Spotting Trends through Journaling

Written by Dan Brown, MA (Director of Operations, Senior Clinician)

Living in Boston, you live with history all around you.  You get used to it and almost expect it. Our home is on the Paul Revere trail, and just down the road on Paul’s horse route is the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington.  Paul actually lived there as a kid, and Rev. John Hancock owned and lived there in 1775.  On Paul’s famous ride, he stopped there around midnight to warn Hancock and Sam Adams that the British were in fact coming and then headed off to Concord to continue to alert the militia.  

There is a museum at the Hancock-Clarke House that has on display a journal belonging to someone who lived there during that time.  The Hancock House is just steps away from Lexington Green where the first shots were fired of the American Revolution.  This journal often chronicled the weather, the people visiting the home, the meals served and events of the day.  

April 18, 1775 the day was evidently a lovely spring day, according to the journal, with sun and good meals planned.  Then one would think April 19, 1775, the day the first shots were fired, there would be a long entry with drama about the events and its significance to the cause.  There was no such entry.  That morning was overcast, the flowers were starting to pop up, and there was some kind of dust up at Lexington’s green near Buckman Tavern.  But instead of a long winded entry, the writer talked about how lunch was going to be a nice stew later that day.   I do love a good stew and spring flowers.   

The reason I share this is that sometimes we “overcook” events that happen in our day, giving it too much significance or taking it as a general theme of how bad things seem to happen to us and only us.  In the Hancock House journal, the writer could have made all sorts of comments about what he or she was seeing and what was going on in the world at that time.  Sure there wasn’t Twitter or Facebook to connect people and events, but this journalist would have known what was going on but he or she chose not to report that.  Seemingly the meal was as important as the shots fired that were supposedly heard around the world.  It was almost as if the writer, being only a short walk away, barely heard the shots and went about their day.  

When it comes to those “overcooked” events, we must work to challenge those automatic thoughts and test them to see if they are actually true.  A good way to do this is (funny enough) through journaling.  Now you might “overcook” the events from time to time in your journal and that’s okay.  Or you might only allow for good things into your journal and that’s okay too.  The key is to start to see the trends in journaling.  

From our side of the office we would call that catastrophizing and black and white thinking.  If you are prone to making every event a catastrophe challenge that thought and don’t let it go to its negative conclusion.  Or you might look at X or Y event as simply being great or terrible.  If you failed at something reframe it into a learning experience instead of a failure.  

Wisdom is the skill to interpret God’s hand in the midst of life’s struggle and mundane moments.  And the ability to truly understand why things happen and what they mean can be hidden. We can sit in that struggle and be curious about our feelings and what God might be doing without “overcooking” things.  And I promise if you do you’ll watch how God will show you Himself in those experiences.

Benefits of Expressive Writing (Part 1)

Written by Day Marshall, LMHC (Senior Clinician)

Early in my career I was introduced to the therapeutic benefits of journaling and expressive writing. In that program, we set aside a 50 minute window each week to give our residential patients time to journal. These journal entries would often be a generator for discussion topics during individual counseling. Very often, the client unearthed a concern or belief during the journaling exercise that he or she was previously unable to put into words.

I often request that my current clients engage in expressive writing as a part of our regular counseling process. I describe this exercise as allowing the jumbled and vague thoughts and feelings that are sitting in their minds to be filtered through the writing-skills part of their brain in order to sort them out and let them be seen for what they are. The writer ‘gives air to’ or ‘lays out on the table’ beliefs, feelings or fears that they have previously never directly acknowledged. This action alone can be extraordinarily beneficial to relieving emotional distress.

Giving yourself a chunk of uninterrupted time to simply express your thoughts and experiences is a luxury lost to time for most of us. For many generations, keeping a journal was a normal part of life and provided documentation of one’s activities and opinions. In our modern age, journaling has often been set aside for the more flashy and mindless activities of screen-based entertainment. However, once we allow ourselves the time to intentionally express ourselves in writing, we discover its immense power to improve our emotional and even physical states. For example, numerous studies among patients with varying illnesses including depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, asthma and fibromyalgia have found that expressive writing has a direct positive impact on the patients’ symptoms.

If you don’t know where to start with expressively writing your feelings or thoughts, begin with a prompt. Use the prompt to get the ball rolling. For example, begin with the prompt, “If I had no fear whatever, I would . . . “ and then give yourself 30-50 minutes of uninterrupted writing time to dive deep into the process. Another example is “the most painful emotional experience of my life was. . . “ Try to consider how the experience made you feel in the moment, the impact it had on how you see yourself or others, and any lingering impacts it has had on your beliefs or behaviors. Journaling specifically about issues that cause fear, stress and anger can be very therapeutic. If you receive a diagnosis that is fearful, writing about that uncertainty can relieve some of the emotional weight of it. If you have a strained relationship, writing a mock letter to the person with whom you struggle can provide an outlet to express all of the emotions and words you have inside that may not be helpful to express directly to the person.

Expressive writing can be kept in a journal, on a private computer document, or can be ‘writing one-offs’ that are deleted or thrown away immediately after the words are put on paper or screen. There is an additional layer of potential therapeutic benefit to journaling that I will save for another post. For now, be encouraged to start! Begin with something. It doesn’t have to be extensive or profound. vEven a commitment to writing 2-4 times a week at 5-10 minute intervals in order to simply begin expressing your emotions and thoughts is helpful. Give it a try. Perhaps you’ll discover the value of it for yourself.