Why journaling is a New Years Resolution you should consider keeping.
I checked myself into a psychiatric hospital in 2014 and then again in 2016.
The first time I did it I was a year clean and sober, also I was insane. Riddled with feelings and no functional behavioral strategies to handle them. The second time, I was exhausted, depressed and tired of functional behavioral strategies. During this admission, I began journaling. It started by accident during a group therapy session on ‘emotional coping’. My first page is below, I clearly was a bit overwhelmed. I did not know that I was setting up a practice that would afford me insight, healing, and sanity.
The reality is, in these fast-paced times it can be very easy to get caught up in the daily grind. Get up, smash a coffee, commute to work scrolling social media, work your ass off all day, commute again, try to exercise, chores, Netflix, pass out — rinse and repeat. Add a couple of kids into the mix and it’s even harder to carve out time for you. I know this kind of living for me, creates a big disconnect from self — I fall into autopilot, survival mode and then start to feel flat because life becomes Groundhog Day. I fail to notice the things in life that I’m grateful for, the things that are hard, seem even harder and I begin to fixate on externals, if I just had this, that and the other…
