When searching about journaling practices, every now and then I run onto posts talking about "blank page journaling" or "filling blank notebook pages" or "how to journal in a blank notebook". But they all seem to have common themes guiding readers to "just write whatever comes through" or "to have a brain dump" or "to let it flow" or "no rules".
We can all agree that journaling has a very positive impact on our mental and emotional health, and even psychologists agree on that. They have been mentioning its benefits in the researches many times. But what researchers have also found out is that not all journaling practices are the same and just dumping one's thoughts on a blank sheet of paper seldom gives positive results.
Knowing What to journal about and How to journal about things are fundamentally two different approaches, and the outcome has different effects. That's why blank page journaling may sometimes backfire and leave an unexpected effect on a person.
If one is going through a particularly challenging phase in their life, when it seems that each negative event is causing a whole set of other negative events, it would be absolutely impossible to write just about anything. That would create a massive cognitive overload and emotional overwhelm. One may end up feeling even worse when seeing a dozen challenging events written on paper. That type of "brain dump" does not create psychological safety.
In my previous post, I mentioned that journaling is like an archeology. Each archeological excavation is done in a very safe environment with a solid structure and boundaries. Within those boundaries archeologists do discover some very precious and forgotten pieces of history.
Going through some old forgotten memories of one's own history is pretty much the same and one needs to feel psychologically safe to journal about those deep inner pathways.
That's why knowing How to journal becomes a lot more important than What to journal about.
Setting safe boundaries is actually helping deeper introspection, as they serve as a guardrail.
Setting a solid structure allows depth, as one is not scattering thoughts and emotions all over the place but instead one is focusing on one specific thing at a time.
In order to clarify what I mean by What and How journaling practices, and why they are fundamentally different, I have to make a clear and important distinction between journaling prompts and journaling structure.
Journaling prompts tell you What to think and write about, whilst journaling structure gives you the space for How to think and write.
Notice the difference:
"What would my day look like today if I let it be imperfect? Write whatever comes through"
vs.
"Today is one of the most imperfect days I had in a long time. How does that make me feel?"
The first one [What] is proposing an imaginary situation, something that may or may not happen and asking you to think about it, and to write whatever comes through. How would you know that the thoughts and emotions you are journaling about are even real?
The second one [How] gives you a familiar situation, something you already know about or have experienced. There's no room for guesswork or overthinking as the feelings are already there, you just have to fix them on a piece of paper.
If you are new to journaling and really struggling to write about anything meaningful, remember, you do not need more prompts, as I'm sure you already have a substantial collection of, you need a safe and guided structure where you can openly write about one single thought or feeling at that exact moment in time.
And you keep on repeating the same practice, over and over again, describing that How until you start noticing patterns. And through patterns you build your self-awareness.
And that is the real point of journaling: developing self-awareness and presence of mind.
Until next time, safe journaling.
Lena
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