[Juliana]

I just thought I'd share something that has helped me a bit when I'm depressed.

There's a back-story. About 10 years ago I came across a journal I had been writing in a few years earlier. When I was writing, I was in a difficult relationship and terribly depressed. As I sat there reading the things I had written, I wanted to reach out to the younger me and tell her that she wouldn't always feel so horrible, and things would get better, and she was about to embark on a few of the best years of her life. I wanted to go back in time and give her a big hug and a pep talk and let her know that things were about to get better in her life.

So, I decided at that point, that I would write in a journal not only when I'm feeling miserable (like I used to do), but also when I'm in a good mood and things are going well. I started by writing to that depressed girl and telling her she was wonderful and her depression would end... and I have continued writing on a regular basis since then. I have found some comfort in those journals when I'm depressed. I go back and read about the other dark times when I felt hopeless and then I read an entry from a few months later and see that things were better and I was happy again. It's like having a little visit with my non-depressed self. It's a good reminder of how it feels to be that non-depressed person, and it reminds me that I WILL feel that way again.

Anyway, I'm just wondering if anyone else keeps journals. Have you found journalling helpful -- just in getting things out, or has it helped you in other ways too? Any tips to share?

[Wants2Fly]

Hi Juliana -- I started journaling when I was about 15. I am not journaling presenting, as I am exploring myself through teeny tiny art projects.

I have used role-playing in my journal. One T suggested I keep a special journal of nice things students say to me when I was very, very depressed. It was a good thing. Sometimes I felt so bad, I couldn't even relate to those nice things. There were no mere words to help.

Journaling can be used for many purposes: creative self-discovery, spiritual growth, emotional discovery and growth, to keep notes on nature, experiments, one's garden.

i do use journalling just to let all the thoughts and feelings out in a more appropriate place as the can get far too out of hand
i too use art i paint and draw when i can sometimes its hard to get the inspriation or imagination
but sometimes i just sit there with pencil and paper and color the whole page in
just doing something with my hands keeps them occupied so i dont do anything else....

just to add thank you for sharing u using it to write positive things
i must try it when i do feel better...

[desperado]

Hey Jules,

I journal on & off -- mostly off, LOL (no time). Rather, I don't make the time. I don't really like it.

I would suggest journalling to anyone. It is really great to look bk on things long ago & see how you felt & perceived things.

Oh, and NEVER throw them out. I remember when I moved when I was like 18.........cleaned out my closet & found some old diaries. One was from when I was ten yrs old. I only remember reading, "I am depressed. Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. I am so lonely. I hate school." I don't know why, but I threw that out...........and oooh God, I so wish I had kept it, now.............

Take care, eh.......good thread.....

Des

[Perna]

I do throw out my journals (Sorry, Des :-) but not until I've "copied" everthing I "need" from the whole of a previous one to the next. I do have a couple little ones from 20+ years ago but when I started to reread the 4-5 I had from when I seriously started working daily after reading Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way they kind of blurred since I have my "life" problems and work on the same sorts of things over and over. Sometimes I get more depressed reading old parts of a journal because the complaints are similar :-) So, now I take the "good" things from each finished journal (not immediately necessarily) and copy them into the next one so I can keep working on them or remember them; quotes, ideas, projects, etc.

Now I keep a huge, blank, artist's book next to me at the computer here and constantly write stuff in it from off the Net; ideas for my school classes, information (for where/when a test is going to be and who I have to call), lots and lots of geneaology info and made-up calendars to track meds, various passwords and URLs/addresses, etc. So it's a bit harder to get to my "easy" chair and books/journal and other projects away from the computer these days.

I was working in Chef Kathleen's Cooking Thin Daybook last year and started my own combination cookbook/journal/shopping "list"/diet & exercise thing but haven't kept up with that project either. I graduate in May so I'm hoping I'll get back to some of these projects, especially my journal, since I haven't got anything else big (like school) planned yet to take the place of the hours on the computer writing papers.

[Wants2Fly]

I have thrown away parts of my journals -- the parts that are endless wailing -- and I have kept other parts that document circumstances I might to recall or write about at some time. As I am getting older, I am feeling less attached to them, and I have whittled them down to one big plastic file box and some more current looseleaf journals from the past few years.

The positive comments from students were in a beautiful bound journal volume that I especially bought as a keepsake -- and I'm not sure where it is presently.

I was in one of the deepest depressions of my life when I started the positive journal at a T's request, and I believe that was the best time to start it, not when I was in better shape. Even though writing the comments could seem like events from someone else's life, it did force me to confront the facts that not everything was as totally negative and bleak as I believed.

One of the teeny tiny art things I am doing is making origami while I watch TV. I am online too much and this gives me something different and expressive to do.

I also make handing things outs of branches and found objects. I want to try a paper mache sculpture that will be a spiral swirl and I will hang 10-point modular origami stars in the colors of the chakras down the center. hahaha. That's the plan, but I don't know if I will have the ability to ever tackle this.

I do journal--the "morning pages" from The Artist's Way someone else mentioned. I took a class that focussed on the book & found writing in the morning--free association--helped clear up my head before starting the day.

I've been keeping a journal on & off since I was a teenager & suffered my first deep depression. I do go back & rip out some of the pages. I don't want my children to read them & realize how sad I was.

My mother wrote lots of letters to my father when she fled the country (he was going to get her involuntarily committed to a mental institution--very bad case of bp) & for some reason he kept them & passed them on to me after she committed suicide. They were full of rants about how much she hated us kids & that I was a ***** (because I had a boyfriend). They were very disturbing, to say the least, so I don't ever want to expose my kids to my negative moods. I've never written anything bad about them, but I just don't want them to know how much I have suffered with the bp depression.--Suzy

[Juliana]

Suzy, that's so disturbing that you read the things your mother wrote when she was feeling at her worst.

I agree that there are some things are best being torn up and discarded. I have thrown out pages from my own journal because they are just nasty and negative. I wouldn't want anyone to read them... because I don't mean half of what I'm saying when I'm angry and writing.

My sister found her diary from her teen years when we were both in our 20s. We sat down to read it together and it was just full of her ranting about how much she hated me. We sort of laughed about it while reading it and she told me she didn't feel that way anymore; she was just a messed up teenager. It was hard for me to know that my sister had hated me so much, though. I'm 5 years younger than her and looked up to her and adored her when she was a teenager. I had no idea that she felt such animosity towards me at that time.

[EJ711]

Hi Juliana,

Good thread! Thanks for starting it!

I had an older brother (12 years older), who I adored.

Do you think your sister might have been jealous of you? Was she as pretty as you?

EJ

[Juliana]

My sister is very pretty, but doesn't think she is. I seem to have been born with self-confidence while she was always very shy and has struggled with self-esteem. I made friends easily and was popular while she had very few friends and didn't go to school dances, didn't have a boyfriend, etc. I was academically gifted and was very musical and she wasn't. I didn't have to try hard to do most things; they just came naturally to me. I was cognizant of the fact that that wasn't fair even when I was a child. I can remember my sister struggling to study spelling for school quizzes and I felt guilty that it was so easy for me and I can remembering feeling so sad for her when she was sitting at home on Friday nights. I could feel how lonely she was.

So there were a lot of inequities and she was (and still is) very sensitive. So, I guess I wasn't really surprised that she was jealous and resentful of me, but I didn't know how MUCH she had hated me. It wasn't my fault that so many things were quite easy for me and it wasn't her fault that many things were much harder for her.

My parents always made sure that they praised both of us. They didn't make a big deal about my academic accomplishments because they knew I hadn't worked hard for them. They praised my sister a lot for her hard work, but that wasn't enough to boost her self-esteem. She still blames them for the way she is and the way she feels, but I think they did the best they could.

[Wants2Fly]

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Suzy5654 said:

My mother wrote lots of letters to my father when she fled the country (he was going to get her involuntarily committed to a mental institution--very bad case of bp) & for some reason he kept them & passed them on to me after she committed suicide. They were full of rants about how much she hated us kids & that I was a ***** (because I had a boyfriend). They were very disturbing, to say the least, --Suzy

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

I think it was cruel of your father to give you these letters. If there were good parts, he ought to have passed only those along.

Perhaps this is one of the best examples I've ever encountered to contradict the saying that the Truth Shall Set You Free.

Not always.

[EJ711]

Juliana,

It sounds to me like she didn't "hate" you as much as the fact that she didn't measure up to you in so many ways. It sounds like she was resentful of your confidence, talents and intellectual capability.

How much older is your sister than you?

EJ

[Juliana]

She's 5 years older than me and she's married with 3 kids. We have a pretty good relationship now, but she often says that I'm more like the older sister because she comes to me for advice. I'm her only close friend. She still gets jealous of me sometimes. That's the main thing that causes problems in our relationship. I have trouble wrapping my head round her jealousy because she has a lovely family and she's quite well-off financially, while I'm single and struggling with so much debt... and recently spent 4 years sick and alone in my tiny flat living on social assistance. My life is nothing to be envious of.

Anyway, her lack of self-esteem makes me sad because I know how painful it is for her. She sees herself through such a negative filter. One day, years ago, she said to me, "It's not fair that you have such beautiful hair." So, I made her look in the mirror with me and showed her that we had EXACTLY the same hair! She couldn't see that. She doesn't think she's pretty even though she's prettier than me. She's 5'9" and has a lovely figure while I'm 5'4" and stocky. She has beautiful, straight, movie star teeth, while mine are terribly crooked. She doesn't see herself the way others see her, though. She has always been that way. She gets very anxious when she feels like people are looking at her. When she was a kid she just wanted to be invisible in school. That breaks my heart.

Sorry for rambling on. This is on my mind a lot.

[Reesie]

I'm glad you are close with your sister now. Sometimes sisters just can't get along, because of the lifetime of issues they have. Were you close during the four years of your illness?

[EJ711]

Hi Juliana,

I was going to say that it sounded like you have more of the characteristics of the older sibling.

I think your confidence is the underlying issue. I think she is jealous of your confidence.

Confidence is a wonderful quality to have.

((((((((Juliana))))))))

EJ

[Juliana]

Hi Reesie. My sister and I were very close during a couple years of my illness. I don't know how I would have gotten through some of the tough times without her support. She turned on me at one point, though. It seemed to come out of the blue. She stopped talking to me for 8 months. It was fuelled by her own mental illness -- depression and low self-esteem, so I do understand that. It was like she reverted back to her childhood behaviour. It turned out she was jealous because she felt like our parents were paying too much attention to me (I was sick and needed help) and she said some very hurtful things about me. I was shocked and very hurt. She ended up apologizing profusely and I forgave her, but the feeling of betrayal hasn't gone away. I felt like she abandoned me when I was at my lowest and took the opportunity to kick me when I was down. She was my only family member in the city, so having her eliminate me from her life for that period of time was painful and lonely. I would never do something like that to her. So, even though we're still quite close, I will never trust her in the same way I did before that happened. I'm not angry with her anymore, but I won't ever open myself up to be hurt by her in that way again. There are other people in my life whom I trust implicitly.

You're right EJ. Confidence is a wonderful thing. I think it's one of my greatest resources when I'm dealing with difficult stuff.

[katheryn]

hi, i used journling to help me get through the past couple of years, sometimes it was daily but at my worst i could write pages on and of through out the day, i now only write when i want to rant when im feeling bad, i have gone back over some of these journals recently and they brought tears to my eyes

[EJ711]

Juliana,

I'm sorry for the period, when you needed your sister, and she wasn't there for you. I'm sorry that due to her insecurity she has hurt you, and lost out on a closer relationship with you.

Hugs,

EJ

[Juliana]

Thanks EJ. Hugs to you too. Thanks for being so supportive. I really appreciate your kind words.