Redux

If you don't write a journal every day, I can really recommend it for helping you become centered, think logically about your loved one's alcoholism - and it is REALLY SUPER to sit down and write all the mean things out that you'd love to say to his face but you're not in a position to, for whatever reason.

I wrote a letter to my ABF yesterday that I will never EVER give to him but MAN it felt good to get all that stuff out. While I was writing it, I pretended that I was going to give it to him as the "Impact Letter" that he said he would like for me to write. Well, I can't give him this as an impact letter because it's pretty brutal but MAN it felt good to get all that stuff off my chest and onto paper!

Do you journal? Do you have any tips for journalling? I'm going to make it a point to start doing this regularly when I get emotional about this situation - it's great therapy!

I use a program called One Note that's part of Microsoft Works, because it's really easy to put a password on the documents. I don't want my kids logging on to my computer and going "OOOH lets read this letter Mom has written to Doofus!"

brundle

I use to but I didn't have any password stuff. I didn't have to worry about the kids, they understand PRIVATE. (We all have our own PCs). AH was another story; so now my feeling is never put anything in writing that you don't want used against you or unless you plan on burning it right after!

I do think it's a great outlet though. I use to just write whatever was on my heart. You know the good, the bad. Sometime I tried to vent, but then bring my focus back on all the good things outside the addict so I wasn't so brought down by it all.

laurie6781

I started journaling very early in my recovery from alcoholism and drug use by my AA sponsor. At first it was hard. I used a 3 hole spiral notebook. At first sometimes the only entries, each day, were the date, and what the weather was like. Slowly the entries started to expand,

Then at 3 years sober and starting Al-Anon my new Al-Anon sponser asked me if I had a journal and was using it every day. I said yes that Bev D had me do that from early recovery. I have kept every one of them. They are great to go back to and read where I was and how far I have come.

I get my notebooks at the "Back To School Sales", usually at Target or K Mart, they seem to run the best specials and I can get an 80 page 3 hole spiral notebook for 10 to 15 cents each. I buy 10 to 15 of them depending on how many I have left from the previous year. They have a space to date them on the front, they are all the same size and fit real well in totes to store them.

Now at 25 years sober, I took most of the first 20 years of journals (kept the first 2, and some around very important times in those 20 years) and had a ceremonial bonfire of the rest. I still have from day 1 of year 21 to today and I still journal most days.

I do NOT use the computer. I find that something happens when one actually WRITES with an implement (pen or pencil). Something happens to what is going on in my head, and as those thoughts move down my shoulder, down my arm, to the fingers holding the pen, sometimes something completely different appears on the paper than what I thought was going on in my head. That does not happen for me when I type it on my computer. So, I WRITE in my journal.

Whatever works for others, I do believe that keeping and writing in a journal is a GREAT tool to work on ME.

J M H O

Love and hugs,

kotabear

from time to time I do.... REALLY need to do it again!!! and soon!

Thumper

I don't. I've tried and it just doesn't seem to work. I have a really hard time with it for some reason.

incitingsilence

I journal, it is my best tool, through different means, meaning straight up just showing me all ripped open and exposed and through poetry cause I love how the abstract can be used to take such raw emotions and maybe things that would be assigned as bad, or ugly or evil and be made into something so beautiful ( in theory )and yet the truth is never removed.

I have so many notebooks that I will not part with but I have over the years shredded things to let go, as a sort of symbolism.

And just like Laurie wrote it was a great way to work out me…

Swanky

I don't keep a journal because when I was young my mother would search for my journals (no matter where I hid them) and use them against me. Journaling still doesn't feel safe to me.

But a couple of things that I've been taught, besides journaling, and really work for me are:

- type a letter to the person I need to address but know I will never send it; this way I can be as open and forthright as I want to be, and it will be mine to read and re-read for as long as I want, even editing if I want to down the line, until I'm ready to delete it

- hand write a letter to someone who I will never have any contact with again (someone dead, or someone who is now "dead to me") telling them all the unfinished business in my heart, then burn it... the burning creates a sort of closure; this sounds hokey but I was surprised

- when someone has really chapped my cheeks, I open an email window but type with the keyboard turned off; it gives me the satisfaction of firing a brutal shot over the bow without actually doing it

Anyway, that's what I do, fwiw. Journaling is a great gift to yourself, if you can do it.

trapeze

I started journaling this year, and it showed me I was in a self-destructive rut. Now I use it to vent or force me to think about myself instead of RAH.