Journaling for Mental Self-help

If you want to use your notebook as a means to self-therapy:

1: Write daily. Long og short doesn't matter, as long as it's every day.

2: Keep your notebook private. Never read somebody else's notebook, even if you get the chance. And those around you shouldn't read yours. So keep it under lock when you are away.

3: Start every entry with a description of the moment now, factually and concretely. How is the light, the weather, the sounds around you? How does your body feel just now? Your pulse, your head, your stomach, right now? And most importantly: what do these do to you? Is the light good or bad? What does the weather do - to you? What does the light carry - for you? Sorrow or joy? Disquiet or peace?  Both at the same time? 

4: Go on noting guesses, conjectures, suspicions, ideas of why all that has this effect on you. Be audacious. Jot down your immediate thoughts. Right or wrong, nobody else but you will see it.

5: End with probes, searches, attempts towards the darkness behind. Does the personal experience you have just noted remind you of something? Something that was said or done to you some time? Something that happened? Times and places you passed through? Why is it reminiscent of just that?

6: Never throw away or lose your notebook. It is a meaningful personal document, your story, the tale of your soul.

This gets more and more difficult as you progress through the points. Especially point 5 will teach you how terrifying a blank page can be, and how heavy a pen can feel.

But you will also learn to know writing as a key to the door of freedom, the relief of burden, oxygen to the breath of your soul. For every page filled you will get stronger, more autonomous. More your self.

I tell you this for selfish reasons. No not egotistic. Self-ish. It worked for me. Maybe it will work for you. Try!

#journaling  #therapy  #selftherapy  #writing  #notebook