Therapeutic Journalling

What is Therapeutic Journalling?

Firstly, journalling is writing down what you’ve been doping and what has been going on in your life.

This can be done in a variety of styles, such as content and detail driven -

“I went to meet a friend in a cafe after not seeing them since last year. It took half and hour to get there. It took a bit of time to get the conversation going and then we chatted for a few hours.”

Or more feeling, emotionally driven -

“I went to meet a friend in a cafe. On the way I felt excited and nervous about meeting my friend. I hadn’t seen them in so long. It felt awkward at first but after a while we managed to reconnect and it felt easy to talk and then the time seemed to fly by and before I knew it a few hours had passed."

Therapeutic Journalling focuses more on the feelings and emotions of our experiences. This gives us a space where we can express ourselves fully with out any judgement, other than our own, and if you notice this write about it too. When writing your journal really focus on your feelings and on the emotions you experienced. This may be difficult at first, especially if you aren’t used to it as it can take time to develop our emotional vocabulary. Once you get better at this try to be even more precise about what you were feeling. If you were feeling happy, what kind of happy?  Was it joyous, exuberant, thrilled, delighted, euphoric, and/or glad, contented, relaxed. If you were feeling sad, what kind of sad?

This can be help in a number of ways. It is a space where we can express and have an outlet. It encourages us to give words to our feelings helping us to reflect upon what is really going on for us. It also helps us organise and understand our feelings, helping us gain self awareness and develop our emotional intelligence. Giving language to our feelings can help us grasp, process and communicate them.

Therapeutic journalling can be done at anytime. It is also a useful accompaniment to counselling as it can help continue the focus and processing between sessions and help us find areas and subjects we may want totally about in the sessions.

If you’d like to know more about how counselling can help your journalling journey please get in touch

Gratitude Diary

A Gratitude diary is a simple positive psychology exercise we can all do to help improve and maintain our mental health and to encourage a more positive outlook.

As humans we are often drawn towards the negative. This is natural for survival, we need to be aware of any potential dangers and react or prepare accordingly, but in the modern world with 24/7 news cycles and worldwide instant information we are surrounded by negative information.

This can lead to a very negative world view.

This exercise helps us to remember the world is also full of positive moments and actions. There is good news out there too.

How to do a Gratitude Diary…

Carry a small note book or diary with you and each day write down three moments during the day that you are grateful for.

Write down - I am grateful for …

These can be simple small things.

Here are some examples from my own diary-

Sunday

I am grateful for breakfast with a friend, for him sharing his time with me.

I am grateful for the bright sunlight on this cold winters day.

I am grateful for the music of that band helping lose myself in the music.

Monday

I am grateful for the strong water pressure in the shower.

I am grateful for the cool breeze after the stuffy tube ride.

I am grateful for the bus driver waiting for me as I rushed to catch the bus.

Tuesday

I am grateful for the smile from a stranger as I walked past.

I am grateful for delicious meal I got to enjoy.

I am grateful for the shop assistant helping me find that item I was struggling to locate.

You get the idea.

Writing these moments down in your diary is key to the effectiveness of this exercise.

According to Psychologist Rick Hanson negative stimuli form into memory extremely quickly while positive stimuli can take a dozen or more seconds to transfer into long term memory.

Therefore the act of writing down these moments and events that we are grateful for makes us concentrate on them for long enough to form long term memories.

Positive Effects

Being grateful can also help us form stronger bonds with others. If we acknowledge our gratitude for what someone else has done for us, then we are more likely to want to reciprocate, and therefore becoming more connected to others in a positive manner.

Taking the time to to contemplate and concentrate on these moments of gratitude also makes us more aware of our world, our place in it and how we experience the world.

Another effect that I and clients of mine that have tried this exercise have noticed is that after doing a gratitude diary for a while we began to notice more and more positive instances that we were grateful for. It became easier to find the positive moments with the fog of negative experiences. 

Try it for yourself and let me know how you get on.

If you find that you are feeling very negative and are only focusing on your negative experiences counselling can help you to understand what is going on for your and to help you work with this and gain perspective. Get in touch now to find out how Counselling for negative thoughts can help you.

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Counselling for Personal Development

Like the old Yellow Pages advert- “We don’t just help with the nasty things in life.”

While counselling is incredibly helpful for Anxiety, Depression, Loss, Relationship difficulties… The list goes on. You don’t have to be struggling to gain from Counselling.

Counselling can help you develop as a human being, assist you in getting more out of life and living more fully. Counselling can aid you in discovering what you truly want from life and to get more from life and living.

Many of us meander through life, taking it as it comes, as if life is happening to us. Doing things because they need doing, because it’s the “right” thing to do. Jobs become a means to an end. Dreams and ambitions fade into the background. Days, weeks, months, years, start to merge into each other.

Then ten, twenty, thirty years fly by and we wake up one day and wonder “What if…?” 

What if… 

We all have our own unique What if’s and it is never too late to explore them. 

It is always valuable to take the time to contemplate and examine our lives. Explore which aspects of our lives make us feel truly alive and which parts feel like dull repetition.

Do you want to live your life on autopilot or do you want to take charge of who you are?

How can counselling help?

Counselling is a great space to explore these ideas. To discover who we are and what drives us. To figure out what is holding us back, in work, our relationships, personal lives. What is stoping us living life fully as we truly want to and what changes and choices we can and wish to make. Counselling can help you form deeper and more meaningful relationships with those around you and help you live more authentically.  

A place without judgements or preconceptions. A place to examine and explore. A place to reflect and grow. A place to wonder. A place to honestly examine those What if’s…

Get in touch now to find out how counselling can help you develop and grow.

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