Keeping Up With Yourself
I enjoyed writing since I was a kid but I don’t remember exactly what was my reason to start writing daily journal. As long as I remember, I’ve been writing a daily journal (I called it “diary”) since I was in elementary school. I keep writing until junior high school but didn’t write regularly. Unfortunately I didn’t keep those diary books –I’m dying to read what I wrote back then, it must be “pretty hilarious”. My senior high school and college days were full of school activities, school assignments and others, so later I started to forget about my daily journal.
In 2012 I started to write daily journal again. I write weekly or at least once a month. After I graduate from college I began writing more often. Sometimes daily, sometimes weekly but much more often than before. I’m writing almost everything about my daily life, my thoughts about event that occur in my day, my detail feelings about particular things, my hope, fear, sadness and exciting feeling I felt during the day. I write about things I grateful for, people in my daily life who makes me smile or even makes me down, thoughts about someone or something in my life and other “unimportant things”. Sometimes I write “letter” for someone when I feel that I want to say something to him/her but didn’t have any courage to do so. Often more, I write about someone I had crush on and the evolving feeling that happen about it (including the lessons I had about my experience with that special someone).
Writing daily journal is something I do to keep in touch with my own self. It help me recognize my feeling at particular time. It also help me recognize my own behavior pattern when I’m dealing with something. Such as, I’m more aware now that when it comes to romantic relationship sometimes I become insecure, being needy and have a lower self-esteem compared to my “partner”. According to what I wrote couple of times, I more likely to just runaway from the relationship if I felt such uncomfortable. Knowing this pattern help me better to cope with that and now I work on to try a different and better approach to deal with such situation.
Lately (thanks to my diary), I found out that I suffer Pre-Menstrual-Syndrome most of the month. I already know that before my period comes I used to feel physical pain in some areas of my body –but I’m not aware that my mood can drastically change in a brief time. Looking at my writing at those critical days, I used to write things that so negative and most of that are about how I feel that my life is off-track -I feel worthless, lonely and gloomy. I sometimes more sensitive and take others behavior personally. I also often write about how I really didn’t like my body and feel upset because I can’t maintain a healthy lifestyle and eat well. I crave for some specific foods and feel sleepy most of the time –and I didn’t like it so much. When I feel terribly down, I then check my calendar. If I notice that my critical time has come, I’m assuring myself that I’m just exaggerating my own thoughts.
I now really “in” to writing daily journal. My daily journal is “place” where I can freely expressing my opinion. I also like to write good and blessing things that happen to me so I keep remember that. I don’t want to take those for granted. It so much fun to read my journal couple months or years before and realized how things have changed. You may already have one or you are more likely to start writing. Here’s why keeping a daily journal good for you :
Writing a daily journal helps you remember how things made you feel on certain days. Getting your feelings written down on paper feels much better than keeping them for yourself. It can also help you think about things more clearly
2. You Can Improve Your Writing Skills (on other language!)
When stuck to write for my blog for quite some time, I poured the idea on to my journal and keep it for later. And also sometimes I write in English and didn’t care (as much as I care when posting something on social media) with the grammar.
Your journal has the potential to be both therapist and a dear friend who listens without judging or interrupting and is open 24 hours a day. You can tell your journal things you wouldn’t dare verbalize to someone else. Writing it down takes the edge off more toxic feelings and emotions and helps you better understand what you’re feeling. You can read here that writing to yourself is an important means of self expression. Having a place to write down your thoughts, feelings, memories and personal impressions about life can be healing and teach you to know yourself better.
Writing about your feelings can help the brain overcome emotional upsets and leave you feeling happier. Brain scans on volunteers showed that putting feelings down on paper reduces activity in a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is responsible for controlling the intensity of our emotions. The study showed that writing about emotions in an abstract sense was more calming than describing them in vivid language, which could make people feel more upset by reactivating their original feelings.
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