journaling

Hi folks
I have a question about the journaling. The dialogue journals seem to be very difficult. How can I suggest someone elses response. I think I am missing the point. Please help. I want to get all I can from the program

 

Just guess at how they would respond based on your memory of them. Your memories, thoughts, and feelings of these people are all in your mind, and that is where TMS is generated. Have fun with it. Be creative.

 

Thanks for the response. I will give it another try.

 

Hi, nopain. Ellen has it right. You don't journal or dialogue with someone else, you think how they react or have reacted to you and your repressed emotions and/or perfecionist and goodist personality.

Just relax and think about present and past events that cause you problems and write about them.
Don't spend more than maybe half an hour journaling or it may become stressful.
Spend the rest of your time enjoying life, living in the present. Don't forget deep breathing and what I do make worry pain go away. I laugh.
Laughing releases positive, pain-healing into the mind and body.

 

Thanks Walt
I am grateful to this site , all the help and advise is wonderful

 

I journal about what I am feeling about something, someone, etc. Not what someone else's view is.

Can you be more explicit in your question--how you are in dialogue with someone else in your journaling? We're here to help and many of us have had great success journaling.

 

I have had an incredible break through as result of journaling. I don't suggest anyone else do it this way though. I can only assume I was ready for it after many years of trying to solve TMS for myself. I had noticed that as I was aging my emotions were starting to "leak" out more. I believed I "knew" myself pretty well and what to watch out for. However, I have never journaled my feelings before. I actually exaggerated my feelings and just wrote. I used words like hate just to see what would come up. Imagine my shock when I listened to Alan Gordon's program yesterday and realized I was on the right track.

I always knew that I was a hypersensitive child and if I didn't know, many people were more than happy to tell me that I was over sensitive. I also always knew that when I moved to another province when I was about 10 that it seemed to me that my life was over. I was so unhappy and angry. However, with journalling and not really thinking what I was journalling, (editing my words) I suddenly realised that things were bad for my mother (who later joined AA) when we moved as well. My father had huge responsibilities. She was expected to be a huge complement to his business. And it was a time when there was a lot of drinking going on everywhere in North America . Liquid lunches, dinners, cocktails, parties. I realized for the first time that my mom had to step up to the plate whether she wanted to or not.

My mom had always blamed my brother and father for everything that happened to me until she went into AA......then she blamed herself. And she took that responsibility on until the day she died. I forgave her because I thought she was a great person and great mom.....Forgiving because someone you love is far different than understanding, though. I didn't remember much of my childhood except a few bad bits here and there. I knew we went on lovely family vacations etc., so that part of my life had to be good. Not once have I through all these years ever thought that my childhood may have been a false memory (and, in my case, no memory denying to myself that my mom was an alcoholic). I understood what my mother must have gone through and cried for her and then I cried for myself because I couldn't share with her that I finally understand because she is gone....The whole process was a little messy but it also felt so good. Today I received the Unlearn Your Pain book which is my next step to my recovery. I was out digging in the garden today....couldn't have done that before. I have great hope going forward and journaling is going to be a big part of my recovery.

I talked to a neighbour the other day who never gets any pain. I already knew that she "Speaks her mind". What I didn't know was that if she was in a position where she felt she shouldn't say anything, she would come home and write down how she felt. This is a pretty strong confirmation to me that I am heading in the right direction.

 

I guess yo rneighbor's way of dealing with expressing herself by writing it down works for her.
Different strokes, they say.

I had a neighbor who, some years ago when I moved into the house next to her's, told me,
"Don't tell me your problems, and I won't tell you mine."

That worked, too. But I asked my sister for some of her Librium and that worked better.

Now I just believe in TMS and don't need anything else.