Journal Writing - Health and Healing

Just what does Journal Writing have to do with individuals who have experienced injury, trauma or circumstances beyond their control and who want to see change?

I have seen first hand the power of Journal Writing. Personally, I have journaled for 25 years, writing things one year that I might never have remembered the next. In busy and hectic times, when our minds are full, Journal Writing invites us to write how things affect us as a way of making our way through it. During my 10 years of coaching clients in how to keep Journals, they have found a trusted friend in the blank page; one who will holds every thought and emotion they could ever experience. Reading the writings later, they were able to see what they have moved through, how far they had come, and how putting their thoughts onto paper had eased what was going on in their minds. Clients have seen how they moved through difficult experiences and came out somewhere else. It gave then a perspective they could not have achieved without writing. When the stress of the situation, along with how it is affecting them, is purged onto paper, page after page, the emotion of it becomes a story only the writer can tell. It is a story that will not change with the passing of time because it is etched in the writer's own handwriting. This too helps many to find their footing again.

As a trained Social Service Worker and Expressive Arts Facilitator, I have had clients who found that when they couldn't keep everything in their minds or work things out, that their journal gave them a place to store information. At times when they didn't feel they were making headway, they only needed to read what they had written months before to see how much progress they had achieved. It is through Journal Writing that one sees how adversity or things beyond their control are affecting them and how writing it down can prompt making peace with the situation. I often encourage clients to use comparisons in Journal Writing, which, interestingly enough, helps one to understand the impact of a situation. I expressed the following in the pages of my journal.

"It's late winter and I notice a tree. Its branches are
dry and bare. I feel the same and then I realize that
light green leaves will blossom forth in spring with
such in abundance I won't be able to count them! "

In that moment of writing, I knew that although I was not sure what life had in store for me, that I would grow from this experience. The description of the tree was how I explained to someone else what I was feeling. Having someone understand was comforting for me. Clients who are coached in the ways of writing journals, find that the act of writing can be used for finding one's way through grief and loss, for making sense of, for beginning to heal painful memories, for learning to forgive one's self and for moving through difficult life times with someone to walk along the way with them. Journal writing clients have found Journaling can prompt them to:

• Keep an accurate record of happenings
• Let go of stress by putting it onto paper, rather than holding it inside
• Tell the story only they can tell
• Heal and soothe painful memories of things beyond our control
• Make sense of what has happened
• Sort through the confusion
• Find hope in difficult times
• Be heard
• Find forgiveness
• Deal with fears

If, as a young girl, Anne Frank could write all the details of her life in concentrations camps, stories from her journals that are still as vivid today as the moment they happened, stories that helped heal the memories of her life, what then is the possibility held in writing for someone who has experienced trauma? Ann Frank left the most accurate records of what happened to her because she wrote them as they happened. Are there things that you need to begin writing? Take comfort in knowing that your journal does not care how you write or about sentence structure or spelling. There are no rules. Your journal will hold fear, challenges, and uncertainty, all without judgement!

*This article is not intended to provide legal advice. It is recommended that you consult your lawyer for advice concerning your particular case.