How to Use Journaling for Insight

Few relationships run as deep as the one you have with yourself. You've wept in private over things no one else heard. You carry a full catalog of your own weak spots, the embarrassing episodes, the guilt stitched to each of them. Nobody else knows the particular way one person can light you up or wreck your mood, or how much effort some ordinary days actually cost you.

And yet knowing yourself this well does not automatically give you a clear read on your own emotions. People get stuck inside their own heads. You can be so close to the feeling that you lose any sense of its shape, wishing for some way out and a return to steadier ground. Writing things down is one of the more reliable routes back to clarity. Put the mess on paper and buried motives tend to surface, which makes it easier to release what you're holding and keep moving toward whoever you're trying to become.

The running conversation inside your head has a name: intrapersonal communication. It covers the pep talks, the self-scolding, the phrases you repeat to steady yourself. Howard Gardner, the developmental psychologist behind the theory of multiple intelligences, argued that intelligence isn't one thing measured by a test. He identified eight kinds, and one of them is intrapersonal intelligence: a sensitivity to your own inner needs and the ability to adjust deliberately for the sake of your own growth. Everybody leans on different strengths.

Why bother with a journal

A steady writing habit pays off in ways that reach past the page. It can lower the physical toll of stress, and researchers have tied that to a stronger immune response, milder asthma symptoms, and reduced flare-ups in rheumatoid arthritis.

It can also loosen creative knots. Your left hemisphere handles the logic and the mechanics of putting words in order while the right side runs looser, which opens a channel to feelings you might not reach any other way.

Writing sorts out the clutter in your thinking. Beyond the relief of simply getting it out, the act of describing a feeling tends to trace it back to its source. Do that often enough and you start to recognize your own patterns: what reliably makes you happy, what sets off anger, what scares you.

There's a problem-solving angle too. A hard decision, a tangle of emotions you can't name, a situation you're not sure how to walk into. Writing gives you room to lay the pieces out and look at them. It can even nudge you toward understanding how someone else sees things, and that shift sometimes becomes the first step in repairing a relationship.

Getting started when it feels awkward

The hardest part is often the beginning. Maybe you tell yourself there's no time. Maybe the idea of keeping a diary feels faintly ridiculous (ridiculous to whom, exactly?). There is no correct method here, but plenty of people freeze at the blank page, so prompts and small tricks earn their keep. The main instruction is just to try it. Knowing yourself is one of the oldest ambitions in human life, and that kind of self-knowledge is what lets a person settle into real growth and self-acceptance.

A few ground rules, which is to say almost none. Ignore spelling. Forget grammar. Do not sit there judging your own handwriting. If typing suits you better, type. Keep in mind, though, that a keyboard isn't always within reach, and writing by hand carries its own release and seems to do good things for how the mind processes.

Pick a private spot. The whole point collapses if you're editing yourself for an imagined reader, so protect the privacy.

If you don't know where to begin, set up topics in advance. Assign certain subjects to certain days, weeks, or months and let that scaffolding carry you.

Try quick-writes. Set a loose timer, ten to twenty minutes, and put down whatever arrives, no steering. It's stream of consciousness, nothing more.

Write by asking. Questions tend to pull answers out of hiding. Question yourself, or address the questions to a person you're in conflict with and see what comes back.

Record what happens to you. Keep an account of your experiences, recent or long past. Even plain description of your days becomes a document you can return to later.

Switch hands. Writing with your non-dominant hand can jostle something creative loose. In a similar spirit, try writing to your present self in the voice of yourself as a child.

Keep a gratitude practice. Noting the good is a simple way to counterbalance the rest. Each day jot down three things you're grateful for, or find the one decent thing hiding inside a day that went wrong.

Make something. Draw, pick up a camera, write lyrics or poems, and tuck the results into the journal. You might surprise yourself. You can also collect work by other artists that mirrors your mood or says something about who you are.

Step outside yourself. Writing about a painful situation in the third person, as though it happened to someone else, can crack a problem open. The distance often makes honesty easier, and it can let you glimpse the other person's view.

Melissa Lavery, M.S.

References: Ainslie, N. (n.d.). Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Retrieved March 10, 2015. Hills, L. (2012, January 4). 10 Journaling Tips to Help You Heal, Grow and Thrive. Retrieved March 10, 2015, from tinybuddha.com. Purcell, M. (2006). The Health Benefits of Journaling. Psych Central. Retrieved March 10, 2015.