Cameron’s grander claims about how journaling could change one’s life. It was fun to wake up every morning and spew a hurried black scrawl all over those straight blue lines. Then journaling provided me with an important outlet for the debilitating anxiety that had come to paralyze me at odd hours each day. Worst of all, I had no idea what would, theoretically, make me happy. I was unhappily married and dissatisfied with my career. I was nearing 30, facing the personal reckoning that always comes with such milestones. Yet one of the quotations that has stuck with me the most is straightforward and practical: “It is very difficult to complain about a situation morning after morning, month after month, without being moved to constructive action.” Cameron’s book, on the other hand, is steeped in the kind of earnest spirituality that New Age skeptics will no doubt bristle at. I got into journaling because I’m interested in what makes people tick.” Pennebaker said of his research: “I’m not a granola-crunching kind of guy. But it can be one of the most useful and cost-effective tools we have to forge a better, more emotionally and mentally healthy life. “Writing promptly upon awakening, we utilize the authenticity available to us in that time frame. “Jungians tell us we have about a 45-minute window before our ego’s defenses are in place in the morning,” she said. Cameron advocates: I write three to five pages every morning by hand.įor her, the timing and frequency is essential to a beneficial practice. The one I’ve come back to again and again, however, is closest to what Ms. Over the years, I have switched up my process here and there, even embarking on an overly ambitious plan involving color-coded pens. Others find talking to a tape recorder works too. “Some people like writing with their nondominant hand. Techies can take heart in knowing that, contrary to the romantic ideal, typing out journal entries on a laptop or even on a phone can yield effects that are just as positive, particularly if it’s more comfortable and convenient for you. Pennebaker is also not a purist when it comes to tools. Go to church.” What tools should I use?ĭr. If you don’t find a benefit from it, he says, “stop doing it. Pennebaker advises, set aside three to four days to write for 15 to 20 minutes a day about it. If you’re distressed about something, Dr. Cameron encourages practitioners to think of them as “brain drain,” a way to expel “all that angry, petty, whiny stuff” that “eddies through our subconscious and muddies our days.” After years working as a writer and journalist, making my living trying to sound smart on the page, this was a huge relief. Or even writing.” They need not be smart, or funny, or particularly deep - in fact, it’s better if they’re not. Cameron describes the morning pages as “three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness,” done as soon as one wakes. In other words: Writing in your journal is the only way to find out what you should be writing about.īut when I was just getting started, the first place I went looking for guidance was the book that had inspired my ex-husband: “The Artist’s Way,” by Julia Cameron. In some ways, though, it’s the most misguided - one thing journaling has taught me is that the mind is a surprising place, and you often don’t know what it may be hiding until you start knocking around in there. This is often the first question a budding journal writer might ask him or herself. I was in a place where I would have tried anything to feel better if someone had told me that a daily practice of morning somersaults helped her get through a difficult time, you better believe I would have started rolling. I didn’t know any of this when I started journaling again two years ago. This in turn improves our immune system and our moods we go to work feeling refreshed, perform better and socialize more. When we do that, our working memory improves, since our brains are freed from the enormously taxing job of processing that experience, and we sleep better. Pennebaker, helps to organize an event in our mind, and make sense of trauma. Pennebaker said, and are often incorporated into traditional talk therapy.Īt the same time, writing is fundamentally an organizational system. Labeling emotions and acknowledging traumatic events - both natural outcomes of journaling - have a known positive effect on people, Dr.
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