Journaling

Anyone find that journaling helps with emotions? I want to start but live in a very tiny house with a very snoopy family. I would do so online but worry about writing too many details and accidentally having someone find it or something! Anyone recommend a very good and secure journaling site??

Is your email secure from snoopers? You could do your journaling in an email account which is only for Journaling. Yahoo has a folder system that I like. mail.google.com may be more secure.

Journaling has been a fav of mine in the past. Venting and getting things out of the way.

Thank you! I will look into that. Yahoo is pretty secure. It's a great idea. I have no one to vent to now which I tnink comes out in aggression to those around me.

Here is a primer I compiled for a friend about journaling. I hope you find it useful. I know I did.

Here is the classic instruction given to all participants in trauma focused journal writing therapy research:
Box 1
Typical writing instructions

For the next 4 days, I would like you to write your very deepest thoughts and feelings about the most traumatic experience of your entire life or an extremely important emotional issue that has affected you and your life. In your writing, I’d like you to really let go and explore your deepest emotions and thoughts. You might tie your topic to your relationships with others, including parents, lovers, friends or relatives; to your past, your present or your future; or to who you have been, who you would like to be or who you are now. You may write about the same general issues or experiences on all days of writing or about different topics each day. All of your writing will be completely confidential.

Don’t worry about spelling, grammar or sentence structure. The only rule is that once you begin writing, you continue until the time is up.

Essentially journaling helps folks clarify their perception of trauma for themselves , how it is felt and how it is acted out even years after the event (and also how it effects other events in a person's ongoing life).

Safe space
Either at home or with a Counselor the person must feel safe and positive. If a person is journaling at home privately, it first is helpful to do other therapies like mindful meditation (or even Reiki, or tapping) prior to engaging in these activities. Many traumas are lived out everyday and for years after they occur until the person experiencing them develops some agency and control over them. Without being in a safe place the person may not finish the exercises and runs the risk of opening up bad feeling that go unaddressed until completing the whole series of steps that lead to closure.

Signs of Improvement
If all the steps are followed, there should be immediate improvement in the persons emotional, physical or spiritual sense of well-being. Although the ill feelings from some trauma might not go away entirely without repeated exposure to it through the journaling practice. The great thing about writing is that you can continue to revisit the same trauma that you have written about previously without having to create it all anew. Evidence of a changed perspective can be found in the language people use. For example, the more people use such cause-and-effect words as "because," "realize" and "understand," the more they appear to benefit. Also, the trauma may have contributed to subsequent traumas that have yet to be dealt with, so repeatedly exploring the traumatic events is often helpful and necessary until all of the associated traumas are dealt with.

Emotions not just facts
It is also important to understand that traumatic memories and their lived-out responses have negative emotions associated with them. Therefore it is important to try to reframe these negative emotions as a positive response to an unfortunate event. Bad feelings can be considered "signs of coping," a "protective and healing mechanism" or a "normal" response to a bad situation. People often feel guilty for harboring, or being unable to deal with those feelings. It is important to remember that denial and numbness are survival mechanisms that keep folks from having to deal with all of the negative emotions at once. Therefore a person may have to revisit a particular event repeatedly before becoming desensitized enough to handle the entire situation.

Flow freely / don't edit
Throughout these exercises, it is important not to edit or to try to craft the perfect grammatical sentence. It is like an artist doing sketches of a great master piece. The person must be loose and fluid in their writing to access the subconsciousness. And because we are identifying recurring emotions that lead to current behaviors, it is important to *not* feel compelled to write chronologically, or to stick to one event or one period of one's life. Let the neurons fire as they want. They may be a tangled mess of feelings, behaviors and emotions that do not punch a clock or read a calendar...don't edit!

Create List of Traumas to Confront
The first step is to create a list of all traumas that the person can remember - as many as necessary. The list does not have to be completed, because as the process goes on other trauma may give rise, some that may be locked in the subconscious. The person can and should continually add to the initial list. I was initially able to identify 12 traumas to take on. As I proceeded through even the first process at least two other traumatic events were associated with it.

Vividly Recall the Event
The next step is to have the person write about their perceptions of the traumatic event. It does not have to be objectively true, or provable. The purpose is not to place blame for the event. But it is important to write as many details as possible about the event without evaluating. The more detailed (even in the initial list) the better the person is able to reestablish control and agency. However, this is the scariest part and sometimes people need help from a Counselor to ensure the person feels as safe and positive as possible. I opened my journaling by stating "it was a very fuzzy memory, things went from black to red as I woke up, then my eyes opened..."

Explore the Emotional and Behavioral Content
After as many details about the event as possible are written, a new page is started exploring how the event felt. It is important to fully explore the emotional content of the memory because similar emotions brought on by the initial event are what triggers the maladaptive behaviors over a person's life until the person gains agency and control. I started my analysis by stating, "I was confused and disoriented at first. I had no memory of home or anything prior to that moment." I wrote about my feeling about the people and the objects I was perceiving. It is important to recognize both the physical and emotional pain that was being experienced.

How Is It Lived Today?
The next step . The question "How is this event lived today?" is where the healing begins. Now, some evaluation of the event and emotions begins. It is where a person ties them to adaptive or maladaptive behaviors that the person continues to live out. The traumatic event will have positive survival skills and negative coping habits attached to it. Both should be explored because the person does not want to lose any adaptive behaviors they gained from the experience, yet still have agency and control over the maladaptive behaviors. One of the maladaptive behaviors I wrote about was being afraid of the dark. And it gave rise to several other traumas I had forgotten about.

Dissecting the Good From the Bad.
The next step is to write about any: Intrusive thoughts, denial/numbing, survival skills, understanding and forgiving the self for reactions that are rooted in the past experience yet still come to mind in current situation, and to note any positive benefits arising from confronting the traumatic memory. I wrote about intrusive thoughts about being abandoned and my maladaptive coping strategies like drinking. I recognized that some of the survival skills I was utilizing were nor longer useful and could be abandoned. I was able to forgive myself. At this point I started feeling some relief.

Strengthen the New Insight
After these steps it is important to strengthen the new insight into the traumatic event. It is done by turning back to your initial perceptions of the event and reading forward through the journal. It is okay to add to the previous steps as newer insights can be built up and other associated traumas my come up. Once re-read, the person writes about how they survived the event as well as they did. How could the event have been worse? And, how can the person be different today? I wrote, "I survived by being extra attentive and supportive of those I love. But I often put other's needs ahead of mine...and if my love is rejected, I often lash out." This example shows that one event creates emotions that lead to positive and negative behaviors, but they all may be controlled appropriately. It is important to flush them out fully. The person should also write about how they can be different in moving forward. If a person is able to forgive him/herself for the past, moving forward differently is where the relief comes.

Write the Final Chapter
Finally, the person should put the journal aside and wait some time. Due to writing about the event the logical side of the brain organizes the event more clearly and then the subconscious continue to work on what was written. It is important that the person goes back to the exercise exploring the trauma and write some conclusions that reinforce any positive insights, feelings or behaviors that came out of it. This is where a person's internal self-view is defined and it should not be one who is "permanently traumatized." This is where the person can write the last chapter of the trauma once s/he has agency and control of the emotions.

After I worked through this process I felt an immediate end to a lot of the anxiety I had been experiencing. The anxiety started to creep back after a few days, but I was able to get rid of it simply by re-reading what I had written. Also, similar negative feelings and behavior may arise as other traumas are unpacked and re-framed.

I use an app called Day One and is has an option for password protect. Whatever you choose just make sure you can set a password. That way you feel more secure about writing what you really feel.

Thanks, Factory Poet. That's a great primer.