[precaryous]

I am having trouble accessing feelings in therapy.

T says I am defending against the feelings in therapy ....that it is very normal and not a bad coping mechanism ...but then I feel bad about not being able to access them.

I asked her if she could provoke those feelings in me, and she joked, "Well, I can poke you with my cane." Lol

She suggested I start a feeling journal. I guess that will cut down on the emails I send her.
That was last week, and I just have one entry.

I guess we will process the journal in therapy. Maybe that will help me.

I have had this impression that if I emote strong feelings with T, that my depression will decrease. Maybe that's not how it works?

Do you/have you kept a feeling journal and did that help you process issues? Did you end up feeling better?

Yes actually. One thing I found helpful was to find a list of feeling vocabulary and pick one or two words that seemed to speak to me at that moment and journal what they brought up for me. Sometimes that vocabularly escapes me, particularly if I'm really depressed and accessing my emotions is particularly difficult, so having a list to prompt me helps. That was actually one of the more helpful things I learned in the hospital was using an actual list to help recognize and put a name on my feelings. It's a hard task when you are numb from depression or resisting emotions as a protection.

[precaryous]

Thank you. I think I have a list like that among the mindfulness handouts she gave me.

[ragsnfeathers]

Originally Posted by precaryous

I am having trouble accessing feelings in therapy.

T says I am defending against the feelings in therapy ....that it is very normal and not a bad coping mechanism ...but then I feel bad about not being able to access them.

I asked her if she could provoke those feelings in me, and she joked, "Well, I can poke you with my cane." Lol

She suggested I start a feeling journal. I guess that will cut down on the emails I send her.
That was last week, and I just have one entry.

I guess we will process the journal in therapy. Maybe that will help me.

I have had this impression that if I emote strong feelings with T, that my depression will decrease. Maybe that's not how it works?

Do you/have you kept a feeling journal and did that help you process issues? Did you end up feeling better?

I just replied but I don't see it. I hope this isn't a double post.

With my previous therapist I journaled right after my session and kept a running list of issues. Feelings didn't come into it because my psychodynamic therapist wasn't interested in my feelings. This for a different post.

My new therapist is. Happy dance. Yesterday I started doing an exercise from a book, "The Artist's Way". It's called "Morning Pages". When you wake up you grab a pen and notebook, or like in my case a laptop, and start writing. You write three pages without stopping. The first part is usually the minutae of life but by the third page surprising things can come up. It's meant to clear your mind to spark creativity, which I would welcome, but I'm also going to review it right before my therapy session and use it that way. I'll tell you how it goes.

[Ellahmae]

I have a couple of feelings wheels that I got from a suggestion on here -they are great at helping me figure out this emotional mess inside I write down what thoughts I have with the feeling and then find the feeling for the thoughts. I'm not sure if that made any sense at all - but it's just a short sentence with a feeling next to it that I think best describes the emotion/thought and then we discuss it.

[stopdog]

I don't see how such a thing would help (I am not saying it can't or does not help others) me because I am usually fine or less fine and the less fine will eventually go back to fine. Writing that down every day would not seem useful.

[Soccer mom]

One of my best journal entries is when I used a feelings list to identify what was going on inside me. It brought out all sorts of emotions I didn't realize I was having.

I don't keep a feeling journal, per se but I do journal when I'm struggling. I also keep a journal of my sessions that I write right after the session is over - more of what happened vs what I was feeling. My T. doesn't read what I bring in - says I should say it. But, she did mention she would like to read my therapy journal to see what I remember from my session and what I leave out or distort. I would rather her read my regular journal full of emotions that my account of our session. LOL

[catonyx]

I don't keep a feeling journal exactly... I keep a thoughts journal which sometimes mentions feelings. I've always kept a journal, but my T suggested keeping a separate one that is more of a point form type. Reason for this is the second I sit down in the T office I pretty much forget everything I thought about all week. It would be perfectly good to hand over my regular journal except that it would take T the whole hour to read. lol Hence the point form.

[precaryous]

Catonyx, I understand, I forget, too. Do you read the point form out loud or do you just use it to refresh your memory during t?

In the past, I have written my thoughts in emails and sent them to myself. I keep them in a special folder on my iPad. Other times, I use previous emails I've sent T to refresh my memory.

Now I am writing longhand in my feelings journal. I have terrible penmanship.

[catonyx]

Originally Posted by precaryous

Catonyx, I understand, I forget, too. Do you read the point form out loud or do you just use it to refresh your memory during t?

In the past, I have written my thoughts in emails and sent them to myself. I keep them in a special folder on my iPad. Other times, I use previous emails I've sent T to refresh my memory.

Now I am writing longhand in my feelings journal. I have terrible penmanship.

I don't know yet. T suggested it last week. So I will find out Friday. I assume I am to read it then we decide where to go from there.

I can't write things out by hand as my toddler would keep grabbing my pen and notebook. So I just keep it all in the notes app on my phone.

[SnakeCharmer]

I did this for myself, not for therapy. But I didn't journal. I got a cheap diary and wrote a short note-- maybe just a few words -- about how I felt every single day, what I ate, who I talked to or saw, and what I was doing.

I used a list of emotion words to help me articulate what I was feeling -- for instance, for me there's a difference between feeling frustrated and feeling thwarted. I also used other words, like hungover, pms-y, achy, migraine, indigestion and so on.

I also used different colored ink. Blue, green, pale orange (yellow is hard to read) and red. The colors symbolized my mood and general state of well-being. Even if I couldn't say exactly what I was feeling at the moment, I could make a statement about my general sense of well-being that day. By using the colored ink I could thumb through the diary and begin to see patterns without even reading the words.

It was one of the best things I ever did for myself. My moods and feelings had felt mysterious up until then, but I soon discovered patterns and it didn't take long for me to figure out how to prevent or turn around the bad feeling.

A concrete example: I discovered I felt depressed, hopeless or filled with angst the day after I talked to or saw a certain friend. Every time. Not before, not during, but within 24 hours. I tried to change the dynamic and when that didn't work I ended the friendship, which was something I'd wanted to do for a long time, but I'd taken the path of least resistance for years, being in denial about the whole thing because she was a "friend of the family." I couldn't believe all the blue ink in the diary after I interacted with her.

After three months, patterns became clear. Chocolate -- migraine. Garlic -- indigestion. Getting sick -- abandoned. Lunch with Ms Smith -- stressed and depressed. And every 28 days my H turned into an intolerable $%#&. Must have been his hormones or something.

[ragsnfeathers]

I like this, though I can't see myself keeping it up for more than a couple days. But it sounds really useful.

[Achy Turtle Armor]

Originally Posted by catonyx

I don't keep a feeling journal exactly... I keep a thoughts journal which sometimes mentions feelings. I've always kept a journal, but my T suggested keeping a separate one that is more of a point form type. Reason for this is the second I sit down in the T office I pretty much forget everything I thought about all week. It would be perfectly good to hand over my regular journal except that it would take T the whole hour to read. lol Hence the point form.

I do this often. Between sessions I keep a list of things I want to say or discuss with my T because I got frustrated with my crappy memory. He expects it now. The way it works for me is that we start the session and if there's a break in conversation I usually say, "I've got a few things I've written down that I want to talk about." He then says, "Fire away."