One of the best ways to use your journal is as a trusted source into which you place all of your emotions.
The very act of getting your emotions out of your head and down on paper will help you to process and work through what you are experiencing and feeling at that time.
Emotional journal writing will help you reduce your anxiety about a particular issue and over time you will gain insights into what triggers an emotional response in you and how you react to everyday situations.
If you are thinking about using this method of writing a journal here are three important guidelines to consider: Express your true feelings.
This is your journal and a place where you can say whatever you feel you need to but sometimes the thought of someone finding and reading the journal can limit how much we share.
If you truly want to get the most out of using a journal as a therapy tool it is important you write everything out.
Make arrangements to ensure your journal is kept in a place where no one except you can gain access to it.
Lock it up if you think that will help.
Expressing exactly what you want to say is important so don't hold back and let it all out.
Avoid self judgement.
We are our own worse critics at times and it is important that as you write in your journal you let all of that go.
Let go of it needing to be written in perfect prose or of what you are writing to flow in a particular way.
Your only goal here is to take an event and write it out into your journal.
How it comes out is not as important.
Focus on your own emotions not on blaming others.
The trick to successfully using emotional journal writing is to take responsibility for your emotions and also to get a "big picture" view of when you experience emotional triggers as a response to particular events.
So, as an example, through your journal writing you may discover that you get angry every time someone tries to show you how to do something.
They want to show you how to do it because they want to be sure that you are okay doing it.
You see it as an expression of their mistrust in you or you feel they are saying you are not good enough to complete the task they are asking you to do and that makes you angry.
This is a valuable insight.
Let me explain how that can help you.
You see yourself getting angry at a parent, a sibling, a co-worker all because they tried to show you how to do something you already know how to do.
As you look through your journal you see a few days ago you got angry at your parent because they were trying to show you how to cook scrambled eggs without burning them.
You have been cooking scrambled eggs for years (okay with hindsight you do burn them but so what!) and that made you angry which started an argument.
Your sibling saw you downloading music and tried to show you a better way to do it.
You got angry at them trying to tell you what to do and that started an argument.
Your co-worker found a faster way of getting something done but it just confused you and made you feel inadequate.
That made you angry and the two of you ended up arguing about how the work should be completed.
By focusing on your own emotions and not on other people you are able to gain insight into what triggers an emotional response in you and then make a clear decision about how to change your behavior to a more positive response.
Overtime and the more you engage in it emotional journal writing will help you make sense of your life and your emotional response to what happens to you.
Remembering that life is 10% of what happens to us and 90% of how we respond will give you some idea of just how important it is for us to be clear about our responses to different situations and the way they are handled.