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

Book Review - Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

In his 2017 bestseller “Why We Sleep” Mathew Walker takes us through “The New Science of Sleep and Dreams”

Broken into four parts, Walker takes us through what’s happening as we sleep, NREM (non-rapid eye movement) and REM sleep, how this aids in memory formation and problem solving. How are body clock and circadian rhythm influence our selling patterns and how this changes over our life time.

Walker then goes on to explain the benefits of sleep and perhaps more shockingly the detrimental effects of not getting enough sleep. Walker links lack of quality sleep to dementia, cancer and heart disease. In showing the links between sleep and brain development Walker highlights sleep’ influence on mental health concerns such as depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.

Next up are dreams and dreaming, with Walker stating “Freud was 50% right and 100% wrong”.

Walker seems to be more aligned with Carl Jung’s theory of dreams as self therapy (though he doesn’t state this in the book) with a chapter titled “Dreaming as Overnight Therapy”. Walker goes on to explain dreams therapeutic, social, creative and problems solving benefits.

The last part of the book tackles the extreme detrimental effects of lack of sleep, death. How we got here as a species and a society to chronically undervaluing sleep, what could should and what is being done to address this.

Interestingly from a counselling perspective are the insights into depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, PTSD and psychosis. Varyingly influence by sleep, development and dreaming.

Walker backs this all up with a plethora of studies conducted by himself and many others. He is good at admitting when the studies are inconclusive, only showing correlation or where the direction of influence may be unclear i.e. is it depression influence sleep issues or is it sleep issues influencing depression. Walker is also clear when it is is own theories rather than the results of studies he is sharing.

Considering the studies heavy nature of the book Mathew Walker manages to make it a compelling and engaging read. I was left feeling this is an important book and one that will hopefully influence not only individuals but also corporations and governments to prioritise sleep, something the Walker himself is trying to do. It has certainly influenced me to include discussions around sleep into my professional work more.

Who is this book for?

This is a book for everyone. It is well written and engaging while being highly informative. This book may change the way you engage with sleep and how you prioritise it.

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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