Wow your Journal is beautiful, do you do a lot of scrap booking or art?

I also use a Journal for my Therapy, I would kind of be lost without it as I find it hard to remember stuff that happens in sessions if I don't write it down and also if things come up in between sessions I know I would forget it if I didn't write it down.

I used to find talking extremely hard so I would write stuff down and ask my T to read it, so I would hand it to her. She would ask me if I could read it myself but when I said no she usually read it. she would sometimes ask me if she could read it out loud to me.
It took me a long time but now I am usually able to read the stuff out myself, which took a lot of courage on my behalf as I don't like reading out loud ( a thing I have hated since my school days). My T says by reading it out myself I am taking ownership of what I have written and my thoughts etc but by handing it to someone else I am sort of separting myself from it and disowning what i have written. But it took time to get to the point I could read things out myself.

I wonder if this is what your T means about not liking you writting stuff down in replacement for actually saying the stuff? Maybe if you could read it to her she wouldnt mind..or if you explained how you felt about wanting to write stuff then she would understand or accept it more?

Many people use journals as some ppl find they can communicate better in writting about how they truely feel... I know I can.

Even if you don't take the Journal to your sessions it may help to still write down how you feel about things and then read over your journal before your session so that you can try and remember what you want to mention in your session? I often do this!

I also find when I am feeling low, just writing things out makes me feel a bit better!

huge hugs
Diz xxx