Do y'all prefer digital or physical journaling?

My preference is to scribble down my writing on old notebook paper without regard to legibility, spelling or syntax. As soon as both sides are filled up, it goes in the recycling bin. I live alone so I don't need to worry about it being read by someone else. I prefer handwriting because it's impossible to go back and change anything that I've written.

Because here's the thing: The physical method of doing your writing exercises is not important. What is important is 100% honesty with yourself, which is why Nicole Sachs and Dr David Hanscom both say that the writing needs to be thrown out immediately. If you keep it, it is far too tempting to edit what you put down, because you're always thinking about you or someone else reading it later. This does not lend itself to true honesty in most of us. I discovered this in myself when I was doing the SEP, which is that my brain was literally encouraging me to skip over things. Forcing myself to put those things down and face them was vital to my recovery. In my case they weren't even earth-shattering as it turns out, but they had created a whole layer of shame and guilt from childhood.

The digital version which is recommended by Nicole Sachs is to keep an almost blank document on your computer, use that for whatever you are writing during one session, then delete all of the journaling before saving the blank document again. This should eliminate any auto-saved text.

 

I just listened to Nicole Sachs' latest episode (season 3 episode 76, only 30 minutes), in which she describes her own recent severe pain flare, and walks us through her process step by step, including exactly how she does her writing which of course she calls JournalSpeak. It's awesome.

 

Again, the strong recommendation of the experts is to write and dispose. It's difficult to be truthful if you keep it.