Crossroad Centre Antigua

Getting The Most Out Of Your Journal

By: Greg Liotta, MSW
Primary Counselor at Crossroads Centre, Antigua.

Many people recommend journaling as an important relapse prevention tool. Indeed, if you apply yourself to it, you will have a profound advantage. There are many ways to use a journal, all of which foster great benefits to your emotional, mental, and spiritual health.

The word “journal” has its roots in “journey”. Unlike a “diary” which documents your recollection of what happened during the day, a “journal” helps you to explore your inner world in a way that can improve your external relationships and circumstances. It is a written reflection on what you are thinking, feeling, and doing. The exploration itself is the “journey”.

Benefits:

1. The primary benefit of using a journal is that it cultivates self awareness. It involves a daily exploration of your thoughts, perceptions, and feelings, as well as a language for identifying your feelings. A person who is self-aware has a profound advantage over someone who is operating via habit and conditioning. Research has proven that self-awareness is a powerful tool for breaking habits, creating new ways of being, and overall success.
2. A daily practice of journaling creates a habit of stepping outside of your “story” to witness what is really happening from a different perspective. This can be invaluable if your “story” is causing you to suffer. It allows you to explore alternative possibilities to situations. It allows you to participate in creating a new story, one of your choosing. *You write your story. Don’t let your story write you!
3. Most importantly, journaling helps you to make connections between what you perceive is happening in your life, how you feel about it, and what you actually say/do about it. Cultivating the capacity for making these connections builds emotional intelligence, which is a predictor of success.

Technique:

1. Rather than documenting what happened during the day, use the journal to explore your thoughts, perceptions, and feelings about what happened. Try to make connections between those elements in your exploration.
1. Instead of “Today I went for coffee with some people after the meeting. It was nice”, consider something like, “After the meeting tonight I went for coffee with some folks from the fellowship, and really enjoyed it. I wasn’t sure I would be able to have a good time with these people. I realized I sometimes get anxious when I am in a social setting. I worry about what people will think of me, if they are judging me. I realized that my addict-mind always assumes the worst, and makes things up. I discovered that I can have fun in sobriety, even if I am nervous. I don’t have to listen to my addict-mind.”
2. Instead of “My co-worker really pissed me off today. I wish they would do something about him”, consider something like “Larry really pissed me off when he did such-and-such. It reminded me of when my father used to speak to me like that. When that happens, it makes me angry, and when I get angry I always tried to escape. When Larry acts like that, I want to escape. I used to escape by drinking, but today I can sit with this anger without doing harm to myself. I don’t have to act on it. Maybe Larry is a good teacher for me. I am learning new ways of coping.”
2. Look for the ways in which situations can teach you lessons, or the way people mirror things you like or don’t like in yourself. Journaling helps to cultivate insights that allow you to see yourself more clearly. These insights can help you experiment with new behaviors.
1. Instead of, “Mary is a brat. I can’t stand to be in the same room with her. Every time she opens her mouth I cringe”, consider something like, “Mary gets under my skin when she does such-an-such. I don’t know why it bothers me so much. I guess sometimes I can be like that, and I hate it when I’m like that. I try hard not to be like that, and I wish Mary would try harder. I wonder if that’s why she gets under my skin so much.”
3. Use the journal to challenge yourself by setting intentions and expectations.

Sample Journal Outlines:

There are a number of effective techniques for journaling. Try one of the following:

Morning Journaling: Set Your Intention

Use the journal to set the tone for your day, such as: “I’m realizing that the evenings are the toughest time for me. Most cravings come when I’m bored and lonely, usually after I get home from work and have nothing to do. Today my intention is to sit through these feelings. Today, I am clear and focused at all times.”

Evening Journaling: Reflections

1. Today the things that affected me the most were….
2. My thoughts about these things were…..
3. These thoughts created these feelings in me…..
4. I realized the following about myself: ……
5. Tomorrow I will challenge myself to be more……..

Gratitude Journaling

Gratitude journaling focuses the mind on things you have to be grateful for. This cultivates a consciousness of appreciation and acceptance, which is a powerful tool in recovery. If you choose this approach, each night you reflect on your day, and identify a minimum of 5 things you have to be grateful for. They must be real, concrete things, and different than what you wrote the day before. Allow the list to grow as long as you wish, so long as you write a minimum of 5 things each day.

Happy Journaling!