Stop F*cking Lying – The Key to Successful Journaling

This pass Sunday I reminisced with my email community about a journaling experience that left me and my newborn baby stranded at the hospital. The ordeal was dramatic and rather traumatic. It left me feeling very uncomfortable with journaling ever again. Although I continued to journal, most of the emotions I wrote were filtered and shallow. My intentional journaling turned into a “dear diary” sort of experience. After a while I did stop journaling because I wasn’t getting anything out of it. It felt pointless.

I even went into a bible that my dad gave me for Christmas many years ago and took out the letters I had hand written to God Himself. I hid those letters in there thinking that:

1. It’s a place where no one would find them, and
2. Maybe placing my deepest pain directly in my bible would get my prayers for relief answered.

I ended up taking the letters out and throwing them away. I really couldn’t afford to take anymore chances with my deepest thoughts becoming ammunition for someone to use against me in my life again. Even when I would sporadically journal to process some major life events, it was so washed down it didn’t help at all. Deep down, it just made me angry that I was forced to filter my emotions.

Growing up, I was taught to be strong. Crying, whining, or hurting were weak emotions for weak people. I think all it really made me do was feel like my emotions didn’t matter. My cries for help didn’t matter and my pain was irrelevant. Journaling was my way of making my emotions matter until my journal betrayed me. Then even that wasn’t safe.

I often hide my emotions seeming cold and heartless to some. I’m really not that way. I do guard my emotions. I know that some people take advantage of them. However, two days before Christmas I found myself having to face my true emotions and it brought me to tears doing 60 mph down route 15 on a rainy winter’s evening.

Initially I felt anger. I was so angry at my son that I was sure I was going to yell and fuss and curse until I lost my voice. However, I sat down fuming and trying to figure out how I was going to fix his fuck up. As I thought about what he’d done, I realized I wasn’t angry. I was actually hurt. I was hurt that he hadn’t called and talked to me about what was going on. I was aching that we had become so disconnected since he left for college. It surfaced feelings about never feeling like I was a good mother to him and how I probably don’t deserve a connection to him. It was manifesting as anger on the outside, but on the inside is where the truth was.

So, when he came home for the holidays, sure that I’d be livid with his actions, I simply told him the truth. The truth brought tears to my eyes, but a freeing feeling to my heart. We talked about what I’d said, and it’s opened the doors to better communication for us. Without that honesty, I’d be mad, he’d be sorry, and we’d be not closer to mending the real issue in our disconnect.

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Journaling requires the same honesty. I talked to my guest Patrice Garrison about journaling in a podcast episode and we touched on the important components to journaling. The components that make journaling successful on your journey.
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• We must Be Honest with ourselves. Why address something that isn’t broken? If you don’t acknowledge the truth, you can not start the process of mending it. No emotion is weak. They all serve a purpose. In most cases that purpose is to guide you in the right direction. Listen to what your emotions are telling you and jot them down. Look at them and process them. Maybe your journaling is sentences and paragraphs in a spiral notebook. Or perhaps your journaling is your rawest emotions sprinkled across unlined paper. Whatever it looks like when you are done, the end result should be an honest account of how you feel so you can process those feelings and use them to guide you in the right direction.
• Journal With The Arrogance of a person that doesn’t care who sees it! That confidence will allow you to be authentic and it opens the flood gates for all your true emotions to come pouring out. Some of us are prone to suppress the “bad” thoughts but they need to be processed too. As Patrice said in the podcast episode, not every thought that enters our mind is something we need to use to get to where we are going. However, it is still a thought that needs to be acknowledged, processed, and handled appropriately. Sometimes it's just garbage and we need to dispose of it, but we can’t do that if we don’t acknowledge it.
• Whatever method of journaling you use to process your feelings, Fall In Love With The Process. If the process does not feel good to you, don’t do it. Find something else that speaks to you. Journaling may look completely different for you than it does for anyone else, but as long as it works, it is what’s best for you. That process should leave you feeling free and comfortable. You should feel focused, accomplished, and unstoppable. Play with different ideas and different methods but don’t feel bound to anything that doesn’t feel right. It defeats the purpose of journaling.
• Every so often, Revisit Yourself. Where were you two days ago? Two weeks Ago? Two months ago? In fitness, an assessment is done before a training regimen begins. It’s not really done to assess how unhealthy you are. It is more so to determine progress. Regardless of where you start, there should be a change after implementing new strategies. If not, something needs to be tweaked. Go back and look at those previous journal entries and marvel at your progress, find the strategies that worked best for you, or find the areas of life that always seem to give you the most trouble. Either way, it’s healthy to look back occasionally and learn from history. It makes the future a lot easier to navigate.

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No journaling experience, or any experience, can be successful without honesty. It’s important to stop lying to ourselves. It makes the process of growth possible.

Have you checked out the podcast episode on journaling and vision boards yet? Click Here to listen!
 
Have you joined my email community? Click here to stay connected!
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