Journaling To Heal The Self : A Beginner’s Guide

Do you know that journaling is a powerful tool to heal your emotional wounds? If you are interested in journaling & self-healing, but don’t know how and where to begin, this beginner’s guide for journaling to heal the self, is meant for you.

WHAT IS JOURNALING?

Journaling, as I understand, is the art of penning down one’s thoughts in an intuitive way, to express whatever one may be thinking or feeling at the given moment. This practice can be highly effective in releasing one’s negative emotions and moving towards a healed and healthier self. However it can be a very vast space for someone who hasn’t journaled before. It can seem a daunting, pointless and vague task at the beginning. And you may decide to all together avoid or skip this brilliant tool in your healing journey, simply for the lack of direction.

My own journey with journaling started intuitively a few years back. Over time it developed into a consistent practice that I use till date. Although initially I started writing to simply express myself, eventually I realised the immense healing power in this simple yet effective practice. And in this post I want to share with you, all that I discovered about the art of journaling.

KEY STEP BEFORE YOU START:  INTENTION SETTING: ‘TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SELF’

Before you start journaling, it is extremely helpful to set an intention for your journaling process. Why do you want to journal? What do you hope to achieve through it? Asking such questions in the beginning, helps you become mindful of your journaling. When you set a key intention before you begin, it will act as a guiding light and an anchor that will bring you back to the focal point, anytime you start to get lost in the maze of your thoughts, feelings or memory. When you journal with mindfulness it becomes a powerful tool for Self-Awareness in addition to being a powerful Self-Healing medium. Journal to simply learn more about yourself, the rest will follow. The below intention is a simple yet profound intention that I used in my journey and you can use it too if you like. Once you set it, your soul will pick up this powerful intention and store it and become your true guide in your journey, revealing to you much more than you can imagine.

‘My intention is to learn as much as possible about myself, so that I can grow.’

THE ‘WHY’ TECHNIQUE OF JOURNALING: WHAT IS IT AND ‘WHY’ THE ‘WHY’ WORKS

The turning point for me came when I started writing things down and then followed it up with a ‘Why’. My intent changed from simply venting/writing whatever I was going through, to an intent to learning about myself through what I was writing. The intent became to learn ‘why’ I was doing what I was doing in life.

When you start questioning yourself, your behaviours and feelings with a simple, curious and patient ‘why’, it becomes a beautiful soul-searching exercise. A chain reaction begins where one ‘why’ will lead you to the next ‘why’ and the next. And you begin to slowly dig, layer by layer into your own psyche. You begin to realise your true, subtle motivations and intentions, your unconscious programming and conditioning behind your behaviour. A lot of which you may be blissfully unaware of, with your conscious mind. If you keep this one question as the anchor-word for all your journaling, it will turn into a very fruitful exercise. You can also do this process for another person’s behaviour in order to understand their perspective and motivations behind their behaviour. 

SIMPLE EXAMPLE OF A ‘WHY?’ PROCESS:

• Me: I am Feeling so …
• Soul: Why are you Feeling …?
• Me: Because I did ….
• Soul: Why did you Do….?
• Me: Because I thought…
• Soul: Why did you Think….?
• Me: Because I Believed…, Because I Assumed…, Because I Know…
• Soul: Why did you Believe…. Assume…. Know…?
• Me: Because I always thought that…/I was told …/Everyone around me …etc

Slowly you understand that each ‘Why’ leads you to an answer/layer deeper than the previous. You can also randomly ask yourself ‘Why’ questions from time to time to go deeper into yourself. A few random ‘Why’ questions: 

• ‘Why am I feeling like this?’
• ‘Why did this incident trigger these feelings in me?’
• ‘Why did I attract such an experience into my life?’
• ‘Why do I keep attracting such experiences into my life?’
• ‘Why did I do …. and not do….?’

TWO TYPES OF JOURNALING

Over time, I realised that my journaling practice fell into two different categories. Both were important in their own way as each served a different purpose. While one helped me deal with smaller, minor, day to day issues, the other helped me heal the deeper wounds. You can begin with both or the one that you need more. 

1. TYPE 1: SPONTANEOUS VENTING – For resolving minor, day to day incidents of one’s life
2. TYPE 2 : LONG TERM JOURNALING – For healing the deeper wounds of one’s life

JOURNALING TYPE 1: SPONTANEOUS VENTING – For resolving minor, day to day incidents of one’s life

The aim of this type of journaling is to process the emotions you may feel due to a particular incident/situation in your day to day life. This is best for a minor situation, a situation which you know is not very important in the larger scheme of your life, yet at the moment it is troubling you and dominating your thoughts. The idea is to resolve the issue in your mind, as quickly as possible, so that your mental energy is not kept captive by an unimportant event. Instead you can focus your precious energy on getting on with your important tasks of the day. If not immediately this can also be done at the End of Each Day, so that you do not carry it with you to the next day/days.   

The basic idea in this approach is that you transfer your thoughts onto a piece of paper, vent for a brief 5-10 mins, find a quick and final resolution point and then discard it all. You can keep a separate diary/journal for this or simply find a piece of paper wherever you are. The key to remember is that even though this is a quick venting process, at it’s core is the ‘Self’, which means that your focus must come back to ‘You’ rather than staying stuck on the ‘Other’. Even if you gain a single point of insight from a minor incident it is great. Over time these little learnings about yourself will all add up and help you form a deep, intimate connection with yourself.

JOURNALING TYPE 1 – SPONTANEOUS VENTING – STEPS TO FOLLOW:

1. VENT ABOUT THE INCIDENT + IDENTIFY YOUR FEELINGS:

Write down all the emotions that you are feeling after an incident e.g. angry, insulted, sad, lonely, misunderstood, helpless, frustrated, let-down, scared, disappointed etc. Let your awareness go to all that you are feeling. This simple act of identifying your true feelings and writing them down can be very healing in itself, even if you don’t proceed any further.  

2. DO THE ‘WHY’ PROCESS:

Write down the ‘why’ below each feeling and try to dig deeper. Why do you think you are feeling like this? Who do you think is responsible for causing those feelings? Initially your script may go like – ‘ABC said this/did this to me. And then I did this….’ Here, you can give yourself the liberty to vent out at the other person who you think is causing the turmoil/feelings inside you. 

3. BRING YOUR FOCUS BACK TO SELF:

Once you have got all the anger/hurt/negative emotions out of the way, bring all the focus back to yourself, to see your part in the whole situation. E.g.  ‘ok, so if ABC did this, what did I do in the situation? This is where you take responsibility for your part in the situation however minor, active or passive it may have been. The idea is that not only do you close the incident for now, but that you also learn something about yourself, so that you can process a similar situation from a better place next time. Some questions you can ask yourself to bring the focus back to yourself are:

• Did I react immediately? Or did I pause and think?
• Was it an automatic/default reaction on my part?
• Could I have given some room to the other person to understand his point of view?
• What can I learn about myself from my automatic reaction? Is this a pattern I have in these kind of situations?
• Could I have reacted in an alternative way?
• What all alternative ways could I have responded in?

4. RESOLVE THE INCIDENT IN YOUR MIND WITH 1 or 2 CONCRETE RESOLUTION POINTS:

As you go deeper and question yourself, resolve the actions/feelings written above with a concrete resolution point against each point. You can also write 1 or 2 overall resolution points for the incident, that you can repeat to yourself if thoughts about the incident do not subside after journaling. Every time you are tempted to start rethinking about the incident and/or blaming the ‘other’ – ‘Im feeling so…because ABC did …’, consciously repeat your resolution points:

‘It’s ok. This incident is now closed.

My part in it was ….

Next time I will do: 1)………& 2)…….instead of …..’

5. TEAR IT AWAY – CLOSURE & FREEDOM: 

The act of tearing out the paper is like a closure you give to yourself. It’s a decision you make that you won’t be spending any more of your precious life energy on that topic/incident. 

JOURNALING TYPE 2 : LONG TERM JOURNALLING – THE THREE STAGES

For certain wounds/situations which impact or change the course of your life, simply venting out once or twice or even ten times may not help. You will need to engage in a longer and deeper process of journaling, for all the layers of pain to come out and dissolve. 

To do this process, pick out the deepest life wounds that you have and you want closure or healing for. You can do this process for each wound/experience. Or you can begin with just the one where you are currently experiencing most pain. 

STAGE 1: THE RAW PHASE : VENTING + EMOTIONAL PROCESSING + SOUL SEARCHING 

AIM: To activate your Soul to release the long held pain, as well as reveal the answers you seek

1. STEP 1 – CREATE A DEDICATED, SAFE, WRITING SPACE: Create a simple text document/notes on your computer or keep a diary if you prefer and start writing about your experience. Start where you feel the most comfortable and are able to write effortlessly. Whatever comes to your mind, simply write it down, with no judgement, no censoring, no structuring. The idea is to creating a safe & loving space where you can be completely honest with yourself. This space is for you and no one else gets to be there. When you know that you have a safe space where you can come anytime, spend some time, share your deepest truths without any fear and ‘Just Be’, you allow yourself to begin the healing process. The safer you feel, the more your soul will open up and the deeper it will go to assist you in finding the answers.
2. STEP 2 – USE THE ‘WHY’ PROCESS TO QUESTION YOURSELF AROUND WHAT YOU HAVE VENTED: Follow a round of writing/venting with the ‘Why?’ process – Why did I do/feel/think/believe this? Let yourself go deeper and deeper into the experience. One question will lead you to another. Even if you start venting about another person and feel they are the cause/source of  your pain, it is ok, write what you feel. Eventually the process will bring in more and more self-awareness and bring you back to yourself.
3. STEP 3 – DON’T BE IN A RUSH TO DRAW BIG CONCLUSIONS OR TO FIND CLOSURE: In Type 1 journaling drawing a conclusion and resolving the incident is easier, since it is a minor day to day issue your are dealing with. In Type 2 journaling, since you are attempting to heal deep wounds, let there be no rush to get to some conclusion. Healing is a process and you cannot rush it. It will take its own course. Let it. Keep going deeper and deeper into the layers of that experience/pain without pressuring yourself to come out of it or to find closure. Eventually you will in your own good time. Do not let your logical mind interfere and tell you to ‘logically’ close things. Because even if you do try to logically close things off, your soul will reject that logic, as it seeks your deeper truth about the experience and not rational logic.
4. STEP4 – WHEN YOU START TO FEEL STUCK IN THIS STAGE: It is highly possible that you remain in this Raw Stage for a very long time, from a few months to a few years, going deeper and uncovering new insights and layers of your experience each time. But eventually you will reach a stage where you start to feel stuck, really really stuck. This will happen when you have emptied out all that you possibly could, from your soul. You may now, find yourself writing the same things over and over and over again as if in a loop. This is a very good sign. It means you truly have reached the bottom of things, the heart of the matter, with nothing very new/insightful left for your soul to reveal. Do note that this stage will arrive, after a lot of rounds of venting, introspection and soul-searching, which sometimes may take a few months. Do not mistake a temporary stuck feeling of not being able to write with this reached-the end-of-the-road feeling. You are now ready to move on to the next stage.

STAGE TWO: CONSCIOUSLY CLOSING THE PAST: ‘THE PAST CLOSURE’ DIARY

Aim – is to create a Permanent Closure for your past/wound, by creating a Solid Closure Space in your Heart, Mind & Soul, so that you can return to this space and consciously ground yourself in it, any time you feel the past pain arising. The aim is to free yourself from the past. 

Stage two begins when you decide that you are done venting, have introspected enough, dug as deep as you possible could, accepted all the insights and revelations from your soul and now want to create a permanent closure for the wound. This is a stage where you consciously chose to close the wound again and again rather than revisiting the past again and again. This is the stage where you stop the questions and replace them with answers.  

While Stage 1 focusses more on Emotional Processing, giving priority to our feelings, letting them out as much as we want, with no judgement. In Stage 2 we also bring in Mindful/Conscious Processing, where we guide our minds like we would guide a little child, towards a resolution. Once the ‘child’ has emotionally expressed all the pain, we now guide the child, like a wise adult, explaining to him/her all the reasons why something happened and why now it’s time to let go. We tell the child how he/she can learn from the experience and use it to grow stronger and wiser. This gentle yet persistent guiding of our minds over time, drives home the point and one gradually becomes genuinely uninterested in looking back, a great sign of progress on the healing journey. 

• CREATE ONE-TIME PERMANENT CLOSURE STATEMENTS & THEN KEEP RE-ENFORCING THEM: Create permanent closure statements, something you can go back to, read and remind yourself that the past wound is now closed. Let the closure statements include all the reasons you now know, logically, emotionally and soulfully, that help you understand the past and move on. Closure statements can be based around universal perspectives such as forgiveness and acceptance. But these universal perspectives will no longer feel empty and shallow to you, as they might have seemed earlier, because they are now backed up valuable truths that you unearthed during all the soul-searching in Stage 1. If you try to close your wounds by prematurely jumping to these closure statements without the patience and hard work of Stage 1, they will seem like empty consolations. With no supporting inner data to base them on, your soul will reject them and the pain will continue. A few universal themes you can use to create closure statements are: 
  • Self-Learnings: Self-Growth is the biggest gift of pain. Write down all that the situation/experience gave you a chance to learn about yourself, about life, which you would have never learnt or discovered, had the situation not happened. These are the precious life lessons you learnt. ‘Had it not been for ….., I would have never learnt …..’ 
  • Forgiveness for the ‘Other’: Understand the situation from the other’s perspective and choose to forgive them for their part – ‘They did the best they could, given the level of awareness, understanding and capacity they had at that time.’
  • Forgiveness for the Self: Use all the insights and self-awareness to now consciously bring in Self-Forgiveness. Know that you did your best at that time, given the level of awareness, understanding and capacity you had at that time – ‘I understand my active or passive part/role in the situation. I did the best I could at that time.’ 
  • Acceptance of the Karmic Interplay and Forces of Destiny: Sometimes the profound forces of destiny (karmic consequences) have to play out before the power of our free will can take over, in our lives. Accepting the power of destiny brings solace – ‘Even though I may not understand it fully, I accept and surrender to the power of destiny and karmic accuracy in what happened.’
  • Faith in Higher Wisdom: Know that there was and is a Higher Good in all of it, which time will eventually reveal to you.

• CREATE A ‘PAST CLOSURE’ DIARY: Create a new diary, the ‘Past Closure Diary’ where you document and record all these closure statements. Add supporting factual info to the closure statements to make them more powerful. The next time the same pain/thinking arises you can simply go to that specific part in your diary and read the closure statements. Reflect and meditate on them for a few minutes, go into the forgiveness and acceptance mode and consciously tell yourself you chose to move on rather than remain a prisoner of the past. The idea is that instead of spending hours venting or introspecting about it like you may do in Stage 1, you now consciously reduce the time you stay in pain, by going right to the heart of the matter, to the closure piece you have documented. You now allow yourself only as much time as is needed to go through the closure piece and re-affirm and accept it. And then get back on track, get on with your task, your day and your life because that part of your past is now closed.

STAGE THREE: MANIFESTING A HAPPY FUTURE: ‘THE HAPPY FUTURE’ DIARY

And then you come to the most important and the most enjoyable part of the journaling process, when you are DONE WITH THE PAST and all you want to do is to focus every ounce of your time, energy and awareness on creating and manifesting the future of your dreams. This does not mean that thoughts about the past will not appear again, but that now you are in a place of power to compassionately disengage from them and keep moving towards your future.   

1. MAKE THE DECISION THAT YOUR FUTURE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR PAST: This is where you decide that your future is more important than your past and that you still have power over creating a life you want despite your past experiences.
2.  CREATE A ‘MY HAPPY FUTURE’ DIARY: Now you create a second diary called ‘My Happy Future Diary’. This is where you write about all that you want in life, in various aspects of your life e.g. work, relationships, play, purpose etc. Think of all the things you want in your future and write them down in as much detail as you can imagine. The idea here is to keep your attention, energy and time focussed on things you can change/create i.e your future rather than looking back. Once you start feeling lighter after completing the first two stages, you will come to a point where you only want to write in this dairy.
3. KEEP ADDING TO IT AS YOU GO ALONG IN LIFE: Keep adding to this diary as and when you feel excitement about some aspect of your future. Keep detailing out your vision. But don’t feel pressured to fill this diary. Adding to this diary should be a joyful task, one that motivates and inspires you with all the wonderful possibilities for your future.
4. EVENTUALLY DISCARD/LET GO OF THE PAST DIARY : At some point you will come to a stage where you are DONE with the past and refuse to give it power over your life anymore. You may feel an urge to detach from everything related to the past. To symbolise the end of the past you can permanently let go of your ‘Past Closure Diary’ by tearing it or burning it. Give a silent prayer of thanks to your past, for helping it make you the person that you are today. And let go. Enter into a new, healthier, more healed and wholesome space, where the only thing that matters is the future and your dreams.

FINAL TIP FOR YOUR JOURNALING PROCESS: LET IT BE INTUITIVE, LET YOUR SOUL GUIDE YOU

It is best to be intuitive about your journaling process. Let your soul guide you and it will take you where you need to go. Use the above process simply as a guideline, take the parts which you like, which resonate with you and leave what doesn’t. You may even end up creating your own unique process of journaling and healing.

Above all, honour your truth in all of it, in the journaling and the healing.  

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU HAVE BEEN JOURNALING ON THE RIGHT TRACK? – A PALPABLE FEELING OF LIGHTNESS, FREEDOM & CLARITY

A key point to keep in mind while journaling is that, not only do you write things down, but that you also stay mindful about how that writing makes you feel. If it helps you feel light, positive and free, you are on the right path. If it does not, don’t force yourself. But do remember, because some wounds cut really deep, it can take a few months to a few years of journaling to get to a stage of consistent lightness and freedom. Let there be no rush towards resolution. 

If you feel the above process is right for you, do not give up, stay consistent, include other healing techniques as well in your healing journey and let your soul be your true guide. Keep moving on, on the path of soulful living. And for sure you will see results. And eventually come to a place where your soul now focusses only on one point : The Point of Your Happy & Purposeful Future.

Love & Power, Richa