The Art & Science of Journal Writing

Yesterday evening, Beth Jacobs and I completed the last of the four-session webinar, Writing for Emotional Balance.  I, personally, found the webinar to be really informative.  If you are anything like me there are times when you use your journal to er, um, er… shall I say FULLY express your emotions.  Okay, so sometimes, I rant and rave and carry on expelling anger or outrage or pain–the stuff that is not pretty when expressing fully in the outer world.  My journal contains that slop nicely, but it’s not helpful to get trapped into writing an endless loop of intense emotion, spewing the same stuff over and over.

Beth suggests that if this intense emotional expression becomes the norm in your journal, you may want to limit the amount of time spent on that kind of writing.  Perhaps you can give yourself five or ten minutes of ranting, and then commit to writing a summary of the rant.  That helps you set a limit for yourself, gives you an opportunity to think about what the storm was about and maybe gain a little insight about your issue. You may even calm down and move to another topic!