
possible, and assuming that they were upset with me and avoidant may
have been a false assumption to make. I may have learned later that
my friend didn't get any new information and thought she had agreed
to call me on a different day.
I would then go
on to “apply the truth” to my untrue belief. If I believe
that I am a failure, I should write about the reasons why that's not
true. The truth is that we do sometimes fail because we are
imperfect, but we are not defined as failures by our mistakes. The
idea that I'm not skilled at relationships is more likely a
reflection of the fact that relationships require work to be good,
and we are not perfect communicators. Every relationship has a bit
of friction, and it's unreasonable to expect that we will never have
conflict with our friends....
Thurman's books have lots of information in them about the truth
about basic assumptions. I'm not familiar with this website which
was one of the first selection Google provided for “negative
beliefs about self,” but
it gives a great working list of false beliefs that often fuel
our negative emotions.
H stand for
“Healthy Response,” and I can actually use the situation to
plan and determine that the next time I am faced with a negative
situation, I can plan how I can better respond. I can think about
how my true belief leads to a response of understanding instead of an
emotional reaction. With better beliefs that are more realistic, I
can consider how I can refrain from reacting emotionally, following
through with a response. I can learn from the mistake, and by
writing it down, I've given it the alternative the attention that it
deserves instead of replaying the problem, actually rehearsing it.
The healthy response part gives me the opportunity to make choices so
that I don't feel trapped or threatened, and it affirms that I can
change and grow which helps take the sting out of the disappointment
in my own behavior, too.
In this
example, I might decide that if I don't hear from a friend right
away, I might put a 48 hour time limit on when I will start thinking
about the problem. I might affirm that I should not jump to the
first negative conclusion which requires me to be more considerate of
others and less self-centered. I may have spent time getting angry
or hurt, when it may have been that my friend was ill and unable to
respond. That would only lead to guilt and more disappointment. If
the matter was a serious one, I could make a better effort to get
additional information, perhaps from a mutual friend before assuming
the worst. I might also choose to apologize to someone that I may
have vented to about my false assumptions, including my friend.
And each day, spend
thirty minutes or so writing out your triggers and reactions, but
also take the critical time to think about the underlying beliefs
that set you up for disappointment, moving on to accepting the
positive beliefs.
Amen's
Killing the ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts). In the
Christian book, This
is Your Brain On Joy, Earl Henslin talks about what Daniel
Amen calls “ANT killing,” the acronym for automatic negative
thoughts which is just another way of looking at false beliefs and
unhealthy expectations, offering people a way of taking control of
their thinking. If
you link HERE and scroll to page 57 in Amen's book, Change
Your Brain, Change Your Life (where a large section of it
appears on Google) you can read some of the section on Automatic
Negative Thoughts.
Amen breaks down
the process more specifically in the book, most of which you can see
online also, but here is an example of some of the material, along
the same lines of the other CBT methods also listed here.
And there you have
it. Here are plenty of ideas to get you started in journaling, and
it's always great to use Scripture to help you elucidate truth. You
can use the things you learn about yourself to direct your own Bible
study which you may wish to include in your journal as well. If
you're not into the whole religion thing, there are all kinds of
secular books on positive
thinking and affirmation. When you remove the negative, you have
to replace and meditate upon positive, or the negative ideas are
going to find an easy way making their way back into your head. The
healthy response which the TRUTH program and Amen's “ANT
extermination” process gives you a good way of directing your
journaling toward positive emotional and spiritual growth. Having
different alternatives to use for journaling also helps keep the
process lively and enjoyable, and you can adapt the process to meet
your personal needs.
I wish you healing
and joy on your journey.
