Journaling Guide For Healing Your Emotional Wounds

My journaling life started when my mother would habitually compare me to my late sister for not being as beautiful as she was. Fortunately, I survived childhood because I learned to write my feelings on paper — the pain of rejection and the mental and emotional suffering of being unloved and unwanted. Today, I am continuously surviving and thriving in adulthood by healing my childhood traumas using the same old technique — journaling.

Journaling (or writing therapy) is the use of longhand writing (handwriting) for self-exploration, deepening of consciousness, and healing inner issues. It captures thoughts and emotions that you try to avoid and allows you to process what happened on a deeper level.

Note: To experience journaling therapeutic benefits and magic, it must be hand-written, using a pen and a notebook or journal.

Why You Should Consider Journaling For Emotional Healing

I have experienced in-person coaching sessions with life coaches and clinical psychologists when I was dealing with anxiety and mild depression. They are amazing options that can help you, but they also have disadvantages. Adding journaling to your healing journey can give you more meaning, support, and direction.

Here are some good reasons why you should consider journaling.

Journaling is inexpensive and you can access it anytime as long as you have your pen and journal pad with you.

Getting a professional life coach or therapist is pretty expensive and you need to get an appointment from them before you get the help and support you need. Triggers and pain occur in unexpected times and you cannot just go or call your therapist to help you deal with them. Journaling can be your go-to rescue to process and calm the storm building up inside you.

Journaling can be your new best friend in adulthood.

When I hit my thirties, almost all my friends, including myself, were getting married and building families.  Our responsibilities get bigger and more serious and connecting with friends could be a challenge at times. We get busy with work, raising kids, maintaining a household, and other adulting matters that consume our time and energy. Sometimes, calling our friends is not a good option, and keeping a journal is like getting a new friend whose life is only devoted to you.

Journaling is a private way of dealing with your pain.

I used to be ashamed of admitting to other people that maybe my mother was right, that I was not beautiful. So I kept the pain to myself to avoid further judgment from others. Most emotional problems are sensitive and difficult to share even with your closest friends. In journaling, you can express and release shame and pain without fearing what others might think about you. 

Journaling Guide For Healing Emotional Wounds

Journaling must be executed without expecting idealistic pictures of how healing should look like. It is not about getting from point A to point B, but an open-ended experience that gradually transforms you. It takes time, commitment, and openness to endless revelations about yourself.

Here is the journaling guide I created to help you explore who you are, the experiences that shaped you, and the inner wounds that you need to heal.

1. Set A Clear Intention

A clear intention why you want to journal creates a space in your heart and mind to prioritize healing painful inner wounds. I became intentional with journaling when I saw a desperate need to let go of emotional baggage that dragged me down and affected my role as a mother and as a wife. Clear intention serves as a reminder of how you want journaling to help you.

Every time I journal, my intention affirms that a simple act of writing helps me address and let go of thoughts that bring negativity to my feelings and perception.

Journaling Guide: How do you want journaling to help you with your mental and emotional healing?

See below for a few suggestions to help you start.

“I believe that writing what I am going through will help me to release thoughts and emotions that are not serving me good anymore.”

“I believe that journaling will help me discover more about my hidden traumas from childhood experiences that trigger my responses towards people and events.”

2. Set A Journaling Schedule That Works For You

Consistency gives more power to your writing. If it is helpful for you to set a specific time for journaling, do it. But if you are in a similar situation like me where following a strict time is not possible, you can do it any time of the day as long as you do it every day.

3. Journal In A Peaceful Place To Hear Yourself

The goal of journaling is to strengthen your ability to reflect or introspect. Introspection is the beginning of spiritual, emotional, and mental healing because this is where we connect deeply with ourselves. When we are alone and spend time with ourselves, we hear our true feelings better and clearer.

A peaceful place can be your bedroom where no one will see writing, or an open crowd like a park, as long as you are not surrounded by people who know you. It is difficult to concentrate and be true to yourself when you are conscious of what others would think of you.

4. Write To Respect Your Feelings

All emotional pains are valid as long as they do not transform you into a revengeful monster. For years, I thought I was already done with my mother’s painful judgment. But when I became a mother, a new emotion took place – anger. I was angry because as a mother, I would never slap my child with words that would shame and hurt her.

In the book The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron wrote a powerful truth about anger that changed how I treated mine. “Anger is meant to be listened to. Anger is a voice, a shout, a plea, a demand. Anger is meant to be respected. Why? Because anger is a map.”

I was taught that it was disrespectful to feel anger towards my parents no matter what they did to me, so I suppressed my anger and even accused myself of being a bad daughter. Through journaling, I was able to redefine anger, appease myself, and forgive my mother.

We need to listen to our emotions instead of stuffing them to allow psychological shifts to flow in our lives. Journaling is a sacred way of communicating with ourselves, hearing our cries, and confronting emotions that we avoid to open our hearts to healing.

Journaling Guide: If you feel betrayed, rejected, judged, shamed, or unloved, listen to them and respect them.

• Write as if you are talking to a friend and tell how you feel. Listen to your inner cries the way you listen to a hurting friend.

• Recognize that your emotions are necessary to learn and grow. They are not enemies that want to destroy you. In this way, you respect yourself as an imperfect and vulnerable human being.

5. Practice Rooting Out

I first heard of the term ‘rooting out’ from my life coach which means to trace the source or pull out childhood experiences that shape who you are today. Rooting out is a technique wherein you try to go back and trace childhood memories, how you respond and cope with them, and how they shaped your personality.

I grew up withdrawing myself from family and relatives to avoid further offensive remarks about my physical appearance. They misunderstood my actions and way of thinking and often found myself alone. In my journaling practice, I noticed that the most common phrases I used were ‘I am alone,’ and ‘Nobody supports me,’.

I learned that my extreme feeling of being alone rooted in the rejection I experienced for not being beautiful. When parents are the primary source of painful experiences, we feel abandoned and alone.

Journaling Guide: What painful or shameful experiences in your childhood made you sensitive to certain situations? What behaviors did you get out of them? (Example: You withdraw from people; you tend to overexplain)

6. Write A Gentle Advice For Yourself

End each journal entry by writing a gentle reminder for yourself. Do not be too hard on yourself. Journaling molds you to become your own best friend, and having a friend who understands and respects what you are going through contributes to your emotional healing.

Examples of a gentle closing:

“I am not perfect and get vulnerable at times, and it’s okay.”

“Little by little, I will be okay, and forgive myself and the people who offended me.”

Journaling allows us to recognize, listen, and respect our pains and gives comfort to our spirits. Write in your journal every day. Be patient and diligent because journaling is not an instant mode for healing. It is by having a long-term relationship with self-introspection that you create a strong emotional foundation.

Journaling is a beautiful experience. If you need more in-depth guidance on journaling, connect with me through this link.