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Summarising thoughts on Point 4 (including reflections from earlier postings)
@Faith-and-Hope talked about the difficulty in bridging and the need to sit with feelings. Due to various reasons she is not able to keep a gratitude diary.
@Appleblossom previously mentioned that she consciously journed about the positives and it really did help.
@Shaz51 said that Mr Shaz loves the difference between the positive vibes at her place vs the negative vibes at the "outlaws' and how he had been knocked down with words and that they often do not think before they speak. Shaz has contemplated starting a gratitude journal.
@Ali11 joined in talking about taking time to pause and @Faith-and-Hope gave practical tips in that regard.
@Former-Member mentioned that her garden diary and that changing her focus from the negative to the positive has helped her.
The next step is tip 5: Journal about the difficult times
- Write 15 minutes for 3-4 days about your painful feelings.
- Ask questions to explore the emotions more.
For me this tip represents a bit of a mine field, particularly for those who have gone through deep trauma and I would again put a reminder out there that self-help can be a good starting point but is not often not adequate for treating emotional wounds and professional help may be necessary.
I bear in mind what @Appleblossom wrote earlier:
"I have not journalled about the negative ones yet. I wrote a few brief poems and I began with a therapist who was supposed to be into narrative therapy. Every now and then I attempt it and have lots of partial pieces of writing. No longer sure what I want to say and I dont want to retraumatise myself, so I am mostly being active and positive, but maybe like your quote about realism, it best doing brief limited memory trips."
The researcher Courtney Ackerman has found a lot of evidence that shows journaling has been proven effective in the treatment of mild depression and anxiety and in complementing other forms of therapy for those with major depression. She quotes the psychologist Barbara Markway, “There’s simply no better way to learn about your thought processes than to write them down.” and “to address our problematic thought patterns, we first have to actually know what they are! Journaling is instrumental in helping us identify our negative automatic self-talk and get to the root of our anxiety”. Courtney mentions that journaling can also help manage stress in a number of ways by:
- Decreasing symptoms of various health conditions
- Improving your cognitive functioning.
- Strengthening your immune system.
- Examining your thoughts and shifting your perspective.
- Reducing rumination and promoting action.
- Planning out your options and considering multiple outcomes of a situation (Scott, 2018).
I think when looking at building our emotional resilience that it is important to examine our negative thoughts and throughout our discussions, contributors have mentioned some of these and I think the forum in general has been a place where we have felt the freedom to do this and is a form of journaling; I know I have found it helpful to write down my feelings here.
