Keeping a Notebook
If writing things down is something that appeals to you as a way to process your inner experience alongside your therapy sessions, then the potential benefits are:
- Increased awareness of
- your inner landscape within the context of your daily life
- your own perceptions of how you are progressing
- particularly meaningful or valuable insights, thoughts and feelings.
- The act of writing can also develop a shift in perspective from being stuck in an experience towards being able to pull back and observe it. This is called building the observing ego.
- Writing can “anchor” you in your recollecting making it potentially easier to talk honestly about experiences without being so concerned about the reaction of others
- It can help to become aware of what it is that we are not sharing in therapy and to be curious about this
How to Start
First and foremost the writing down of your innermost thoughts and feelings needs to be safe. If there is any concern that others might read what you have written then you either need to consider finding some security for yourself in the activity, or alternatively, abandon the idea.
Questions to Ask Yourself in Your Writing Activity
Everyday experience
What has happened to me in the last few days?
How do I feel in relation to these events?
Good Feelings
What feels good right now?
Where is this feeling in my body?
Can I Describe it?
Not so Great Feelings
What doesn’t feel so great right now?
Where is this feeling in my body?
Can I Describe it?
What I Want to Change
What am I wanting to change in my life at the moment?
What is it that is stopping me from doing this?
How do I feel when I think about this?
What I Thought of Therapy
What was helpful in therapy?
What was not so helpful in therapy?
What I Haven’t Said
What am I not sharing in therapy?
What reaction am I concerned about in this?
Does this remind me of anything?
And any other questions you see fit
