Journal to the Self:
22 Paths to Personal Growth
by Kathleen Adams
THE
79¢ THERAPIST
In moments of ecstasy, in
moments of despair the journal remains an impassive, silent friend,
forever ready to coach, to confront, to critique, to console. Its
potential as a tool for holistic mental health is unsurpassed. -Write On!
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For nearly 30 years I have had
the same therapist. This therapist is available to me 24 hours a day and
hasn't gone on vacation in almost three decades. I have called upon my
therapist at three in the morning, on my wedding day, on my lunch break,
on a cold and lonely Christmas, on a Bora Bora beach, and in the dentist's
reception room.
I can tell this therapist
absolutely anything. My therapist listens silently to my most sinister
darkness, my most bizarre fantasy, my most cherished dream. And I can say
all this in any way that I want: I can scream, whimper, thrash, wail,
rage, exult, foam, celebrate. I can be funny, snide, introspective,
accusatory, sarcastic, helpless, brilliant, sentimental, cruel, profound,
caustic, inspirational, opinionated, or vulgar.
My therapist accepts all of
this and more without comment, judgment, or reprisal.
Best of all, this therapist
keeps a detailed record of all of our work together, so that I have on my
bookshelf a chronology of my life-my loves, my pains, my wins, my wounds,
my growth, my transformation.
Has this cost a fortune? you
ask. Not at all. My therapist doesn't want payment.
My therapist is my journal,
which I write in spiral notebooks, obtainable for under a dollar in any
city in the country. That's why I call my journal "the 79¢
therapist."
MY JOURNAL JOURNEY
My own journal journey began
when I was ten. Envious of my older sister's nightly retreat into her
locked diary, I waited impatiently for the time when I, too, would have a
life sufficiently unpredictable that it merited chronicle. My favorite
gift my tenth Christmas was a five-year diary that allotted six lines for
each day's entry.
In 1962, the life-style of the
average suburban sixth-grader wasn't particularly glamorous. Some days it
was a struggle to fill up even six lines:
It snowed. I had to wear boots
to school. I hate wearing boots to school! They're UGGHHHH!!!!!
Or:
Mr. Mason was sick. We had a
substitute. She was boring.
Barbie M. and I ate lunch
together.
And so one day I recorded not
what had happened in school that day, but what I wished had
happened:
Jack T. was waiting for me at
the corner. He carried my books. He said he's loved me since 4th. He asked
me to go steady. I said ok but only if it's secret.
And then:
Tommy S. walked me home from
school and boy was Jack mad!!!!! He said he won't go steady anymore unless
it's not secret. I don't know who I like better.
As I warmed to my fantasy
life, the cast of supporting players (all plucked from Mr. Mason's
classroom) grew, and the plots began to take intricate twists and turns.
Not only was my own fictional love life logged for posterity, but also
scandals involving my school chums popped up with alarming regularity.
The inevitable ethical dilemma
(What if somebody reads it and believes it?) and the nagging literary fear
(What if somebody reads it and doesn't?) finally cut short my budding
career as a soap opera scriptwriter; I destroyed my first diary and vowed
not to write another.
But I did. And another, and
another after that.
I have now been writing
journals and diaries for 27 years, and I'm happily hooked for life.
As it turned out, soap opera
scriptwriting wasn't in my professional future. But writing was, and so
was psychotherapy. And then, at last, they married.
Journals.
Since that happy day, I have
taught and lectured about Journa1 writing and its applications as a tool
for personal growth and self-discovery, both to therapists and to
individuals who want to learn how to heal themselves. It has been, and is,
a consummate joy. I am in love with my work.
RACHEL'S JOURNAL JOURNEY
Perhaps the most rewarding and
fascinating part of journal therapy is this: it spreads out before you in
black and white the contents of the heart, mind, and soul. You simply
cannot appreciate how healing and powerful this is until you have
experienced it.
Take, for example, eight weeks
in the life of Rachel, an adult child of an alcoholic father, whose
husband had filed for divorce unexpectedly and without explanation. Rachel
began her journal journey in the summer of 1988:
June 30.
So! Here I am writing in my journal, feeling self-conscious. A new pen and
notebook do not a journal make.
July 1.
Hmmmmm. Fighting the urge to rip out last night's entry to "do
over." But last night was last night and cannot be done over. Be here
now!
It didn't take Rachel long to
address the painful issues common to Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACAs):
July 3.
Why should I be afraid to ask what I possibly couldn't know? I never
realized the extent to which the prison of not knowing has contributed to
my aloneness.
July 4.
I don't want to write these words. But I have already written them, and
they are true. And lightning didn't strike. But it is so painful to be
vulnerable.
Despite her early discomfort,
Rachel soon found herself using her journal to take inventory of her life:
July 6.
So today is your birthday. It's been quite a year, wouldn't you say?
July 9.
Today I had an experience that has shot huge gaping holes in everything
that I believe to be true....
Rachel found that her
present-day feelings of discomfort and depression echoed an earlier time,
which she explored in a Steppingstones essay:
July 14.
It was a time when I felt like a nobody and when I lost everything I
thought was mine-including people I had counted on, home, as well as my
own heart....
With some of her ACA issues in
focus, Rachel used Unsent Letters to clarify her feelings about her
father's recovery from alcoholism:
July 16.
Dear Dad: I want you to get help but I don't believe you will.... Take the
plunge. You have nothing more to lose.
Three weeks into the process,
Rachel noticed a shift in her relationship with her journal:
July 18.
I just reviewed the last few entries in comparison to the first. I must
feel more comfortable-my handwriting is messier! Hello, journal!
The "disidentification"
process continued with a list of " 100 Things I Am Not." Rachel
followed up with:
July 20.
I know now I will not die-knowledge I previously had in my head but not in
my heart-and I will stay with this sadness as best I can.
This shift in awareness
allowed her to verbalize long-denied anger and resentments:
July 28.
I'm sick of it!! I'm sick of being in recovery and still feeling unclean
and dishonest. I'm sick of sadness and pain. I'm sick of trying so hard
and still not getting it. And I hate this journal for pointing it out to
me all the time. I hate you, journal!!!
And as if this entry were the
"labor pains" of her soul, the very next entry logged a dream:
August 1.
I am pregnant and give birth to a girl. The labor is swift....
In a whimsical dialogue with
her cat, Rachel received cogent feline advice:
August 2.
CAT: Hey-loosen up. Be more like me-live in the moment, without judgment,
get love where you can and purr a lot.
RACHEL: Yeah-well, it sounds
good-but . . .
CAT: Those endless buts! Let's
go play!
An entry logging "current
events" opened the door to more exploration of her anger:
August 7.
Today I found out the divorce will be finalized in September. I feel angry
about it-the whole sense of its being done to me as if the divorce
is an entity of its own, going on about its way without taking my feelings
into account.
In a Stream of Consciousness
spiral, Rachel began with the word "Self" and circled her way
around and around until she was finally able to break loose with the
phrase "get angry," which she did in a journal dialogue with her
husband. Her anger and hurt expressed at last, Rachel found a curious calm
in an Unsent Letter to her husband:
August 15.
The time has come to say good-bye. You're right-part of me has been
attached to the pain and energy connected to the unresolved status of our
relationship. I'll miss you.... As I write this, I realize I never had the
chance to say good-bye and that's been part of my struggle to let go. So I
use this time and space to say good-bye, to say I forgive you and wish you
the best.... Adios. Good-bye. Love, Rachel.
Tender with harvested pain,
Rachel ended this eight-week leg of her journey with a list entitled
"Things I Am Grateful For."
We live out our lives in
cycles. The tides ebb and flow. The moon blooms into fullness and recedes.
We live a hundred tiny deaths from hour to hour. And as it did with
Rachel, each death inevitably leads to rebirth.
YOUR JOURNAL JOURNEY
Every time I begin a class, I
ask the students what they want to gain from the experience. We create a
list of "collective class goals," which usually includes items
such as:
