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Journal to the Self: Twenty-Two Paths to Personal Growth - Open the Door to Self-Understanding by Reading, Writing, and Creating a Journal of Your Life Listen to the secrets of your self. Open the door to self-understanding-by writing, reading, and crating a journal of your life. For generations people have kept diaries but only now are psychologists recognizing the extraordinary transformative powers of journal writing. In this remarkable book, featuring actual diary entries, a nationally known expert in journal therapy gives you specific techniques for keeping your own journal and using it to:
With separate chapters designed to achieve specific results, Journal to the Self shows you how to overcome "diary block," how your daily writing can help you do better in your career, 19 ways to write for under 15 minutes each, how to use your past entries to solve today's problems, and how to cross-reference your journal for instant access. For the first time, here is a step-by-step guide to creating a powerful tool for better living-and a simple, rewarding way to achieve greater self-awareness.
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I can tell this therapist absolutely anything. My therapist listens silently to my most sinister darkness, my most bizarre fantasy, my most cherished dream. And I can say all this in any way that I want: I can scream, whimper, thrash, wail, rage, exult, foam, celebrate. I can be funny, snide, introspective, accusatory, sarcastic, helpless, brilliant, sentimental, cruel, profound, caustic, inspirational, opinionated, or vulgar. My therapist accepts all of this and more without comment, judgment, or reprisal. Best of all, this therapist keeps a detailed record of all of our work together, so that I have on my bookshelf a chronology of my life-my loves, my pains, my wins, my wounds, my growth, my transformation. Has this cost a fortune? you ask. Not at all. My therapist doesn't want payment. My therapist is my journal, which I write in spiral notebooks, obtainable for under a dollar in any city in the country. That's why I call my journal "the 79¢ therapist."
My own journal journey began when I was ten. Envious of my older sister's nightly retreat into her locked diary, I waited impatiently for the time when I, too, would have a life sufficiently unpredictable that it merited chronicle. My favorite gift my tenth Christmas was a five-year diary that allotted six lines for each day's entry. In 1962, the life-style of the average suburban sixth-grader wasn't particularly glamorous. Some days it was a struggle to fill up even six lines:
Or:
And so one day I recorded not what had happened in school that day, but what I wished had happened:
And then:
As I warmed to my fantasy life, the cast of supporting players (all plucked from Mr. Mason's classroom) grew, and the plots began to take intricate twists and turns. Not only was my own fictional love life logged for posterity, but also scandals involving my school chums popped up with alarming regularity. The inevitable ethical dilemma (What if somebody reads it and believes it?) and the nagging literary fear (What if somebody reads it and doesn't?) finally cut short my budding career as a soap opera scriptwriter; I destroyed my first diary and vowed not to write another. But I did. And another, and another after that. I have now been writing journals and diaries for 27 years, and I'm happily hooked for life. As it turned out, soap opera scriptwriting wasn't in my professional future. But writing was, and so was psychotherapy. And then, at last, they married. Journals. Since that happy day, I have taught and lectured about Journa1 writing and its applications as a tool for personal growth and self-discovery, both to therapists and to individuals who want to learn how to heal themselves. It has been, and is, a consummate joy. I am in love with my work.
Perhaps the most rewarding and fascinating part of journal therapy is this: it spreads out before you in black and white the contents of the heart, mind, and soul. You simply cannot appreciate how healing and powerful this is until you have experienced it. Take, for example, eight weeks in the life of Rachel, an adult child of an alcoholic father, whose husband had filed for divorce unexpectedly and without explanation. Rachel began her journal journey in the summer of 1988:
It didn't take Rachel long to address the painful issues common to Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACAs):
Despite her early discomfort, Rachel soon found herself using her journal to take inventory of her life:
With some of her ACA issues in focus, Rachel used Unsent Letters to clarify her feelings about her father's recovery from alcoholism:
Three weeks into the process, Rachel noticed a shift in her relationship with her journal:
The "disidentification" process continued with a list of " 100 Things I Am Not." Rachel followed up with:
This shift in awareness allowed her to verbalize long-denied anger and resentments:
And as if this entry were the "labor pains" of her soul, the very next entry logged a dream:
In a whimsical dialogue with her cat, Rachel received cogent feline advice:
An entry logging "current events" opened the door to more exploration of her anger:
In a Stream of Consciousness spiral, Rachel began with the word "Self" and circled her way around and around until she was finally able to break loose with the phrase "get angry," which she did in a journal dialogue with her husband. Her anger and hurt expressed at last, Rachel found a curious calm in an Unsent Letter to her husband:
Tender with harvested pain, Rachel ended this eight-week leg of her journey with a list entitled "Things I Am Grateful For." We live out our lives in cycles. The tides ebb and flow. The moon blooms into fullness and recedes. We live a hundred tiny deaths from hour to hour. And as it did with Rachel, each death inevitably leads to rebirth.
Every time I begin a class, I ask the students what they want to gain from the experience. We create a list of "collective class goals," which usually includes items such as:
After everyone has had an opportunity to contribute to the collective list, I add the last one:
For the journal journey is not always dreary, heavy, or tumultuous. Sometimes, to be sure, the path is a steep uphill climb; sometimes it seems you're hiking down the Grand Canyon without a burro. But remember that your journal will log your joy just as faithfully as your pain, your laughter with as much expression as your tears, your triumphs in as much detail as your tragedies. Notice the parts of the journal journey that are playful, joyful, and exuberant, and write about them, too. Remember that rainbows are real, even if the pot of gold isn't. Ready for the journey? There's not much to pack-only a notebook of your choice, a pen or pencil that feels good, and this trail map. If there's anything else that you need, just throw it in your backpack. And away we'll go! Copyright © 1990 by Kathleen Adams About the Author Kathleen Adams, M.A., LPC, is a licensed psychotherapist and internationally acclaimed pioneer in the field of journal therapy. She travels extensively to teach and consult at holistic learning centers, retreats, conferences, hospitals, mental health agencies, and churches. More by Kathleen Adams, M.A., LPC |
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