Journaling instead of going to therapy

[Brandon Nankivell]

It is possible to identify traumas with the aid of journaling. Then holding on to them or letting them go will be your choice.

Some prompts I use:

• Why am I feeling X?
• What is the source of X?
• What is first memory in which I remember feeling X?
• What is the most potent memory in which I remember feeling X?
• What triggers X?
• What does feeling X or behaving X do for me?
• Would I like to keep holding on to X or let it go?

[shree]

Journaling can be therapeutic, but it's not a therapy.

From my experience, inner child dialogue which can be very powerful. It's a form of journaling. Combined with a few other things it can make miracles in your life.

[Letho]

@Basman f no.

I've never had therapy but I basically have an advanced+ degree in self-awareness, etc. 

If you don't have that, do both. 

I mean, just go and see a very good therapist to help with your journaling it'll only cost you a few hundred bucks and you'll be journaling 10X better than you otherwise would have. Do research and use your intuition on who's likely to help you on your path here.

Your path here obviously isn't meant to be go and see a therapist, its obviously to learn from a therapist as well as anything else you can do on how to develop your self-awareness so you don't need them anymore. So do that. Don't mess around with it, get it done.

You also have Meta-AI for example, just use that, then feedback loop your learning experience with an ACTUAL therapist and you'll NATURALLY continually grow from there. Don't think you're all crash hot and get overconfident, its so incredibly valuable to have feedback from extremely good insightful people/therapists, even if they're sometimes a little off, you use the feedback to grow regardless.

[Basman]

On 01/10/2024 at 11:00 AM, shree said:

Journaling can be therapeutic, but it's not a therapy.

From my experience, inner child dialogue which can be very powerful. It's a form of journaling. Combined with a few other things it can make miracles in your life.

Do you have any resources on inner child dialoging?

[shree]

58 minutes ago, Basman said:

Do you have any resources on inner child dialoging?

Check my public journal in the forum. I think one of my last posts explains it very well.

If you want to go deeper into it, I suggest Teal Swan's Self-Love course and Patrick Teahan.

 

[melchangelo]

What I’ve found is that feeling into your emotions is the most important. Really allow yourself to suffer from there the difference between pain and pleasure dissolves 

[Thought Art]

On 9/19/2024 at 6:08 AM, Basman said:

Is it possible to work out your neurosis, traumas, etc. through journaling instead of going to therapy? Therapy is expensive, inconvenient and often has long waiting lists. Obviously, I'm distinguishing from severe trauma that would typically be diagnosed in some way. Comparatively, I have light trauma.

Has anyone had any luck with working through their issues via journaling? What kind of prompts did you use? What was your process like?

No. You need a toolbox. When fixing a house if you only use a hammer you'll break things. Or, wont be able to fix everything.

[Espaim]

On 9/25/2024 at 10:37 AM, Basman said:

A lot of good resources. Thanks guys.

I can definitely see that argument, but therapy is essentially a lot of "how did that make you feel?" If you have the know-how, surely you can achieve a lot with just journaling in theory. Besides, I don't believe therapy is for everyone, like the initial research was based heavily off working with women for example.

Journaling can certainly help you with many issues you may face. I suggest you to do it if you do or do not go to therapy. Nonetheless, I'll add some thoughts here.
It seems like you have lumped "therapy" into a single thing but there are many approaches to it. Let me list some of the top of my head:
 

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
• Existential Therapy
• Psychoanalysis
• Gestalt Therapy
• Psychodrama
   

I bet some will have more of "how did that make you feel?" and others will be... Different. I suggest you research about it.
If you find some approach that interests you, don't fear trying it out. Sometimes it'll be hard to find a good match of an approach or professional for your individual needs but it can be helpful. And you can even bring your journal to help! At the end, the choice is yours.

[WritingHands]

The-rapists are useless

Pretty sure youre doing the better thing.

Actually what you stated is something that'd they do but you're doing it on your own for free

Edited October 24 by WritingHands

[Yimpa]

Journalling and therapy go hand-in-hand. 

[Letho]

@Basman yes of course, but 99% of people are unqualified to do it. At the very least, if you can do it you should be doing both. For both, where is the competency relative to the practice and you as a person? 

[Basman]

One thing I haven't seen anyone say is that a therapist usually equipped with way more knowledge and vocabulary to address ones issues in addition to having an outside perspective.

[DianaFr]

On 19/09/2024 at 0:08 PM, Basman said:

Is it possible to work out your neurosis, traumas, etc. through journaling instead of going to therapy? Therapy is expensive, inconvenient and often has long waiting lists. Obviously, I'm distinguishing from severe trauma that would typically be diagnosed in some way. Comparatively, I have light trauma.

Has anyone had any luck with working through their issues via journaling? What kind of prompts did you use? What was your process like?

Journaling can't replace therapy but it can be insanely helpful. I have been journaling for two decades as a regular habit and I don't know who would I be without it. As for the trauma work, it's not sufficient, though. I've noticed that my journaling habit has made me very self-aware, so working with other modalities like therapy is easier because I can self-reflect easily, I know myself very well, and when the therapist joins in, the work is just more effective. However, the thing with trauma is - one needs to experience the opposite in order to heal. You can dig up your traumas and reframe the related beliefs, you can also make sense of your trauma-related emotional patterns on paper but you can't recreate the experience you need for true healing. This is a huge shadow for many in this forum by the way. Let us do whatever we can to meditate ourselves out of existence by pursuing high-consciousness stuff and convincing ourselves that we're better than "normies" so we can find a way to cope with our pain. In reality what most people around here actually need is good relationships. Certainly not a new self-help technique. The same is true for journaling as trauma remedy. It is not a solution. Very helpful, but not a solution. 

As for the techniques, I mostly rely on a flow-of-consciousness style of journaling and rarely use prompts. Just start with whatever I'm feeling in the moment, and the story unfolds from there. I added more specific frameworks, like CBT techniques and other belief-reframing methods when I already had 10 years of experience in freestyling regularly, so I already had a good writing discipline. I don't think it would make as much sense if I started with the specific methods from scratch, because it would make the task too difficult to keep up with and thus less efficient. For me, what worked even better was creative approach and involvment of different creative tools like Tarot cards and creative writing. Wow, that made this work so much more exciting and turned it into a journey rather than a mission with a certain outcome. But that may as well be just me. My mind thrives on symbols and abstractions, and I applied it effectively in my trauma work. Maybe you have your thing as well to in corporate in your journaling practice. 

[Basman]

1 hour ago, DianaFr said:

 However, the thing with trauma is - one needs to experience the opposite in order to heal. You can dig up your traumas and reframe the related beliefs, you can also make sense of your trauma-related emotional patterns on paper but you can't recreate the experience you need for true healing.

I assume therapy can facilitate such? Are there other avenues?

It sucks that mental health professionals are so out of reach without money.