“Dear Diary”: a psychotherapist who is always at hand

Imagine that at every moment of life there is someone next to you to complain to, and he will not “cheer” you with the words “get it together, rag.” Someone you can tell about the difficult situation you’re in and be supportive and sympathetic. Someone you can share your joy with and won’t belittle your progress. Someone who never sleeps or goes on vacation. His attention belongs only to you, and his time is free for you.

This is a diary. Personal psychotherapist in a notebook.

I keep a diary for half my life. I do it on a whim, I try different practices. I carefully keep notebooks and sometimes I look into them to find out what I lived for, what occupied my thoughts, to explore whether I have changed.

There is some magic in the thoughts that we write down with a pen on paper. Written ideas begin to take shape. Recorded emotions subside, order, let go. We live them through letters, and do not drive them deep into ourselves. Recorded events remain and delight in a few years. Or show us what we’ve been through, what lessons have made us stronger. Recorded words of reproaches and accusations do not hurt the one to whom they were intended. We exhale, become calmer, begin to see the situation differently and can say what we really want.

The diary is great for:

• fixing and clarifying thoughts,
• identifying causes and problems
• brainstorming and decision making,
• discovering what lies deep and imperceptible at first sight,
• travel beyond the obvious,
• rapid collection of information
• focusing on what is really happening (usually it is not what it seems).

There are many written practices, and to feel their power and effect, you can start with any. The main thing is to buy yourself a beautiful notebook and a comfortable pen so that you want to take them in your hands again and again. Suddenly you want to regularly keep a diary?

One word

You can start simple. Look back at the past year or month and name it using just one or two words. Choose a word for the coming month.

Each evening, in your diary or wall calendar, write down one epithet that describes your day, and below it, another epithet that describes your dreams for tomorrow. It only takes a minute and is a fun exercise in creating your own reality.

Short practice to feel yourself

When I feel that I am “lost” and I understand that nothing works for me in this state, I ask myself the following questions and answer them in writing:

• What is happening to me at the moment? What am I doing now, how do I feel? What am I thinking about? How do I breathe?
• What would I like next? Do I want to keep doing, thinking, feeling and breathing the same way? Do I want to change something?
• What can I do now to feel the way I want?

By asking myself about myself, I stop acting out of habit, forcing myself to finish things. I suddenly feel: I’m tired, I’m stuffy, I feel discomfort – for example, because my leg is numb, but I didn’t notice it. The question of breathing is not accidental: it is impossible to breathe deeply and worry at the same time. Therefore, when I become aware of my sensations, name them and begin to breathe deeply, I change my state. When I understand what I really want, I can, for example, turn on the music and dance for three minutes or take a brisk walk to my favorite podcast. Or decide that today I will reach the sea, and finish what I started tomorrow morning.

“Unsent” letter

A practice that helps at an emotional peak: in a state of resentment, anger or anger – an “unsent” letter. Instead of tearing and throwing, I sit down and write. You can pour everything on paper, not embarrassed in expressions, write something that you will never say to your interlocutor in person.

I write until the anger subsides. If the feelings do not subside, I take another sheet and write further. And so on until I cool down, until completely different emotions come to replace anger and anger. Then the letter can be torn into pieces with pleasure or even burned.

Five questions to understand yourself

In writing practices, there are “springboards” or “seeds” – short phrases or questions that help expand the thought. For instance:

1. Three things that went well today.
2. Three thanks.
3. One intention per day (what would you like to broadcast to the world today).
4. Five things you want to create or try.
5. Current difficulties and advice to yourself on how to deal with them.

Other techniques can be found in the book by renowned diary therapy expert Kathleen Adams. “Diary as a way to yourself”.

Perhaps, after you work with the springboard, you will want to write further. Don’t stop yourself. For the sake of experiment, set a goal for at least a week to write 10-15 minutes a day. Watch how the wording of thoughts changes when you catch them and write them down, how order appears in your head. If ideas, ideas and deeds are written out on time, we free up space for the new, bring the internal dialogue out. The vanity recedes, and we begin to hear ourselves.