How To Keep An Emotional Journal?

I have long researched how to keep an emotional journal but, despite my best efforts, I could not find anything on the subject. I read a lot of theoretical information, but I didn’t know where to start. No information was explained with examples. This is why  I decided to take a notebook and, in a schematic way, I started to manage my own emotions, in my own way. The experience has been such that today I would like to share it with all of you.

An emotional journal can be made by writing down emotions as we feel them. However, the mess we can generate can turn out to be more or less chaotic, so it won’t help us. Personally, I like visual things, using the right words to force me to be concise and not to “take shortcuts”.

We can write every day, if necessary, or when we feel the need to. The important thing is to keep in mind that  creating an emotional journal serves not only to record the negative emotions that we may have (anger, frustration, anxiety) but also those that are positive (joy, euphoria, happiness).. This will allow us to know ourselves on a deeper level and initiate a proper process towards emotional intelligence.

The first steps to keeping an emotional journal

In order to keep an emotional journal, it is important to have a special journal for this purpose. We will therefore not lose any of our notes, whether in loose sheets or in other notebooks or notebooks, and thus can return to our emotions when we feel the need to analyze them from a different angle.

Once we have a notebook that we find enjoyable and that inspires us, it’s time to start. For this it  is important to keep in mind that when we are writing we should be calm, unhurried and alone. This will make it easier to connect with our emotions and listen to what they want to tell us.

You can keep an emotional journal in the following way  : make four columns labeled “situation”, “emotion”, “response” and “suggestions” as follows:

This is an example of how, in a situation such as public speaking, a person explains step by step how they feel, what emotion is harassing them, how they react and what are their suggestions. to resolve this situation. As we can see, this corresponds to  a schematic, clear and concise form of dealing with emotions.

Emotional management brings us greater well-being

Writing regularly in our emotional journal  will help us perceive in which area of ​​our life we ​​usually have the most difficulty and which emotions are repeated the most. Is it fear or perhaps insecurity? Being aware of this will allow us to review our suggestions in order to put them into practice and avoid them being just written down on paper.

If you are a person with a lot of obsessive or ruminating thoughts, keeping an emotional journal will help you put an end to them. Thanks to this powerful emotional management tool, you will realize that once you analyze and reflect on what happened, you will be inundated with a pleasant feeling of well-being.

We can also deal with the positive emotions we feel. We will thus focus our attention on all the good things that we have come to experience. Let’s take another example:

Situation	Emotion	Reply	Suggestions
Getting a promotion at work	Happiness	Relaxation	Share it with other people

Now you have all the tools, and even visual examples, to keep an emotional journal that will help you and manage your emotions. However, it is important to keep in mind that there is no better or worse way to do it. You can add more columns if you want, or remove one that doesn’t convince you. This is your emotional journal and it should adapt to you. Their forms of creation are very diverse.

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Our thoughts

The most important thing to start with this writing therapy is to let your imagination run wild and follow the few tips …