Notebook, or journal for therapy what's inside?

Does your therapist ask you to keep a notebook or journal for therapy? And whether or not your t asked you to do this or you decided on your own, what do you put in yours? Just curious because potential new t said I might want to keep one to jot down thoughts or questions during the week.

i would show T parts of my journal in the beginning. he bought me 2 journals. he would keep one and i would take the other home and write in it. next time we saw each other we swapped. this went on til they were both filled and eventually i just started emailing him journal like emails. i stopped journaling throughout the years but earlier last month i started writing in a book i have. i write when i feel bad usually

It was suggested to me by all three. I didn't follow up, mainly because I have this phobia/paranoia about writing - like when it's on the page it becomes independent of me and takes on a life of its own and I lose control of the knowledge the words impart.

But about six weeks ago things were so bad I started - I just needed somewhere else besides therapy to release stuff. I've managed to write at least a sentence or two a day, sometimes several paragraphs. I still can't write about anything really heavy, but it does help to write down frustrations with marriage, family, therapy, etc. I wouldn't bring it to therapy, though.

If you're reluctant to do this, what helped me start was going to Staples and buying an actual book intended to be a journal. Somehow that formality helped.

Work was giving away these nice hardcover notebooks but they were monogrammed letters and weird ones not my initials. So I bought some washi craft tape and covered it up. I may start by writing my concerns if I choose to see this therapist. The hunt has been pretty fruitless save one therapist. Another thread soon on that topic!

None of my T's have suggested it but I started therapy journals in May of 2015. It has been so helpful to read back to what happened and how I felt about it because some of the stuff I would not remember if I had not written it down. I think its really helpful and helps me re-learn things if I keep therapy journals.

image.jpg my notebook

what a great idea! I have horrible hand writing and I'm a decent typist so I'll do some type of online journaling... It's going to be interesting to read these journal entries down the road!

My t suggested journaling a long time ago and i've done it ever since. i have two running journals one is where i record my dreams, and the other is day to day thoughts, poems, questions for t, etc etc. I use spiral notebooks, and put the from-to dates on the front of each one when they finish. I have a big box full of them. It is interesting to read back in the very early ones. I'm coming up on 5 years with current t - so yeah, there's lots of notebooks!!

I have a drawer filled with spiral notebooks from previous therapies. From 1983 on! I used to write all about my sessions and also stuff I couldn't say to my Ts. There was no internet so writing or typing were my only options. I chose writing. There's too much to read now but sometimes I do. At the time, I read some excerpts from my journals to my T because I couldn't talk to them.

My T has suggested journaling but my hand gets tired. Maybe that's an excuse! I also think it's because I post so much on this forum. I don't feel like journaling.

I used to journal, but ex-T told me to stop because I started obsessing about the negatives in my life. Current T and I recently came up with a new idea for journaling: write only about the positives. That way when I'm depressed, I can look back and remember that things weren't always bad. I have yet to start it though.

This reminds me of a tip Sparky gave me. My old job was very demoralizing and stressful. Sparky wanted me to write down three things a day at work that were either positive or things that made me grateful.

I've always liked journaling ever since I was little. But when I was a teenager my mom snooped in my room and read my journal which had very private things in it, and I've been super paranoid about writing serious and private things down on paper ever since.
However I do write in an online journal (penzu.com) and have for about five years. I write immediately after each therapy appointment about what happened, what we talked about, and how I felt about it because I have a terrible memory and it helped both to remind me before my next session, and also to look back and track my mood. I write in between sessions too, or I'll write things down to remind myself to tell my T.
I never showed my T or told her, I just used it as a tool for myself.

I journal but it is more art journalling than anything else. I find it useful as a way to get out of my head and focus on what is going on for me in a simpler and deeper way. I do put words in it and sometimes it is more words than art but last session T suggested maybe I jot down some notes, questions, thoughts before I come to session because I do have a habit of forgetting things when in the room and also having something as a prompt can helpr to open up. I have been trying to curb my emails bit it made me feel quite bad because I couldn't open up and so there was a lot being left unsaid. I realised I had stopped journalling too which meant I wasn't getting stuff out of me in any way. I think it does help but if it was a wordy journal I think it would just keep me in my head. I like my art journalling.

By the third session, my T asked me to journal because she was convinced that I bury my feelings. I had never liked to journal but did it because I finally realized I had a big problem and was open to suggestions.
I journal about my feelings (when I can identify them), things about me that seem "out of whack" (obsessions, sleep problems, hyperactivity, interactions with people, etc.).
I now enjoy keeping a journal.

Timely topic for me. I had the intention to keep a journal before I first entered therapy and did it a few times, but then started sending emails to the T instead (that is an old issue of mine). My former therapist suggested journaling instead of emails to him but he also got engaged in the emails a lot and everything became quite messy so the journaling nevever got realized. Now my current T says it's okay for me to email whenever and said that he would read everything, but it's clear that he does not (I totally understand). So just decided that I will now really switch to journaling instead as the emails just make me feel crazy and ashamed and it's not really an interaction anyway.

I don't like handwriting much and prefer digital technology for pretty much anything possible, so I signed up to Penzu (also mentioned by annielovesbacon above) because they also offer a free mobile app.

What I plan to put in the journal. I have a habit of sending an email to T after each session and typically a few between sessions (although less than I used to) about additional thoughts and feelings in response to what was discussed in the session or whatever else that comes up. I actually like the idea of the journal now because I can certainly put stuff in it that I would not tell the therapist. We'll see how it goes. Have not told T yet.

Thanks to those who mentioned "Penzu" I will check it out. I also have a fear that I will suddenly pass away and my family will find my journals which is another reason why I would prefer to do it online and password protect the file. Hoping Penzu will allow that. If not, I may just start a word document and password protect that.

As an English teacher, you'd think I'd be all about journals, but I haven't kept up with one in ages. When I do journal, I prefer to write on actual paper than on a computer -- something about the tactile contact works better for me. Typing just doesn't help me purge whatever it is I am trying to get out through writing. But I completely understand the security concerns which is why computer-based journalling is appealing.

I never had a therapist specifically ask me to keep a journal, but I think they all assumed I did because of that English teacher thing. I did share certain journal entries with them now and again when I felt what I had written was worthy of exploring with them.

My last therapist always gave me a hard time because he said my journal was too neat. LOL! That is, again, a hazard of having gone through education classes that demanded I have clear handwriting (since we are modeling and communicating with students).

My t never asked me to keep one but I have always kept one. I find it useful to record my sessions and anything that comes up in between. I think if a t asked me to keep one I wouldn't

I journal, but it's not strictly a therapy journal. I've written in journals off and on all my life. I find that I can process my thoughts more easily when I write. Since starting with my current therapist, I've taken to writing in my journal more frequently, and my therapist will often encourage me to write when I'm particularly struggling. I will sometimes read parts of entries to my therapist, if I feel it is relevant to what I'm working on at that time.

My therapist encourages me to read entries to her if I want to share them. A few times, she has offered to read them aloud when I was struggling to share. That brought an immediate no from me, as I often edit my entries when I share them by skipping over parts that I'm not comfortable sharing.

For me, it has been helpful to write and it's been helpful the times that I have shared entries.

I write in mine mostly what happens, what is discussed or done, as well as thoughts and feelings I might have had about it while it was happening and thought processes as I write the journal. It has brought me a lot of insight to write everything that happened - it often happens that I notice it wasn't as bad (or other times as good) as I remembered until I sat down to capture it word after word.

Yes, same here. Kind of like reading a real book instead of an e-book. There is just something about ink on a page that makes it seem more real.

I would actually be more concerned with keeping a journal on a computer or the internet. With a book I can hide it if need be.

As an off-shoot to this thread, what do you all do with your journals when they are full?

I used to keep them, but I found rereading them later to be very triggering and depressing. My therapist gave me a good idea that has worked for me. When I get finished filling a journal, I go through it fairly immediately and transfer any particular gems that I believe I might find truly helpful into a separate master journal. I generally find what I end up keeping isn't all that much, but what I do keep are items I really do reread from time to time: skills I have found useful, quotes I really liked (I'm a quote collector), etc. I try to keep the master journal positive, useful, and inspirational. The old journals I get rid of kind of like a purge of the old which for me was so often filled with ruminations, severe depressive thinking, details of memory that I don't find helpful to keep rehashing over and over. My T helped me frame this as letting the past be delegated to where it belongs.

When I was inpatient as a teenager, I had the terrible experience of staff going through my journals and laughing. I have since only kept notes that are either too cryptic for others to understand or anything really revealing gets written down , talked about in therapy then the page gets torn out and tossed. I am especially nervous about carrying the notebook on me at work. Because at work, I use similar notebooks all the time for meetings ( if I don't know someone I'll jot down his or her role and ask someone later that kind of thing)

Do you need to take the journal to work? I set a specific time of day - night, just before bed - to write in it. That way it never needs to leave my bedside table.

I've kept journals since I was a kid, but now they are mostly therapy journals more than anything else. I try to write about each session soon after. I keep them in boxes when I finish and like to go back through them from time to time. It helps me see how I've grown, or sometimes how I am stuck or repeating patterns with T.