Healing through Journaling

Healing through Journaling might sound very New-Agey for some. What does healing even mean? Where are the wounds? Why is everyone talking about wounds that are not visible? If it is a wound that can not be seen by anyone, how do you even know it exists?

Why are unhealed wounds an issue? I will have to write a quote that I read on social media a while back and I might get the wording wrong however the essence is “Unhealed wounds will cause you to bleed on other people and eventually infect many areas of your own life”

When you have experienced pain and trauma in your life and ran away from the feelings or numbed yourself in one way or another, you left an internal wound open and raw. This will create an unhealthy pattern in your life.

For example, if you have been cheated on by a partner and you numbed the pain by turning into a party person or workaholic, you ran away from the hurt and pain without healing it. An effective way to quickly address that wound is to book a few sessions with a therapist and process the pain and move on with your self-esteem intact while having even more self-love. When you do not heal this wound, it affects you consciously and subconsciously making you attract even more experiences in your life that hurt you further.

Therapy is a luxury for many people like me and hence, my best bet when it came to confronting my own demons has always been journaling. Robin Sharma said that Journaling is Meditation on paper and I concur.

So how do you start? What kind of journal do you buy? When do you do it? What is the right and wrong way of doing it? Should I watch a few videos on journaling? I humbly request you to stop right there. Please do not complicate it. My motto in life is to keep it simple.

It is your mind, my reader. It is your beautiful life and your own experiences. I normally write on any paper I get and if I feel that my emotions are too intense and my words are too mean I process my feelings on the paper and tear it before trashing it. The point is, to be honest with yourself without any filters.

What makes an effective session of my healing through journaling?

The most important thing is to sit with your feelings. It might seem uncomfortable. It might seem like a waste of time. Sometimes you might feel a resistance bubbling up inside you. This is when we should remember that “What we resist persists”

An excerpt from my recent journaling session reads like this

I feel like darkness has swallowed me whole. It hurts. I feel my lower abdomen is tight and my feet are cold. I feel sad and empty. I am so angry that these feelings are coming up because I felt I had dealt with all this before. 

Then I proceeded to write who triggered this in me. I always incorporate speaking to the person (through my journal) who triggered me. I end the session with forgiveness to the person and the situation. Once, the feelings have been addressed, explored, and processed, it is time to bring your intention and attention to healing it. I normally feel lighter after an effective session but, the full impact of the session is felt after a rejuvenating sleep.

Having a consistent practice of honoring your feelings and gathering life lessons will enable you to show up as a more mature and well-integrated person. I am still learning and growing through my journaling sessions and I recently realized that owing to my certain childhood experiences, I have created a pattern for myself where I am just surviving and tiptoeing through life even though my conscious intention is to truly and wholly experience life to the fullest.

This shows that the practice of journaling and meditating is not a quick fix but a journey and a lifestyle. It will change you and liberate you little by little and over the course of a year or two, you will be transformed into a more self-aware, loving, compassionate individual who has started to thrive in life. Others might think you became an overnight success but, you will always know it was a result of consistently showing up for yourself.